1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 17
6 * Support for .gdb_index sections with version less than 7 has been
9 * GDB now accepts --no-escape-args as an alternative to --args on the
10 command line. GDB will not escape special shell characters within
11 arguments after --no-escape-args.
13 * gdbserver now accepts --no-escape-args as a command line flag. When
14 this flag is used gdbserver will not escape special shell characters
15 within the inferior arguments.
17 * The add-inferior, clone-inferior, and MI -add-inferior commands will
18 now give a warning, and create the new inferior without a
19 connection, when the current inferior's connection, at the time the
20 command is given, is unshareable. For example, the core-file target
21 cannot be shared between inferiors, nor can the Window native
22 target. These targets could never really be shared. Attempting to
23 share them would usually lead to GDB crashing. GDB now prevents
26 * When connecting to a remote server, if the server supports the new
27 qExecAndArgs packet, then GDB will copy the argument string from the
28 server and update the 'args' setting, as if 'set args ...' had been
29 used. This means that the arguments are visible from GDB using
30 'show args', and that, if using the extended-remote protocol,
31 subsequent runs of the inferior will use the same arguments as the
34 * Support for stabs debug information has been removed.
36 * Support for the binary file format dbx has been removed.
38 * When connected to an extended-remote target GDB can now
39 automatically set the 'remote exec-file' in some cases. GDB will
40 auto set the remote exec-file only if the remote wasn't started with
41 an executable, and the user hasn't used 'set remote exec-file' to
42 set an executable. GDB will auto set the remote exec-file using the
43 current executable if the current executable has a 'target:' prefix,
44 or if the current executable is within the sysroot.
46 * GDB now adds all type symbols to the .gdb_index section. The index
47 version number has not increased as a consequence of this change.
48 This fixes an issue where GDB could fail to find a type when relying
49 on the index. Any existing indexes should be regenerated.
50 * Support for Floating Point Mode Register (FPMR) in AArch64.
54 GNU/Linux/MicroBlaze (gdbserver) microblazeel-*linux*
58 maintenance test-remote-args ARGS
59 Test splitting and joining of inferior arguments ARGS as they would
60 be split and joined when being passed to a remote target.
64 maintenance info program-spaces
65 This command no longer displays the core file name.
68 If an inferior has a core file loaded, then this will be displayed
69 as an additional line under the inferior's table entry in the
72 New command class for help
73 The new command class "essential" has been added, which is a set of
74 commands that we, as developers, believe would be close to a minimal
75 set of commands for a new user of GDB.
77 * Changed remote packets
79 single-inf-arg in qSupported
80 The new single-inf-arg feature within the qSupported packet allows
81 GDB to inform the stub that it would like to send the inferior
82 arguments as a single string within the vRun packet. The stub can
83 reply with the single-inf-arg feature to indicate that it is able to
84 accept arguments as a single string.
89 This packet returns the executable filename and argument string with
90 which the server was started. If no such information was given to
91 the server then this is reflected in the reply.
95 ** New class gdb.Style for representing styles, a collection of
96 foreground and background gdb.Color objects, and an intensity.
98 ** New constants gdb.INTENSITY_NORMAL, gdb.INTENSITY_BOLD, and
99 gdb.INTENSITY_DIM for use with gdb.Style when representing
102 ** New gdb.StyleParameterSet for creating custom style settings.
103 Use gdb.StyleParameterSet(NAME) to create 'set style NAME ...'
104 and 'show style NAME ...' parameters.
106 ** The gdb.write() function now takes an additional, optional,
107 'style' argument, which can be used to style the output.
109 ** New gdb.Corefile class which represents a loaded core file. This
110 has an attribute Corefile.filename, the file name of the loaded
111 core file, and a method Corefile.is_valid(), which returns False
112 when a Corefile object becomes invalid (e.g. when the core file
113 is unloaded). There is also Corefile.mapped_files() which
114 returns a list of CorefileMappedFile objects, representing files
115 that were mapped into the core file when it was created.
117 ** New gdb.CorefileMappedFile type representing a file that was
118 mapped when the core file was created. Has read-only attributes
119 filename (string), build_id (string), is_main_executable
120 (boolean), and regions (list of CorefileMappedFileRegion objects).
122 ** New gdb.CorefileMappedFileRegion type, which represents a mapped
123 region of a file (see gdb.CorefileMappedFile above). Has
124 read-only attributes start, end, and file_offset.
126 ** New Inferior.corefile attribute. This read only attribute
127 contains the gdb.Corefile object if a core file is loaded into
128 the inferior, otherwise, this contains None.
130 *** Changes in GDB 17
132 * Debugging Linux programs that use x86-64 or x86-64 with 32-bit pointer
133 size (X32) Shadow Stacks are now supported.
135 * Support for the shadow stack pointer register on x86-64 or x86-64 with
136 32-bit pointer size (X32) GNU/Linux.
138 * Debugger Adapter Protocol changes
140 ** GDB now supports the "completions" request.
142 * "set style" commands now supports numeric format for basic colors
143 from 0 to 255 and #RRGGBB format for TrueColor.
145 * New built-in convenience variable $_colorsupport provides comma-separated
146 list of color space names supported by terminal. Each color space name is one
147 of monochrome, ansi_8color, aixterm_16color, xterm_256color or rgb_24bit.
148 It is handy for conditionally using styling colors based on terminal features.
151 (gdb) if $_regex ($_colorsupport, ".*(^|,)rgb_24bit($|,).*")
152 >set style filename background #FACADE
154 >if $_regex ($_colorsupport, ".*(^|,)xterm_256color($|,).*")
155 >set style filename background 224
157 >set style filename background red
161 * UST (static tracepoint) support from gdbserver has been removed.
163 * Linux checkpoint code has been updated to work with multiple inferiors.
165 * The gcore and gdb-add-index scripts now have a -v or --version
166 option, which prints the version number, and then exits. As well as
167 a -h or --help option, which prints each options and a brief
170 * The gcore script now has a -g option that lets you specify the GDB
171 binary invoked by gcore.
173 * On systems that support linker namespaces, the output of the command
174 "info sharedlibraries" may add one more column, NS, which identifies the
175 namespace into which the library was loaded, if more than one namespace
178 * New built-in convenience variables $linker_namespace_count and
179 $_linker_namespace. These show the number of active linker
180 namespaces, and the namespace to which the current location belongs to.
181 In systems that don't support linker namespaces, or if the inferior hasn't
182 started yet, these always return the integer 0.
184 * The 'org.gnu.gdb.i386.linux' target description feature can now
185 contain three additional registers which provide access to the TLS
186 related GDT entries on i386 (and x86-64 when compiling with -m32).
188 * Add record full support for rv64gc architectures
190 * Debugging Linux programs that use AArch64 Guarded Control Stacks is now
193 * New "--binary-output" command line option instructs GDB to set the
194 translation mode of its stdout/stderr to binary mode. This disables
195 Line Feed translation. MS-Windows only.
197 * The "catch syscall" command now works on riscv*-linux* targets.
201 maintenance check psymtabs
202 Renamed from maintenance check-psymtabs
204 maintenance check symtabs
205 Renamed from maintenance check-symtabs
207 maintenance canonicalize
208 Show the canonical form of a C++ name.
210 set riscv numeric-register-names on|off
211 show riscv numeric-register-names
212 Controls whether GDB refers to risc-v registers by their numeric names
213 (e.g 'x1') or their abi names (e.g. 'ra').
214 Defaults to 'off', matching the old behaviour (abi names).
216 set style emoji on|off|auto
218 Controls whether GDB can display emoji. The default is "auto",
219 which means emoji will be displayed in some situations when
220 the host charset is UTF-8.
222 set style warning-prefix STRING
223 set style error-prefix STRING
224 These commands control the prefix that is printed before warnings
225 and errors, respectively. This functionality is intended for use
226 with emoji display, and so the prefixes are only displayed if emoji
229 info linker-namespaces
230 info linker-namespaces [[N]]
231 Print information about the given linker namespace (identified as N),
232 or about all the namespaces if no argument is given.
234 set remote multiple-watchpoint-addresses-packet
235 show remote multiple-watchpoint-addresses-packet
236 Set/show the support for receiving multiple watchpoint addresses in
237 the 'T' stop reply packet.
242 On Linux and FreeBSD, the addresses shown in the output of this
243 command are now for the full memory range allocated to the shared
246 info threads [-gid] [-stopped] [-running] [ID]...
247 If no threads match the given ID(s) or filter options, GDB now prints
251 without printing the provided arguments. The newly added '-stopped'
252 option makes GDB list the stopped threads only. Similarly,
253 '-running' makes GDB list the running threads only. If both options
254 are given together, both stopped and running threads are listed.
255 These new flags can be useful to get a reduced list when there is a
256 large number of threads.
258 * GDB-internal Thread Local Storage (TLS) support
260 ** Linux targets for the x86_64, aarch64, ppc64, s390x, and riscv
261 architectures now have GDB-internal support for TLS address
262 lookup in addition to that traditionally provided by the
263 libthread_db library. This internal support works for programs
264 linked against either the GLIBC or MUSL C libraries. For
265 programs linked against MUSL, this new internal support provides
266 new debug functionality, allowing access to TLS variables, due to
267 the fact that MUSL does not implement the libthread_db library.
268 Internal TLS support is also useful in cross-debugging
269 situations, debugging statically linked binaries, and debugging
270 programs linked against GLIBC 2.33 and earlier, but which are not
271 linked against libpthread.
273 ** The command 'maint set force-internal-tls-address-lookup on' may
274 be used to force the internal TLS lookup mechanisms to be used.
275 Otherwise, TLS lookup via libthread_db will still be preferred,
280 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 3.4.
282 ** New class gdb.Color for dealing with colors.
284 ** New constant gdb.PARAM_COLOR represents color type of a
285 gdb.Parameter.value. Parameter's value is gdb.Color instance.
287 ** The memory_source argument (the second argument) has been removed
288 from gdb.disassembler.builtin_disassemble. This argument was
289 never used by GDB, and was added by mistake. The unused argument
290 was never documented in the GDB manual, so users should not have
293 ** gdb.execute has an additional 'styling' argument. When True, then
294 output will be styled. The default for this argument is True
295 when output is going to standard output, and False when output is
298 ** Setting the documentation string (__doc__) of a gdb.Parameter
299 sub-class to the empty string, means GDB will only display the
300 set_doc or show_doc strings in the set/show help output.
302 ** New gdb.ParameterPrefix class. This can be used to create 'set'
303 and 'show' gdb.Command prefixes, suitable for use with new
306 ** Prefix commands (gdb.Command sub-classes) that don't have an
307 invoke method will now behave like builtin prefix commands when
308 invoked without a sub-command name. This means printing the help
309 text for all sub-commands, unless the prefix command is a 'show'
310 command, in which case the value of all sub-commands is printed.
312 ** New gdb.warning() function that takes a string and prints it as a
313 warning, with GDB's standard 'warning' prefix.
315 ** New attribute gdb.Value.is_unavailable, this checks for
316 unavailability like gdb.Value.is_optimized_out checks for
317 optimized out values.
321 ** New type <gdb:color> for dealing with colors.
323 ** New constant PARAM_COLOR represents color type of a value
324 of a <gdb:parameter> object. Parameter's value is <gdb::color> instance.
326 ** Eliding the #:doc string from make-parameter now means that GDB
327 will use a default documentation string. Setting #:doc to the
328 empty string for make-parameter means GDB will only display the
329 #:set_doc or #:show_doc strings in the set/show help output.
331 ** Prefix commands (using make-command) that don't have a #:invoke
332 property will now behave like builtin prefix commands when
333 invoked without a sub-command name. This means printing the help
334 text for all sub-commands, unless the prefix command is a 'show'
335 command, in which case the value of all sub-commands is printed.
339 binary-upload in qSupported reply
340 If the stub sends back 'binary-upload+' in it's qSupported reply,
341 then GDB will, where possible, make use of the 'x' packet. If the
342 stub doesn't report this feature supported, then GDB will not use
346 Return information about files on the remote system. Like
347 vFile:stat but if the filename is a symbolic link, return
348 information about the link itself, the file the link refers to.
350 * Changed remote packets
353 The XML that is sent as a response can now include an "id_str"
354 attribute for a thread element. The attribute indicates what GDB
355 should print as the target ID of the thread, for example in the
356 "info threads" command or when switching to the thread.
359 Previously, gdbserver incorrectly implemented this packet using
360 lstat rather than stat. This has now been corrected. The
361 documentation has also been clarified.
364 The signal stop packet can now include multiple 'watch', 'rwatch',
365 and 'awatch' stop reason entries. GDB will select between all of
366 the possible watchpoint addresses that are returned when presenting
367 the stop to the user.
369 multi-wp-addr in qSupported
370 The qSupported packet allows GDB to inform the stub it supports
371 receiving multiple watchpoint stop reasons in a single 'T' stop
372 reply packet. This improves support for targets with ambiguous
373 hardware watchpoint address reporting (e.g. AArch64). GDB will
374 always accept multiple watchpoint addresses regardless of whether
375 the stub claims to support this feature or not.
379 ** The =library-unloaded event now includes the 'ranges' field, which
380 has the same meaning as for the =library-loaded event.
382 ** The =library-unloaded event now includes the 'still-in-use' field.
383 This field is 'true' when a library is unloaded (removed from the
384 inferior's list of loaded libraries), but the mapping within the
385 inferior's address space is retained, as the library was mapped
386 multiple times, and the same mapping was being reused. In all
387 other cases, this field will have the value 'false'.
389 * Support for stabs debugging format and the a.out/dbx object format is
390 deprecated, and will be removed in GDB 18.
394 --enable-binary-file-formats=[FORMAT,...]
395 --enable-binary-file-formats=all
396 A user can now decide to only compile support for certain file formats.
397 The available formats at this point are: dbx, coff, xcoff, elf, mach-o
398 and mips. Some targets require specific file formats to be available,
399 and in such cases, the configure script will warn the user and add
400 support anyway. By default, all formats will be compiled in, to
401 continue the behavior from before adding the switch.
403 * A new configure option was added, allowing support for the compile
404 subsystem to be disabled at configure time, in the form of
405 --disable-gdb-compile.
407 * A new configure option was added, allowing support for DWARF debug
408 information to be disabled at configure time. The flag is
409 --disable-gdb-dwarf-support.
411 * A new configure option was added, allowing support for mdebug/ecoff
412 debug information to be disabled at configure time. The flag to do
413 that is --disable-gdb-mdebug-support.
415 * The Alpha target now supports target descriptions.
417 *** Changes in GDB 16
419 * Support for Nios II targets has been removed as this architecture
420 has been EOL'ed by Intel.
422 * GDB now supports watchpoints for tagged data pointers (see
423 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_pointer) on amd64, such as the
424 one used by the Linear Address Masking (LAM) feature provided by
427 * Debugging support for Intel MPX has been removed. This includes the
429 ** MPX register support
430 ** the commands "show/set mpx bound" (deprecated since GDB 15)
431 ** i386 and amd64 implementation of the hooks report_signal_info and
434 * GDB now supports printing of asynchronous events from the Intel Processor
435 Trace during 'record instruction-history', 'record function-call-history'
436 and all stepping commands. This can be controlled with the new
437 "set record btrace pt event-tracing" command.
439 * GDB now supports printing of ptwrite payloads from the Intel Processor
440 Trace during 'record instruction-history', 'record function-call-history'
441 and all stepping commands. The payload is also accessible in Python as a
442 RecordAuxiliary object. Printing is customizable via a ptwrite filter
443 function in Python. By default, the raw ptwrite payload is printed for
444 each ptwrite that is encountered.
446 * For breakpoints that are created in the 'pending' state, any
447 'thread' or 'task' keywords are parsed at the time the breakpoint is
448 created, rather than at the time the breakpoint becomes non-pending.
450 * Thread-specific breakpoints are only inserted into the program space
451 in which the thread of interest is running. In most cases program
452 spaces are unique for each inferior, so this means that
453 thread-specific breakpoints will usually only be inserted for the
454 inferior containing the thread of interest. The breakpoint will
455 be hit no less than before.
457 * For ARM targets, the offset of the pc in the jmp_buf has been fixed to match
458 glibc 2.20 and later. This should only matter when not using libc probes.
459 This may cause breakage when using an incompatible libc, like uclibc or
460 newlib, or an older glibc.
462 * MTE (Memory Tagging Extension) debugging is now supported on AArch64 baremetal
465 * Remove support (native and remote) for QNX Neutrino (triplet
468 * In a record session, when a forward emulation reaches the end of the reverse
469 history, the warning message has been changed to indicate that the end of the
470 history has been reached. It also specifies that the forward execution can
471 continue, and the recording will also continue.
473 * The Ada 'Object_Size attribute is now supported.
475 * Support for process record/replay and reverse debugging on loongarch*-linux*
476 targets has been added.
478 * New bash script gstack uses GDB to print stack traces of running processes.
482 ** Added gdb.record.clear. Clears the trace data of the current recording.
483 This forces re-decoding of the trace for successive commands.
485 ** Added the new event source gdb.tui_enabled.
487 ** New module gdb.missing_objfile that facilitates dealing with
488 missing objfiles when opening a core-file.
490 ** New function gdb.missing_objfile.register_handler that can
491 register an instance of a sub-class of
492 gdb.missing_debug.MissingObjfileHandler as a handler for missing
495 ** New class gdb.missing_objfile.MissingObjfileHandler which can be
496 sub-classed to create handlers for missing objfiles.
498 ** The 'signed' argument to gdb.Architecture.integer_type() will no
499 longer accept non-bool types.
501 ** The gdb.MICommand.installed property can only be set to True or
504 ** The 'qualified' argument to gdb.Breakpoint constructor will no
505 longer accept non-bool types.
507 ** Added the gdb.Symbol.is_artificial attribute.
509 ** Added gdb.Block.subblocks. Returns a list of blocks contained in that
512 ** Added gdb.Symbol.domain. Contains the domain of the symbol.
514 ** Added gdb.Architecture.void_type. Returns a gdb.Type representing "void"
515 type for that architecture.
517 * Debugger Adapter Protocol changes
519 ** The "scopes" request will now return a scope holding global
520 variables from the stack frame's compilation unit.
522 ** The "scopes" request will return a "returnValue" scope holding
523 the return value from the latest "stepOut" command, when
526 ** The "launch" and "attach" requests were rewritten in accordance
527 with some clarifications to the spec. Now they can be sent at
528 any time after the "initialized" event, but will not take effect
529 (or send a response) until after the "configurationDone" request
532 ** The "variables" request will not return artificial symbols.
536 show jit-reader-directory
537 Show the name of the directory that "jit-reader-load" uses for
540 set style line-number foreground COLOR
541 set style line-number background COLOR
542 set style line-number intensity VALUE
543 Control the styling of line numbers printed by GDB.
545 set style command foreground COLOR
546 set style command background COLOR
547 set style command intensity VALUE
548 Control the styling of GDB commands when displayed by GDB.
550 set style title foreground COLOR
551 set style title background COLOR
552 set style title intensity VALUE
553 This style now applies to the header line of lists, for example the
554 first line of the output of "info breakpoints". Previous uses of
555 this style have been replaced with the new "command" style.
557 set warn-language-frame-mismatch [on|off]
558 show warn-language-frame-mismatch
559 Control the warning that is emitted when specifying a language that
560 does not match the current frame's language.
562 maintenance info inline-frames [ADDRESS]
563 New command which displays GDB's inline-frame information for the
564 current address, or for ADDRESS if specified. The output identifies
565 inlined frames which start at the specified address.
567 maintenance info blocks [ADDRESS]
568 New command which displays information about all of the blocks at
569 ADDRESS, or at the current address if ADDRESS is not given. Blocks
570 are listed starting at the inner global block out to the most inner
573 maintenance frame-unwinder disable [-all | -name NAME | [-class] CLASS]
574 maintenance frame-unwinder enable [-all | -name NAME | [-class] CLASS]
575 Enable or disable frame unwinders. This is only meant to be used when
576 testing unwinders themselves, and you want to ensure that a fallback
577 algorithm won't obscure a regression. GDB is not expected to behave
578 well if you try to execute the inferior with unwinders disabled.
580 info missing-objfile-handlers
581 List all the registered missing-objfile handlers.
583 enable missing-objfile-handler LOCUS HANDLER
584 disable missing-objfile-handler LOCUS HANDLER
585 Enable or disable a missing-objfile handler with a name matching the
586 regular expression HANDLER, in LOCUS.
588 LOCUS can be 'global' to operate on global missing-objfile handler,
589 'progspace' to operate on handlers within the current program space,
590 or can be a regular expression which is matched against the filename
591 of the primary executable in each program space.
596 This command now supports file-name completion.
598 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
599 The ADDRESS expression can now be a full expression consisting of
600 multiple terms, e.g. 'function + 0x1000' (without quotes),
601 previously only a single term could be given.
610 These commands now require their filename argument to be quoted if
611 it contains white space or quote characters. If the argument
612 contains no such special characters then quoting is not required.
614 maintenance print remote-registers
615 Add an "Expedited" column to the output of the command. It indicates
616 which registers were included in the last stop reply packet received by
619 maintenance info frame-unwinders
620 Add a CLASS column to the output. This class is a somewhat arbitrary
621 grouping of unwinders, based on which area of GDB adds the unwinder.
622 Also add an ENABLED column, that will show if the unwinder is enabled
625 maintenance set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
626 This command has been removed because the same functionality can be
627 achieved with maint frame-unwinder (enable|disable) DEBUGINFO.
629 maintenance show dwarf unwinders
630 This command has been removed since the functionality can be achieved
631 by checking the last column of maint info frame-unwinders.
634 Now includes the version of GNU Readline library that GDB is using.
639 Return information about files on the remote system. Like
640 vFile:fstat but takes a filename rather than an open file
644 Given ADDR and LENGTH, fetch LENGTH units from the memory at address
645 ADDR and send the fetched data in binary format. This packet is
646 equivalent to 'm', except that the data in the response are in
649 *** Changes in GDB 15
651 * The MPX commands "show/set mpx bound" have been deprecated, as Intel
652 listed MPX as removed in 2019.
654 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++17 compiler.
655 For example, GCC 9 or later.
657 * GDB index now contains information about the main function. This speeds up
658 startup when it is being used for some large binaries.
660 * On hosts where threading is available, DWARF reading is now done in
661 the background, resulting in faster startup. This can be controlled
662 using "maint set dwarf synchronous".
667 Attempting to use both the 'r' and 'b' flags with the disassemble
668 command will now give an error. Previously the 'b' flag would
669 always override the 'r' flag.
673 GDB now generates sparse core files, on systems that support it.
675 maintenance info line-table
676 Add an EPILOGUE-BEGIN column to the output of the command. It indicates
677 if the line is considered the start of the epilogue, and thus a point at
678 which the frame can be considered destroyed.
680 set unwindonsignal on|off
682 These commands are now aliases for the new set/show unwind-on-signal.
685 This command now gives an error if any unexpected arguments are
686 found after the command.
689 When using the command "list ." in a location that has no debug information
690 or no file loaded, GDB now says that there is no debug information to print
691 lines. This makes it more obvious that there is no information, as opposed
692 to implying there is no inferior loaded.
696 info missing-debug-handler
697 List all the registered missing debug handlers.
699 enable missing-debug-handler LOCUS HANDLER
700 disable missing-debug-handler LOCUS HANDLER
701 Enable or disable a missing debug handler with a name matching the
702 regular expression HANDLER, in LOCUS.
704 LOCUS can be 'global' to operate on global missing debug handler,
705 'progspace' to operate on handlers within the current program space,
706 or can be a regular expression which is matched against the filename
707 of the primary executable in each program space.
709 maintenance info linux-lwps
710 List all LWPs under control of the linux-nat target.
712 set remote thread-options-packet
713 show remote thread-options-packet
714 Set/show the use of the thread options packet.
716 set direct-call-timeout SECONDS
717 show direct-call-timeout
718 set indirect-call-timeout SECONDS
719 show indirect-call-timeout
720 These new settings can be used to limit how long GDB will wait for
721 an inferior function call to complete. The direct timeout is used
722 for inferior function calls from e.g. 'call' and 'print' commands,
723 while the indirect timeout is used for inferior function calls from
724 within a conditional breakpoint expression.
726 The default for the direct timeout is unlimited, while the default
727 for the indirect timeout is 30 seconds.
729 These timeouts will only have an effect for targets that are
730 operating in async mode. For non-async targets the timeouts are
731 ignored, GDB will wait indefinitely for an inferior function to
732 complete, unless interrupted by the user using Ctrl-C.
734 set unwind-on-timeout on|off
735 show unwind-on-timeout
736 These commands control whether GDB should unwind the stack when a
737 timeout occurs during an inferior function call. The default is
738 off, in which case the inferior will remain in the frame where the
739 timeout occurred. When on, GDB will unwind the stack removing the
740 dummy frame that was added for the inferior call, and restoring the
741 inferior state to how it was before the inferior call started.
743 set unwind-on-signal on|off
744 show unwind-on-signal
745 These new commands replaces the existing set/show unwindonsignal. The
746 old command is maintained as an alias.
748 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
750 ** The --remote-debug and --event-loop-debug command line options
753 ** The --debug command line option now takes an optional comma
754 separated list of components to emit debug for. The currently
755 supported components are: all, threads, event-loop, and remote.
756 If no components are given then threads is assumed.
758 ** The 'monitor set remote-debug' and 'monitor set event-loop-debug'
759 command have been removed.
761 ** The 'monitor set debug 0|1' command has been extended to take a
762 component name, e.g.: 'monitor set debug COMPONENT off|on'.
763 Possible component names are: all, threads, event-loop, and
768 ** New function gdb.notify_mi(NAME, DATA), that emits custom
769 GDB/MI async notification.
771 ** New read/write attribute gdb.Value.bytes that contains a bytes
772 object holding the contents of this value.
774 ** New module gdb.missing_debug that facilitates dealing with
775 objfiles that are missing any debug information.
777 ** New function gdb.missing_debug.register_handler that can register
778 an instance of a sub-class of gdb.missing_debug.MissingDebugInfo
779 as a handler for objfiles that are missing debug information.
781 ** New class gdb.missing_debug.MissingDebugInfo which can be
782 sub-classed to create handlers for objfiles with missing debug
785 ** Stop events now have a "details" attribute that holds a
786 dictionary that carries the same information as an MI "*stopped"
789 ** New function gdb.interrupt(), that interrupts GDB as if the user
792 ** New gdb.InferiorThread.ptid_string attribute. This read-only
793 attribute contains the string that appears in the 'Target Id'
794 column of the 'info threads' command output.
796 ** It is no longer possible to create new gdb.Progspace object using
797 'gdb.Progspace()', this will result in a TypeError. Progspace
798 objects can still be obtained through calling other API
799 functions, for example 'gdb.current_progspace()'.
801 ** User defined attributes can be added to a gdb.Inferior object,
802 these will be stored in the object's new Inferior.__dict__
805 ** User defined attributes can be added to a gdb.InferiorThread
806 object, these will be stored in the object's new
807 InferiorThread.__dict__ attribute.
809 ** New constants gdb.SYMBOL_TYPE_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTION_DOMAIN,
810 and gdb.SEARCH_*_DOMAIN corresponding to all the existing symbol
811 domains. Symbol lookup can now search in multiple domains at
812 once, and can also narrowly search for just a type or function.
814 * Debugger Adapter Protocol changes
816 ** GDB now emits the "process" event.
818 ** GDB now supports the "cancel" request.
820 ** The "attach" request now supports specifying the program.
822 ** New command "set debug dap-log-level" controls DAP logging.
824 ** The "set debug dap-log-file" command is now documented. This
825 command was available in GDB 14 but not documented.
829 ** New constants SYMBOL_TYPE_DOMAIN, SYMBOL_FUNCTION_DOMAIN, and
830 SEARCH_*_DOMAIN corresponding to all the existing symbol domains.
831 Symbol lookup can now search in multiple domains at once, and can
832 also narrowly search for just a type or function.
836 New stop reason: clone
837 Indicates that a clone system call was executed.
840 Enable/disable optional event reporting, on a per-thread basis.
841 Currently supported options are GDB_THREAD_OPTION_CLONE, to enable
842 clone event reporting, and GDB_THREAD_OPTION_EXIT to enable thread
843 exit event reporting.
845 QThreadOptions in qSupported
846 The qSupported packet allows GDB to inform the stub it supports the
847 QThreadOptions packet, and the qSupported response can contain the
848 set of thread options the remote stub supports.
851 This new packet allows GDB to query the stub about a given address to check
852 if it is tagged or not. Many memory tagging-related GDB commands need to
853 perform this check before they read/write the allocation tag related to an
854 address. Currently, however, this is done through a 'vFile' request to read
855 the file /proc/<PID>/smaps and check if the address is in a region reported
856 as memory tagged. Since not all targets have a notion of what the smaps
857 file is about, this new packet provides a more generic way to perform such
860 *** Changes in GDB 14
862 * GDB now supports the AArch64 Scalable Matrix Extension 2 (SME2), which
863 includes a new 512 bit lookup table register named ZT0.
865 * GDB now supports the AArch64 Scalable Matrix Extension (SME), which includes
866 a new matrix register named ZA, a new thread register TPIDR2 and a new vector
867 length register SVG (streaming vector granule). GDB also supports tracking
868 ZA state across signal frames.
870 Some features are still under development or are dependent on ABI specs that
871 are still in alpha stage. For example, manual function calls with ZA state
872 don't have any special handling, and tracking of SVG changes based on
873 DWARF information is still not implemented, but there are plans to do so in
876 * GDB now recognizes the NO_COLOR environment variable and disables
877 styling according to the spec. See https://no-color.org/.
878 Styling can be re-enabled with "set style enabled on".
880 * The AArch64 'org.gnu.gdb.aarch64.pauth' Pointer Authentication feature string
881 has been deprecated in favor of the 'org.gnu.gdb.aarch64.pauth_v2' feature
884 * GDB now has some support for integer types larger than 64 bits.
886 * Removed targets and native configurations
888 GDB no longer supports AIX 4.x, AIX 5.x and AIX 6.x. The minimum supported
889 AIX version is now AIX 7.1.
891 * Multi-target feature configuration
893 GDB now supports the individual configuration of remote targets' feature
894 sets. Based on the current selection of a target, the commands 'set remote
895 <name>-packet (on|off|auto)' and 'show remote <name>-packet' can be used to
896 configure a target's feature packet and to display its configuration,
899 The individual packet sizes can be configured and shown using the commands
900 ** 'set remote memory-read-packet-size (number of bytes|fixed|limit)'
901 ** 'set remote memory-write-packet-size (number of bytes|fixed|limit)'
902 ** 'show remote memory-read-packet-size'
903 ** 'show remote memory-write-packet-size'.
905 The configuration of the packet itself, as well as the size of a memory-read
906 or memory-write packet applies to the currently selected target (if
907 available). If no target is selected, it applies to future remote
908 connections. Similarly, the show commands print the configuration of the
909 currently selected target. If no remote target is selected, the default
910 configuration for future connections is shown.
912 * GDB has initial built-in support for the Debugger Adapter Protocol.
913 This support requires that GDB be built with Python scripting
916 * For the break command, multiple uses of the 'thread' or 'task'
917 keywords will now give an error instead of just using the thread or
918 task id from the last instance of the keyword. E.g.:
919 break foo thread 1 thread 2
920 will now give an error rather than using 'thread 2'.
922 * For the watch command, multiple uses of the 'task' keyword will now
923 give an error instead of just using the task id from the last
924 instance of the keyword. E.g.:
925 watch my_var task 1 task 2
926 will now give an error rather than using 'task 2'. The 'thread'
927 keyword already gave an error when used multiple times with the
928 watch command, this remains unchanged.
930 * The 'set print elements' setting now helps when printing large arrays.
931 If an array would otherwise exceed max-value-size, but 'print elements'
932 is set such that the size of elements to print is less than or equal
933 to 'max-value-size', GDB will now still print the array, however only
934 'max-value-size' worth of data will be added into the value history.
936 * For both the break and watch commands, it is now invalid to use both
937 the 'thread' and 'task' keywords within the same command. For
938 example the following commands will now give an error:
939 break foo thread 1 task 1
940 watch var thread 2 task 3
942 * The printf command now accepts a '%V' output format which will
943 format an expression just as the 'print' command would. Print
944 options can be placed within '[...]' after the '%V' to modify how
945 the value is printed. E.g:
946 printf "%V", some_array
947 printf "%V[-array-indexes on]", some_array
948 will print the array without, or with array indexes included, just
949 as the array would be printed by the 'print' command. This
950 functionality is also available for dprintf when dprintf-style is
953 * When the printf command requires a string to be fetched from the
954 inferior, GDB now uses the existing 'max-value-size' setting to the
955 limit the memory allocated within GDB. The default 'max-value-size'
956 is 64k. To print longer strings you should increase
959 * The Ada 2022 Enum_Rep and Enum_Val attributes are now supported.
961 * The Ada 2022 target name symbol ('@') is now supported by the Ada
964 * The 'list' command now accepts '.' as an argument, which tells GDB to
965 print the location around the point of execution within the current frame.
966 If the inferior hasn't started yet, the command will print around the
967 beginning of the 'main' function.
969 * Using the 'list' command with no arguments in a situation where the
970 command would attempt to list past the end of the file now warns the
971 user that the end of file has been reached, refers the user to the
972 newly added '.' argument
974 * Breakpoints can now be inferior-specific. This is similar to the
975 existing thread-specific breakpoint support. Breakpoint conditions
976 can include the 'inferior' keyword followed by an inferior id (as
977 displayed in the 'info inferiors' output). It is invalid to use the
978 'inferior' keyword with either the 'thread' or 'task' keywords when
979 creating a breakpoint.
981 * New convenience function "$_shell", to execute a shell command and
982 return the result. This lets you run shell commands in expressions.
985 (gdb) p $_shell("true")
987 (gdb) p $_shell("false")
989 (gdb) break func if $_shell("some command") == 0
993 --additional-debug-dirs=PATHs
995 Provide a colon-separated list of additional directories to search for
996 separate debug info. These directories are added to the default value of
997 the 'debug-file-directory' GDB parameter.
1001 set debug breakpoint on|off
1002 show debug breakpoint
1003 Print additional debug messages about breakpoint insertion and removal.
1005 maintenance print record-instruction [ N ]
1006 Print the recorded information for a given instruction. If N is not given
1007 prints how GDB would undo the last instruction executed. If N is negative,
1008 prints how GDB would undo the N-th previous instruction, and if N is
1009 positive, it prints how GDB will redo the N-th following instruction.
1011 maintenance info frame-unwinders
1012 List the frame unwinders currently in effect, starting with the highest
1015 maintenance wait-for-index-cache
1016 Wait until all pending writes to the index cache have completed.
1018 set always-read-ctf on|off
1019 show always-read-ctf
1020 When off, CTF is only read if DWARF is not present. When on, CTF is
1021 read regardless of whether DWARF is present. Off by default.
1024 Get main symbol to identify entry point into program.
1026 set tui mouse-events [on|off]
1027 show tui mouse-events
1028 When on (default), mouse clicks control the TUI and can be accessed by
1029 Python extensions. When off, mouse clicks are handled by the terminal,
1030 enabling terminal-native text selection.
1034 ** MI version 1 has been removed.
1036 ** mi now reports 'no-history' as a stop reason when hitting the end of the
1037 reverse execution history.
1039 ** When creating a thread-specific breakpoint using the '-p' option,
1040 the -break-insert command would report the 'thread' field twice in
1041 the reply. The content of both fields was always identical. This
1042 has now been fixed; the 'thread' field will be reported just once
1043 for thread-specific breakpoints, or not at all for breakpoints
1044 without a thread restriction. The same is also true for the 'task'
1045 field of an Ada task-specific breakpoint.
1047 ** It is no longer possible to create a thread-specific breakpoint for
1048 a thread that doesn't exist using '-break-insert -p ID'. Creating
1049 breakpoints for non-existent threads is not allowed when using the
1050 CLI, that the MI allowed it was a long standing bug, which has now
1053 ** The '--simple-values' argument to the '-stack-list-arguments',
1054 '-stack-list-locals', '-stack-list-variables', and '-var-list-children'
1055 commands now takes reference types into account: that is, a value is now
1056 considered simple if it is neither an array, structure, or union, nor a
1057 reference to an array, structure, or union. (Previously all references were
1058 considered simple.) Support for this feature can be verified by using the
1059 '-list-features' command, which should contain "simple-values-ref-types".
1061 ** The -break-insert command now accepts a '-g thread-group-id' option
1062 to allow for the creation of inferior-specific breakpoints.
1064 ** The bkpt tuple, which appears in breakpoint-created notifications,
1065 and in the result of the -break-insert command can now include an
1066 optional 'inferior' field for both the main breakpoint, and each
1067 location, when the breakpoint is inferior-specific.
1071 ** gdb.ThreadExitedEvent added. Emits a ThreadEvent.
1073 ** The gdb.unwinder.Unwinder.name attribute is now read-only.
1075 ** The name argument passed to gdb.unwinder.Unwinder.__init__ must
1076 now be of type 'str' otherwise a TypeError will be raised.
1078 ** The gdb.unwinder.Unwinder.enabled attribute can now only accept
1079 values of type 'bool'. Changing this attribute will now
1080 invalidate GDB's frame-cache, which means GDB will need to
1081 rebuild its frame-cache when next required - either with, or
1082 without the particular unwinder, depending on how 'enabled' was
1085 ** New methods added to the gdb.PendingFrame class. These methods
1086 have the same behavior as the corresponding methods on
1087 gdb.Frame. The new methods are:
1089 - gdb.PendingFrame.name: Return the name for the frame's
1091 - gdb.PendingFrame.is_valid: Return True if the pending frame
1093 - gdb.PendingFrame.pc: Return the $pc register value for this
1095 - gdb.PendingFrame.language: Return a string containing the
1096 language for this frame, or None.
1097 - gdb.PendingFrame.find_sal: Return a gdb.Symtab_and_line
1098 object for the current location within the pending frame, or
1100 - gdb.PendingFrame.block: Return a gdb.Block for the current
1101 pending frame, or None.
1102 - gdb.PendingFrame.function: Return a gdb.Symbol for the
1103 current pending frame, or None.
1105 ** The frame-id passed to gdb.PendingFrame.create_unwind_info can
1106 now use either an integer or a gdb.Value object for each of its
1107 'sp', 'pc', and 'special' attributes.
1109 ** A new class gdb.unwinder.FrameId has been added. Instances of
1110 this class are constructed with 'sp' (stack-pointer) and 'pc'
1111 (program-counter) values, and can be used as the frame-id when
1112 calling gdb.PendingFrame.create_unwind_info.
1114 ** It is now no longer possible to sub-class the
1115 gdb.disassembler.DisassemblerResult type.
1117 ** The Disassembler API from the gdb.disassembler module has been
1118 extended to include styling support:
1120 - The DisassemblerResult class can now be initialized with a list
1121 of parts. Each part represents part of the disassembled
1122 instruction along with the associated style information. This
1123 list of parts can be accessed with the new
1124 DisassemblerResult.parts property.
1126 - New constants gdb.disassembler.STYLE_* representing all the
1127 different styles part of an instruction might have.
1129 - New methods DisassembleInfo.text_part and
1130 DisassembleInfo.address_part which are used to create the new
1131 styled parts of a disassembled instruction.
1133 - Changes are backwards compatible, the older API can still be
1134 used to disassemble instructions without styling.
1136 ** New function gdb.execute_mi(COMMAND, [ARG]...), that invokes a
1137 GDB/MI command and returns the output as a Python dictionary.
1139 ** New function gdb.block_signals(). This returns a context manager
1140 that blocks any signals that GDB needs to handle itself.
1142 ** New class gdb.Thread. This is a subclass of threading.Thread
1143 that calls gdb.block_signals in its "start" method.
1145 ** gdb.parse_and_eval now has a new "global_context" parameter.
1146 This can be used to request that the parse only examine global
1149 ** gdb.Inferior now has a new "arguments" attribute. This holds the
1150 command-line arguments to the inferior, if known.
1152 ** gdb.Inferior now has a new "main_name" attribute. This holds the
1153 name of the inferior's "main", if known.
1155 ** gdb.Inferior now has new methods "clear_env", "set_env", and
1156 "unset_env". These can be used to modify the inferior's
1157 environment before it is started.
1159 ** gdb.Value now has the 'assign' method.
1161 ** gdb.Value now has the 'to_array' method. This converts an
1162 array-like Value to an array.
1164 ** gdb.Progspace now has the new method "objfile_for_address". This
1165 returns the gdb.Objfile, if any, that covers a given address.
1167 ** gdb.Breakpoint now has an "inferior" attribute. If the
1168 Breakpoint object is inferior specific then this attribute holds
1169 the inferior-id (an integer). If the Breakpoint object is not
1170 inferior specific, then this field contains None. This field can
1173 ** gdb.Type now has the "is_array_like" and "is_string_like"
1174 methods. These reflect GDB's internal idea of whether a type
1175 might be array- or string-like, even if they do not have the
1176 corresponding type code.
1178 ** gdb.ValuePrinter is a new class that can be used as the base
1179 class for the result of applying a pretty-printer. As a base
1180 class, it signals to gdb that the printer may implement new
1181 pretty-printer methods.
1183 ** New attribute Progspace.symbol_file. This attribute holds the
1184 gdb.Objfile that corresponds to Progspace.filename (when
1185 Progspace.filename is not None), otherwise, this attribute is
1188 ** New attribute Progspace.executable_filename. This attribute
1189 holds a string containing a file name set by the "exec-file" or
1190 "file" commands, or None if no executable file is set. This
1191 isn't the exact string passed by the user to these commands; the
1192 file name will have been partially resolved to an absolute file
1195 ** A new executable_changed event registry is available. This event
1196 emits ExecutableChangedEvent objects, which have 'progspace' (a
1197 gdb.Progspace) and 'reload' (a Boolean) attributes. This event
1198 is emitted when gdb.Progspace.executable_filename changes.
1200 ** New event registries gdb.events.new_progspace and
1201 gdb.events.free_progspace, these emit NewProgspaceEvent and
1202 FreeProgspaceEvent event types respectively. Both of these event
1203 types have a single 'progspace' attribute, which is the
1204 gdb.Progspace that is either being added to GDB, or removed from
1207 ** gdb.LazyString now implements the __str__ method.
1209 ** New method gdb.Frame.static_link that returns the outer frame
1210 of a nested function frame.
1212 *** Changes in GDB 13
1214 * MI version 1 is deprecated, and will be removed in GDB 14.
1216 * GDB now supports dumping memory tag data for AArch64 MTE. It also supports
1217 reading memory tag data for AArch64 MTE from core files generated by
1218 the gcore command or the Linux kernel.
1220 When a process uses memory-mapped pages protected by memory tags (for
1221 example, AArch64 MTE), this additional information will be recorded in
1222 the core file in the event of a crash or if GDB generates a core file
1223 from the current process state. GDB will show this additional information
1224 automatically, or through one of the memory-tag subcommands.
1226 * Scheduler-locking and new threads
1228 When scheduler-locking is in effect, only the current thread may run
1229 when the inferior is resumed. However, previously, new threads
1230 created by the resumed thread would still be able to run free. Now,
1231 they are held stopped.
1233 * "info breakpoints" now displays enabled breakpoint locations of
1234 disabled breakpoints as in the "y-" state. For example:
1236 (gdb) info breakpoints
1237 Num Type Disp Enb Address What
1238 1 breakpoint keep n <MULTIPLE>
1239 1.1 y- 0x00000000000011b6 in ...
1240 1.2 y- 0x00000000000011c2 in ...
1241 1.3 n 0x00000000000011ce in ...
1243 * Support for Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on FreeBSD arm and
1244 aarch64 architectures.
1246 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on FreeBSD/Aarch64.
1248 * Remove support for building against Python 2, it is now only possible to
1249 build GDB against Python 3.
1251 * DBX mode has been removed.
1253 * GDB now honours the DWARF prologue_end line-table entry flag the compiler can
1254 emit to indicate where a breakpoint should be placed to break in a function
1257 * Completion now also offers "NUMBER" for "set" commands that accept
1258 a numeric argument and the "unlimited" keyword. For example:
1260 (gdb) set width <TAB>
1265 (gdb) complete set width
1269 * Disassembler styling using libopcodes. GDB now supports
1270 disassembler styling using libopcodes. This is only available for
1271 some targets (currently x86 and RISC-V). For unsupported targets
1272 Python Pygments is still used. For supported targets, libopcodes
1273 styling is used by default.
1275 * The Windows native target now supports target async.
1277 * gdb now supports zstd compressed debug sections (ELFCOMPRESS_ZSTD) for ELF.
1279 * The format of 'disassemble /r' and 'record instruction-history /r'
1280 has changed. The instruction bytes could now be grouped together,
1281 and displayed in the endianness of the instruction. This is the
1282 same layout as used by GNU objdump when disassembling.
1284 There is now 'disassemble /b' and 'record instruction-history /b'
1285 which will always display the instructions bytes one at a time in
1286 memory order, that is, the byte at the lowest address first.
1288 For both /r and /b GDB is now better at using whitespace in order to
1289 align the disassembled instruction text.
1291 * The TUI no longer styles the source and assembly code highlighted by
1292 the current position indicator by default. You can however
1293 re-enable styling using the new "set style tui-current-position"
1296 * New convenience variable $_inferior_thread_count contains the number
1297 of live threads in the current inferior.
1299 * When a breakpoint with multiple code locations is hit, GDB now prints
1300 the code location using the syntax <breakpoint_number>.<location_number>
1302 Thread 1 "zeoes" hit Breakpoint 2.3, some_func () at zeoes.c:8
1304 * When a breakpoint is hit, GDB now sets the convenience variables $_hit_bpnum
1305 and $_hit_locno to the hit breakpoint number and code location number.
1306 This allows to disable the last hit breakpoint using
1307 (gdb) disable $_hit_bpnum
1308 or disable only the specific breakpoint code location using
1309 (gdb) disable $_hit_bpnum.$_hit_locno
1310 These commands can be used inside the command list of a breakpoint to
1311 automatically disable the just encountered breakpoint (or the just
1312 encountered specific breakpoint code location).
1313 When a breakpoint has only one location, $_hit_locno is set to 1 so that
1314 (gdb) disable $_hit_bpnum.$_hit_locno
1316 (gdb) disable $_hit_bpnum
1317 are both disabling the breakpoint.
1321 maintenance set ignore-prologue-end-flag on|off
1322 maintenance show ignore-prologue-end-flag
1323 This setting, which is off by default, controls whether GDB ignores the
1324 PROLOGUE-END flag from the line-table when skipping prologue. This can be
1325 used to force GDB to use prologue analyzers if the line-table is constructed
1326 from erroneous debug information.
1328 set print nibbles [on|off]
1330 This controls whether the 'print/t' command will display binary values
1331 in groups of four bits, known as "nibbles". The default is 'off'.
1333 maintenance set libopcodes-styling on|off
1334 maintenance show libopcodes-styling
1335 These can be used to force off libopcodes based styling, the Python
1336 Pygments styling will then be used instead.
1338 set style disassembler comment
1339 show style disassembler comment
1340 set style disassembler immediate
1341 show style disassembler immediate
1342 set style disassembler mnemonic
1343 show style disassembler mnemonic
1344 set style disassembler register
1345 show style disassembler register
1346 set style disassembler address
1347 show style disassembler address
1348 set style disassembler symbol
1349 show style disassembler symbol
1350 For targets that support libopcodes based styling, these settings
1351 control how various aspects of the disassembler output are styled.
1352 The 'disassembler address' and 'disassembler symbol' styles are
1353 aliases for the 'address' and 'function' styles respectively.
1355 maintenance print frame-id [ LEVEL ]
1356 Print GDB's internal frame-id for the frame at LEVEL. If LEVEL is
1357 not given, then print the frame-id for the currently selected frame.
1359 set debug infcall on|off
1361 Print additional debug messages about inferior function calls.
1363 set debug solib on|off
1365 Print additional debug messages about shared library handling.
1367 set style tui-current-position [on|off]
1368 Whether to style the source and assembly code highlighted by the
1369 TUI's current position indicator. The default is off.
1371 set print characters LIMIT
1372 show print characters
1373 This new setting is like 'set print elements', but controls how many
1374 characters of a string are printed. This functionality used to be
1375 covered by 'set print elements', but it can be controlled separately
1376 now. LIMIT can be set to a numerical value to request that particular
1377 character count, to 'unlimited' to print all characters of a string,
1378 or to 'elements', which is also the default, to follow the setting of
1379 'set print elements' as it used to be.
1381 print -characters LIMIT
1382 This new option to the 'print' command has the same effect as a temporary
1383 use of 'set print characters'.
1387 document user-defined
1388 It is now possible to document user-defined aliases.
1389 When a user-defined alias is documented, the help and apropos commands
1390 use the provided documentation instead of the documentation of the
1392 Documenting a user-defined alias is particularly useful when the alias
1393 is a set of nested 'with' commands to avoid showing the help of
1394 the with command for an alias that will in fact launch the
1395 last command given in the nested commands.
1397 maintenance info line-table
1398 Add a PROLOGUE-END column to the output which indicates that an
1399 entry corresponds to an address where a breakpoint should be placed
1400 to be at the first instruction past a function's prologue.
1404 set debug aix-solib on|off
1405 show debug aix-solib
1406 set debug solib-frv on|off
1407 show debug solib-frv
1408 Removed in favor of "set/show debug solib".
1410 maintenance info program-spaces
1411 This command now includes a 'Core File' column which indicates the
1412 name of the core file associated with each program space.
1416 GNU/Linux/LoongArch (gdbserver) loongarch*-*-linux*
1418 GNU/Linux/CSKY (gdbserver) csky*-*linux*
1424 ** The async record stating the stopped reason 'breakpoint-hit' now
1425 contains an optional field locno giving the code location number
1426 when the breakpoint has multiple code locations.
1430 ** GDB will now reformat the doc string for gdb.Command and
1431 gdb.Parameter sub-classes to remove unnecessary leading
1432 whitespace from each line before using the string as the help
1435 ** New function gdb.format_address(ADDRESS, PROGSPACE, ARCHITECTURE),
1436 that formats ADDRESS as 'address <symbol+offset>', where symbol is
1437 looked up in PROGSPACE, and ARCHITECTURE is used to format address.
1438 This is the same format that GDB uses when printing address, symbol,
1439 and offset information from the disassembler.
1441 ** New function gdb.current_language that returns the name of the
1442 current language. Unlike gdb.parameter('language'), this will
1443 never return 'auto'.
1445 ** New method gdb.Frame.language that returns the name of the
1448 ** New Python API for wrapping GDB's disassembler:
1450 - gdb.disassembler.register_disassembler(DISASSEMBLER, ARCH).
1451 DISASSEMBLER is a sub-class of gdb.disassembler.Disassembler.
1452 ARCH is either None or a string containing a bfd architecture
1453 name. DISASSEMBLER is registered as a disassembler for
1454 architecture ARCH, or for all architectures if ARCH is None.
1455 The previous disassembler registered for ARCH is returned, this
1456 can be None if no previous disassembler was registered.
1458 - gdb.disassembler.Disassembler is the class from which all
1459 disassemblers should inherit. Its constructor takes a string,
1460 a name for the disassembler, which is currently only used in
1461 some debug output. Sub-classes should override the __call__
1462 method to perform disassembly, invoking __call__ on this base
1463 class will raise an exception.
1465 - gdb.disassembler.DisassembleInfo is the class used to describe
1466 a single disassembly request from GDB. An instance of this
1467 class is passed to the __call__ method of
1468 gdb.disassembler.Disassembler and has the following read-only
1469 attributes: 'address', and 'architecture', as well as the
1470 following method: 'read_memory'.
1472 - gdb.disassembler.builtin_disassemble(INFO, MEMORY_SOURCE),
1473 calls GDB's builtin disassembler on INFO, which is a
1474 gdb.disassembler.DisassembleInfo object. MEMORY_SOURCE is
1475 optional, its default value is None. If MEMORY_SOURCE is not
1476 None then it must be an object that has a 'read_memory' method.
1478 - gdb.disassembler.DisassemblerResult is a class that can be used
1479 to wrap the result of a call to a Disassembler. It has
1480 read-only attributes 'length' and 'string'.
1482 ** gdb.Objfile now has an attribute named "is_file". This is True
1483 if the objfile comes from a file, and False otherwise.
1485 ** New function gdb.print_options that returns a dictionary of the
1486 prevailing print options, in the form accepted by
1487 gdb.Value.format_string.
1489 ** gdb.Value.format_string now uses the format provided by 'print',
1490 if it is called during a 'print' or other similar operation.
1492 ** gdb.Value.format_string now accepts the 'summary' keyword. This
1493 can be used to request a shorter representation of a value, the
1494 way that 'set print frame-arguments scalars' does.
1496 ** New Python type gdb.BreakpointLocation.
1497 The new attribute 'locations' of gdb.Breakpoint returns a list of
1498 gdb.BreakpointLocation objects specifying the locations where the
1499 breakpoint is inserted into the debuggee.
1501 ** The gdb.register_window_type method now restricts the set of
1502 acceptable window names. The first character of a window's name
1503 must start with a character in the set [a-zA-Z], every subsequent
1504 character of a window's name must be in the set [-_.a-zA-Z0-9].
1506 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1508 ** GDBserver is now supported on LoongArch GNU/Linux.
1510 ** GDBserver is now supported on CSKY GNU/Linux.
1512 * LoongArch floating-point support
1514 GDB now supports floating-point on LoongArch GNU/Linux.
1516 * AMD GPU ROCm debugging support
1518 GDB now supports debugging programs offloaded to AMD GPUs using the ROCm
1521 *** Changes in GDB 12
1523 * DBX mode is deprecated, and will be removed in GDB 13
1525 * GDB 12 is the last release of GDB that will support building against
1526 Python 2. From GDB 13, it will only be possible to build GDB itself
1527 with Python 3 support.
1529 * The disable-randomization setting now works on Windows.
1531 * Improved C++ template support
1533 GDB now treats functions/types involving C++ templates like it does function
1534 overloads. Users may omit parameter lists to set breakpoints on families of
1535 template functions, including types/functions composed of multiple template types:
1537 (gdb) break template_func(template_1, int)
1539 The above will set breakpoints at every function `template_func' where
1540 the first function parameter is any template type named `template_1' and
1541 the second function parameter is `int'.
1543 TAB completion also gains similar improvements.
1545 * The FreeBSD native target now supports async mode.
1551 Enable or disable multithreaded symbol loading. This is enabled
1552 by default, but passing --disable-threading or --enable-threading=no
1553 to configure will disable it.
1555 Disabling this can cause a performance penalty when there are a lot of
1556 symbols to load, but is useful for debugging purposes.
1560 maint set backtrace-on-fatal-signal on|off
1561 maint show backtrace-on-fatal-signal
1562 This setting is 'on' by default. When 'on' GDB will print a limited
1563 backtrace to stderr in the situation where GDB terminates with a
1564 fatal signal. This only supported on some platforms where the
1565 backtrace and backtrace_symbols_fd functions are available.
1567 set source open on|off
1569 This setting, which is on by default, controls whether GDB will try
1570 to open source code files. Switching this off will stop GDB trying
1571 to open and read source code files, which can be useful if the files
1572 are located over a slow network connection.
1576 These are now deprecated aliases for "set max-value-size" and
1577 "show max-value-size".
1579 task apply [all | TASK-IDS...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
1580 Like "thread apply", but applies COMMAND to Ada tasks.
1583 Watchpoints can now be restricted to a specific Ada task.
1585 maint set internal-error backtrace on|off
1586 maint show internal-error backtrace
1587 maint set internal-warning backtrace on|off
1588 maint show internal-warning backtrace
1589 GDB can now print a backtrace of itself when it encounters either an
1590 internal-error, or an internal-warning. This is on by default for
1591 internal-error and off by default for internal-warning.
1594 Deprecated and replaced by "set logging enabled on|off".
1596 set logging enabled on|off
1597 show logging enabled
1598 These commands set or show whether logging is enabled or disabled.
1601 You can now exit GDB by using the new command "exit", in addition to
1602 the existing "quit" command.
1604 set debug threads on|off
1606 Print additional debug messages about thread creation and deletion.
1608 set debug linux-nat on|off
1609 show debug linux-nat
1610 These new commands replaced the old 'set debug lin-lwp' and 'show
1611 debug lin-lwp' respectively. Turning this setting on prints debug
1612 messages relating to GDB's handling of native Linux inferiors.
1614 maint flush source-cache
1615 Flush the contents of the source code cache.
1617 maint set gnu-source-highlight enabled on|off
1618 maint show gnu-source-highlight enabled
1619 Whether GDB should use the GNU Source Highlight library for adding
1620 styling to source code. When off, the library will not be used, even
1621 when available. When GNU Source Highlight isn't used, or can't add
1622 styling to a particular source file, then the Python Pygments
1623 library will be used instead.
1625 set suppress-cli-notifications (on|off)
1626 show suppress-cli-notifications
1627 This controls whether printing the notifications is suppressed for CLI.
1628 CLI notifications occur when you change the selected context
1629 (i.e., the current inferior, thread and/or the frame), or when
1630 the program being debugged stops (e.g., because of hitting a
1631 breakpoint, completing source-stepping, an interrupt, etc.).
1633 set style disassembler enabled on|off
1634 show style disassembler enabled
1635 If GDB is compiled with Python support, and the Python Pygments
1636 package is available, then, when this setting is on, disassembler
1637 output will have styling applied.
1639 set ada source-charset
1640 show ada source-charset
1641 Set the character set encoding that is assumed for Ada symbols. Valid
1642 values for this follow the values that can be passed to the GNAT
1643 compiler via the '-gnati' option. The default is ISO-8859-1.
1649 These are the new names for the old 'layout', 'focus', 'refresh',
1650 and 'winheight' tui commands respectively. The old names still
1651 exist as aliases to these new commands.
1655 The new command 'tui window width', and the alias 'winwidth' allow
1656 the width of a tui window to be adjusted when windows are laid out
1659 set debug tui on|off
1661 Control the display of debug output about GDB's tui.
1666 Printing of floating-point values with base-modifying formats like
1667 /x has been changed to display the underlying bytes of the value in
1668 the desired base. This was GDB's documented behavior, but was never
1669 implemented correctly.
1672 This command can now print a reply, if the reply includes
1673 non-printable characters. Any non-printable characters are printed
1674 as escaped hex, e.g. \x?? where '??' is replaces with the value of
1675 the non-printable character.
1678 The clone-inferior command now ensures that the TTY, CMD and ARGS
1679 settings are copied from the original inferior to the new one.
1680 All modifications to the environment variables done using the 'set
1681 environment' or 'unset environment' commands are also copied to the new
1684 set debug lin-lwp on|off
1686 These commands have been removed from GDB. The new command 'set
1687 debug linux-nat' and 'show debug linux-nat' should be used
1691 This command now includes information about the width of the tui
1692 windows in its output.
1698 These commands are now aliases for the 'tui layout', 'tui focus',
1699 'tui refresh', and 'tui window height' commands respectively.
1701 * GDB's Ada parser now supports an extension for specifying the exact
1702 byte contents of a floating-point literal. This can be useful for
1703 setting floating-point registers to a precise value without loss of
1704 precision. The syntax is an extension of the based literal syntax.
1705 Use, e.g., "16lf#0123abcd#" -- the number of "l"s controls the width
1706 of the floating-point type, and the "f" is the marker for floating
1711 ** The '-add-inferior' with no option flags now inherits the
1712 connection of the current inferior, this restores the behavior of
1713 GDB as it was prior to GDB 10.
1715 ** The '-add-inferior' command now accepts a '--no-connection'
1716 option, which causes the new inferior to start without a
1719 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 4 (-i=mi4).
1721 ** The "script" field in breakpoint output (which is syntactically
1722 incorrect in MI 3 and below) has changed in MI 4 to become a list.
1723 This affects the following commands and events:
1727 - =breakpoint-created
1728 - =breakpoint-modified
1730 The -fix-breakpoint-script-output command can be used to enable
1731 this behavior with previous MI versions.
1735 GNU/Linux/LoongArch loongarch*-*-linux*
1743 ** New function gdb.add_history(), which takes a gdb.Value object
1744 and adds the value it represents to GDB's history list. An
1745 integer, the index of the new item in the history list, is
1748 ** New function gdb.history_count(), which returns the number of
1749 values in GDB's value history.
1751 ** New gdb.events.gdb_exiting event. This event is called with a
1752 gdb.GdbExitingEvent object which has the read-only attribute
1753 'exit_code', which contains the value of the GDB exit code. This
1754 event is triggered once GDB decides it is going to exit, but
1755 before GDB starts to clean up its internal state.
1757 ** New function gdb.architecture_names(), which returns a list
1758 containing all of the possible Architecture.name() values. Each
1761 ** New function gdb.Architecture.integer_type(), which returns an
1762 integer type given a size and a signed-ness.
1764 ** New gdb.TargetConnection object type that represents a connection
1765 (as displayed by the 'info connections' command). A sub-class,
1766 gdb.RemoteTargetConnection, is used to represent 'remote' and
1767 'extended-remote' connections.
1769 ** The gdb.Inferior type now has a 'connection' property which is an
1770 instance of gdb.TargetConnection, the connection used by this
1771 inferior. This can be None if the inferior has no connection.
1773 ** New 'gdb.events.connection_removed' event registry, which emits a
1774 'gdb.ConnectionEvent' when a connection is removed from GDB.
1775 This event has a 'connection' property, a gdb.TargetConnection
1776 object for the connection being removed.
1778 ** New gdb.connections() function that returns a list of all
1779 currently active connections.
1781 ** New gdb.RemoteTargetConnection.send_packet(PACKET) method. This
1782 is equivalent to the existing 'maint packet' CLI command; it
1783 allows a user specified packet to be sent to the remote target.
1785 ** New function gdb.host_charset(), returns a string, which is the
1786 name of the current host charset.
1788 ** New gdb.set_parameter(NAME, VALUE). This sets the gdb parameter
1791 ** New gdb.with_parameter(NAME, VALUE). This returns a context
1792 manager that temporarily sets the gdb parameter NAME to VALUE,
1793 then resets it when the context is exited.
1795 ** The gdb.Value.format_string method now takes a 'styling'
1796 argument, which is a boolean. When true, the returned string can
1797 include escape sequences to apply styling. The styling will only
1798 be present if styling is otherwise turned on in GDB (see 'help
1799 set styling'). When false, which is the default if the argument
1800 is not given, then no styling is applied to the returned string.
1802 ** New read-only attribute gdb.InferiorThread.details, which is
1803 either a string, containing additional, target specific thread
1804 state information, or None, if there is no such additional
1807 ** New read-only attribute gdb.Type.is_scalar, which is True for
1808 scalar types, and False for all other types.
1810 ** New read-only attribute gdb.Type.is_signed. This attribute
1811 should only be read when Type.is_scalar is True, and will be True
1812 for signed types, and False for all other types. Attempting to
1813 read this attribute for non-scalar types will raise a ValueError.
1815 ** It is now possible to add GDB/MI commands implemented in Python.
1817 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1819 ** GDBserver is now supported on OpenRISC GNU/Linux.
1821 * New native configurations
1823 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
1825 *** Changes in GDB 11
1827 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
1830 * GDB now supports general memory tagging functionality if the underlying
1831 architecture supports the proper primitives and hooks. Currently this is
1832 enabled only for AArch64 MTE.
1836 - Additional information when the inferior crashes with a SIGSEGV caused by
1837 a memory tag violation.
1839 - A new modifier 'm' for the "x" command, which displays allocation tags for a
1840 particular memory range.
1842 - Display of memory tag mismatches by "print", for addresses and
1843 pointers, if memory tagging is supported by the architecture.
1845 * Building GDB now requires GMP (The GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
1850 ** '-break-insert --qualified' and '-dprintf-insert --qualified'
1852 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
1853 new "--qualified" option that makes GDB interpret a specified
1854 function name as a complete fully-qualified name. This is the
1855 equivalent of the CLI's "break -qualified" and "dprintf
1858 ** '-break-insert --force-condition' and '-dprintf-insert --force-condition'
1860 The MI -break-insert and -dprintf-insert commands now support a
1861 '--force-condition' flag to forcibly define a condition even when
1862 the condition is invalid at all locations of the breakpoint. This
1863 is equivalent to the '-force-condition' flag of the CLI's "break"
1866 ** '-break-condition --force'
1868 The MI -break-condition command now supports a '--force' flag to
1869 forcibly define a condition even when the condition is invalid at
1870 all locations of the selected breakpoint. This is equivalent to
1871 the '-force' flag of the CLI's "cond" command.
1873 ** '-file-list-exec-source-files [--group-by-objfile]
1874 [--basename | --dirname]
1877 The existing -file-list-exec-source-files command now takes an
1878 optional REGEXP which is used to filter the source files that are
1879 included in the results.
1881 By default REGEXP is matched against the full filename of the
1882 source file. When one of --basename or --dirname is given then
1883 REGEXP is only matched against the specified part of the full
1886 When the optional --group-by-objfile flag is used the output
1887 format is changed, the results are now a list of object files
1888 (executable and libraries) with the source files that are
1889 associated with each object file.
1891 The results from -file-list-exec-source-files now include a
1892 'debug-fully-read' field which takes the value 'true' or 'false'.
1893 A 'true' value indicates the source file is from a compilation
1894 unit that has had its debug information fully read in by GDB, a
1895 value of 'false' indicates GDB has only performed a partial scan
1896 of the debug information so far.
1898 * GDB now supports core file debugging for x86_64 Cygwin programs.
1900 * GDB will now look for the .gdbinit file in a config directory before
1901 looking for ~/.gdbinit. The file is searched for in the following
1902 locations: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.config/gdb/gdbinit,
1903 $HOME/.gdbinit. On Apple hosts the search order is instead:
1904 $HOME/Library/Preferences/gdb/gdbinit, $HOME/.gdbinit.
1906 * GDB now supports fixed point types which are described in DWARF
1907 as base types with a fixed-point encoding. Additionally, support
1908 for the DW_AT_GNU_numerator and DW_AT_GNU_denominator has also
1911 For Ada, this allows support for fixed point types without requiring
1912 the use of the GNAT encoding (based on information added to the type's
1913 name following a GNAT-specific format).
1915 * GDB will now load and process commands from ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit
1916 or ~/.gdbearlyinit if these files are present. These files are
1917 processed earlier than any of the other initialization files and
1918 can affect parts of GDB's startup that previously had already been
1919 completed before the initialization files were read, for example
1920 styling of the initial GDB greeting.
1922 * GDB now has two new options "--early-init-command" and
1923 "--early-init-eval-command" with corresponding short options "-eix"
1924 and "-eiex" that allow options (that would normally appear in a
1925 gdbearlyinit file) to be passed on the command line.
1927 * For RISC-V targets, the target feature "org.gnu.gdb.riscv.vector" is
1928 now understood by GDB, and can be used to describe the vector
1929 registers of a target. The precise requirements of this register
1930 feature are documented in the GDB manual.
1932 * For ARM targets, the "org.gnu.gdb.arm.m-profile-mve" feature is now
1933 supported by GDB and describes a new VPR register from the ARM MVE
1934 (Helium) extension. See the GDB manual for more information.
1938 ** TUI windows now support mouse actions. The mouse wheel scrolls
1939 the appropriate window.
1941 ** Key combinations that do not have a specific action on the
1942 focused window are passed to GDB. For example, you now can use
1943 Ctrl-Left/Ctrl-Right to move between words in the command window
1944 regardless of which window is in focus. Previously you would
1945 need to focus on the command window for such key combinations to
1950 set debug event-loop
1951 show debug event-loop
1952 Control the display of debug output about GDB's event loop.
1954 set print memory-tag-violations
1955 show print memory-tag-violations
1956 Control whether to display additional information about memory tag violations
1957 when printing pointers and addresses. Architecture support for memory
1958 tagging is required for this option to have an effect.
1960 maintenance flush symbol-cache
1961 maintenance flush register-cache
1962 These new commands are equivalent to the already existing commands
1963 'maintenance flush-symbol-cache' and 'flushregs' respectively.
1965 maintenance flush dcache
1966 A new command to flush the dcache.
1968 maintenance info target-sections
1969 Print GDB's internal target sections table.
1971 maintenance info jit
1972 Print the JIT code objects in the inferior known to GDB.
1974 memory-tag show-logical-tag POINTER
1975 Print the logical tag for POINTER.
1976 memory-tag with-logical-tag POINTER TAG
1977 Print POINTER with logical tag TAG.
1978 memory-tag show-allocation-tag ADDRESS
1979 Print the allocation tag for ADDRESS.
1980 memory-tag set-allocation-tag ADDRESS LENGTH TAGS
1981 Set the allocation tag for [ADDRESS, ADDRESS + LENGTH) to TAGS.
1982 memory-tag check POINTER
1983 Validate that POINTER's logical tag matches the allocation tag.
1985 set startup-quietly on|off
1986 show startup-quietly
1987 When 'on', this causes GDB to act as if "-silent" were passed on the
1988 command line. This command needs to be added to an early
1989 initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to
1992 set print type hex on|off
1994 When 'on', the 'ptype' command uses hexadecimal notation to print sizes
1995 and offsets of struct members. When 'off', decimal notation is used.
1997 set python ignore-environment on|off
1998 show python ignore-environment
1999 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to ignore any
2000 environment variables that would otherwise affect how Python
2001 behaves. This command needs to be added to an early initialization
2002 file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in order to affect GDB.
2004 set python dont-write-bytecode auto|on|off
2005 show python dont-write-bytecode
2006 When 'on', this causes GDB's builtin Python to not write any
2007 byte-code (.pyc files) to disk. This command needs to be added to
2008 an early initialization file (e.g. ~/.config/gdb/gdbearlyinit) in
2009 order to affect GDB. When 'off' byte-code will always be written.
2010 When set to 'auto' (the default) Python will check the
2011 PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.
2015 break [PROBE_MODIFIER] [LOCATION] [thread THREADNUM]
2016 [-force-condition] [if CONDITION]
2017 This command would previously refuse setting a breakpoint if the
2018 CONDITION expression is invalid at a location. It now accepts and
2019 defines the breakpoint if there is at least one location at which
2020 the CONDITION is valid. The locations for which the CONDITION is
2021 invalid, are automatically disabled. If CONDITION is invalid at all
2022 of the locations, setting the breakpoint is still rejected. However,
2023 the '-force-condition' flag can be used in this case for forcing GDB to
2024 define the breakpoint, making all the current locations automatically
2025 disabled. This may be useful if the user knows the condition will
2026 become meaningful at a future location, e.g. due to a shared library
2029 condition [-force] N COND
2030 The behavior of this command is changed the same way for the 'break'
2031 command as explained above. The '-force' flag can be used to force
2032 GDB into defining the condition even when COND is invalid for all the
2033 current locations of breakpoint N.
2036 maintenance flush-symbol-cache
2037 These commands are deprecated in favor of the new commands
2038 'maintenance flush register-cache' and 'maintenance flush
2039 symbol-cache' respectively.
2041 set style version foreground COLOR
2042 set style version background COLOR
2043 set style version intensity VALUE
2044 Control the styling of GDB's version number text.
2047 When the ID parameter is omitted, then this command prints information
2048 about the current inferior. When the ID parameter is present, the
2049 behavior of the command is unchanged and have the inferior ID become
2050 the current inferior.
2052 maintenance info sections
2053 The ALLOBJ keyword has been replaced with an -all-objects command
2054 line flag. It is now possible to filter which sections are printed
2055 even when -all-objects is passed.
2057 ptype[/FLAGS] TYPE | EXPRESSION
2058 The 'ptype' command has two new flags. When '/x' is set, hexadecimal
2059 notation is used when printing sizes and offsets of struct members.
2060 When '/d' is set, decimal notation is used when printing sizes and
2061 offsets of struct members. Default behavior is given by 'show print
2065 The info sources command output has been restructured. The results
2066 are now based around a list of objfiles (executable and libraries),
2067 and for each objfile the source files that are part of that objfile
2070 * Removed targets and native configurations
2072 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2074 * New remote packets
2077 Request the remote to send allocation tags for a particular memory range.
2079 Request the remote to store the specified allocation tags to the requested
2084 ** Improved support for rvalue reference values:
2085 TYPE_CODE_RVALUE_REF is now exported as part of the API and the
2086 value-referenced-value procedure now handles rvalue reference
2089 ** New procedures for obtaining value variants:
2090 value-reference-value, value-rvalue-reference-value and
2093 ** Temporary breakpoints can now be created with make-breakpoint and
2094 tested for using breakpoint-temporary?.
2098 ** Inferior objects now contain a read-only 'connection_num' attribute that
2099 gives the connection number as seen in 'info connections' and
2102 ** New method gdb.Frame.level() which returns the stack level of the
2105 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.level() which returns the stack level
2106 of the frame object.
2108 ** When hitting a catchpoint, the Python API will now emit a
2109 gdb.BreakpointEvent rather than a gdb.StopEvent. The
2110 gdb.Breakpoint attached to the event will have type BP_CATCHPOINT.
2112 ** Python TUI windows can now receive mouse click events. If the
2113 Window object implements the click method, it is called for each
2114 mouse click event in this window.
2116 *** Changes in GDB 10
2118 * There are new feature names for ARC targets: "org.gnu.gdb.arc.core"
2119 and "org.gnu.gdb.arc.aux". The old names are still supported but
2120 must be considered obsolete. They will be deprecated after some
2123 * Help and apropos commands will now show the documentation of a
2124 command only once, even if that command has one or more aliases.
2125 These commands now show the command name, then all of its aliases,
2126 and finally the description of the command.
2128 * 'help aliases' now shows only the user defined aliases. GDB predefined
2129 aliases are shown together with their aliased command.
2131 * GDB now supports debuginfod, an HTTP server for distributing ELF/DWARF
2132 debugging information as well as source code.
2134 When built with debuginfod, GDB can automatically query debuginfod
2135 servers for the separate debug files and source code of the executable
2138 To build GDB with debuginfod, pass --with-debuginfod to configure (this
2139 requires libdebuginfod, the debuginfod client library).
2141 debuginfod is distributed with elfutils, starting with version 0.178.
2143 You can get the latest version from https://sourceware.org/elfutils.
2145 * Multi-target debugging support
2147 GDB now supports debugging multiple target connections
2148 simultaneously. For example, you can now have each inferior
2149 connected to different remote servers running in different machines,
2150 or have one inferior debugging a local native process, an inferior
2151 debugging a core dump, etc.
2153 This support is experimental and comes with some limitations -- you
2154 can only resume multiple targets simultaneously if all targets
2155 support non-stop mode, and all remote stubs or servers must support
2156 the same set of remote protocol features exactly. See also "info
2157 connections" and "add-inferior -no-connection" below, and "maint set
2158 target-non-stop" in the user manual.
2160 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2162 ** GDBserver is now supported on ARC GNU/Linux.
2164 ** GDBserver is now supported on RISC-V GNU/Linux.
2166 ** GDBserver no longer supports these host triplets:
2168 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2177 i[34567]86-*-mingw32ce*
2179 * Debugging MS-Windows processes now sets $_exitsignal when the
2180 inferior is terminated by a signal, instead of setting $_exitcode.
2182 * Multithreaded symbol loading has now been enabled by default on systems
2183 that support it (see entry for GDB 9, below), providing faster
2184 performance for programs with many symbols.
2186 * The $_siginfo convenience variable now also works on Windows targets,
2187 and will display the EXCEPTION_RECORD of the last handled exception.
2189 * TUI windows can now be arranged horizontally.
2191 * The command history filename can now be set to the empty string
2192 either using 'set history filename' or by setting 'GDBHISTFILE=' in
2193 the environment. The effect of setting this filename to the empty
2194 string is that GDB will not try to load any previous command
2197 * On Windows targets, it is now possible to debug 32-bit programs with a
2202 set exec-file-mismatch -- Set exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
2203 show exec-file-mismatch -- Show exec-file-mismatch handling (ask|warn|off).
2204 Set or show the option 'exec-file-mismatch'. When GDB attaches to a
2205 running process, this new option indicates whether to detect
2206 a mismatch between the current executable file loaded by GDB and the
2207 executable file used to start the process. If 'ask', the default,
2208 display a warning and ask the user whether to load the process
2209 executable file; if 'warn', just display a warning; if 'off', don't
2210 attempt to detect a mismatch.
2212 tui new-layout NAME WINDOW WEIGHT [WINDOW WEIGHT]...
2213 Define a new TUI layout, specifying its name and the windows that
2216 maintenance print xml-tdesc [FILE]
2217 Prints the current target description as an XML document. If the
2218 optional FILE is provided (which is an XML target description) then
2219 the target description is read from FILE into GDB, and then
2222 maintenance print core-file-backed-mappings
2223 Prints file-backed mappings loaded from a core file's note section.
2224 Output is expected to be similar to that of "info proc mappings".
2226 set debug fortran-array-slicing on|off
2227 show debug fortran-array-slicing
2228 Print debugging when taking slices of Fortran arrays.
2230 set fortran repack-array-slices on|off
2231 show fortran repack-array-slices
2232 When taking slices from Fortran arrays and strings, if the slice is
2233 non-contiguous within the original value then, when this option is
2234 on, the new value will be repacked into a single contiguous value.
2235 When this option is off, then the value returned will consist of a
2236 descriptor that describes the slice within the memory of the
2237 original parent value.
2241 alias [-a] [--] ALIAS = COMMAND [DEFAULT-ARGS...]
2242 The alias command can now specify default args for an alias.
2243 GDB automatically prepends the alias default args to the argument list
2244 provided explicitly by the user.
2245 For example, to have a backtrace with full details, you can define
2246 an alias 'bt_ALL' as
2247 'alias bt_ALL = backtrace -entry-values both -frame-arg all
2248 -past-main -past-entry -full'.
2249 Alias default arguments can also use a set of nested 'with' commands,
2250 e.g. 'alias pp10 = with print pretty -- with print elem 10 -- print'
2251 defines the alias pp10 that will pretty print a maximum of 10 elements
2252 of the given expression (if the expression is an array).
2256 GNU/Linux/RISC-V (gdbserver) riscv*-*-linux*
2257 BPF bpf-unknown-none
2262 ** gdb.register_window_type can be used to implement new TUI windows
2265 ** Dynamic types can now be queried. gdb.Type has a new attribute,
2266 "dynamic", and gdb.Type.sizeof can be None for a dynamic type. A
2267 field of a dynamic type may have None for its "bitpos" attribute
2270 ** Commands written in Python can be in the "TUI" help class by
2271 registering with the new constant gdb.COMMAND_TUI.
2273 ** New method gdb.PendingFrame.architecture () to retrieve the
2274 architecture of the pending frame.
2276 ** New gdb.Architecture.registers method that returns a
2277 gdb.RegisterDescriptorIterator object, an iterator that returns
2278 gdb.RegisterDescriptor objects. The new RegisterDescriptor is a
2279 way to query the registers available for an architecture.
2281 ** New gdb.Architecture.register_groups method that returns a
2282 gdb.RegisterGroupIterator object, an iterator that returns
2283 gdb.RegisterGroup objects. The new RegisterGroup is a way to
2284 discover the available register groups.
2288 ** GDB can now be built with GNU Guile 3.0 and 2.2 in addition to 2.0.
2290 ** Procedures 'memory-port-read-buffer-size',
2291 'set-memory-port-read-buffer-size!', 'memory-port-write-buffer-size',
2292 and 'set-memory-port-write-buffer-size!' are deprecated. When
2293 using Guile 2.2 and later, users who need to control the size of
2294 a memory port's internal buffer can use the 'setvbuf' procedure.
2296 *** Changes in GDB 9
2298 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
2300 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
2301 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
2302 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
2303 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
2304 such as in system-wide init files.
2306 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
2307 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
2308 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
2309 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
2310 current GDB settings.
2312 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
2313 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
2314 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
2315 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
2317 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
2318 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
2321 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
2322 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
2324 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
2325 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
2326 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
2328 * The command define-prefix can now define user defined prefix commands.
2329 User defined commands can now be defined using these user defined prefix
2332 * Command names can now use the . character.
2334 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
2336 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
2339 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
2341 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
2342 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
2344 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
2345 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
2346 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
2348 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
2350 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
2351 not visible in the current scope.
2353 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
2354 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
2355 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
2356 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
2357 compiled with support for that language.
2359 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
2360 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
2361 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
2365 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
2366 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
2367 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
2368 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
2369 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
2371 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
2372 type was defined in.
2374 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
2375 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
2376 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
2379 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
2380 symbols with static linkage.
2382 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
2383 all static symbols with static linkage.
2385 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
2386 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
2388 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
2389 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
2393 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
2394 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
2395 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
2396 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
2397 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
2398 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
2399 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
2401 define-prefix COMMAND
2402 Define or mark a command as a user-defined prefix command.
2404 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
2405 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
2406 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
2407 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
2408 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
2409 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
2410 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
2411 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
2412 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
2413 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
2414 of array elements to print.
2416 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
2417 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
2419 set may-call-functions [on|off]
2420 show may-call-functions
2421 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
2422 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
2423 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
2424 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
2425 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
2426 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
2429 set print finish [on|off]
2431 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
2432 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
2433 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
2437 show print max-depth
2438 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
2439 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
2440 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
2441 the old behavior back.
2443 set print raw-values [on|off]
2444 show print raw-values
2445 By default, GDB applies the enabled pretty printers when printing a
2446 value. This allows to ignore the enabled pretty printers for a series
2447 of commands. The default is 'off'.
2449 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
2450 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
2451 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
2453 set style title foreground COLOR
2454 set style title background COLOR
2455 set style title intensity VALUE
2456 Control the styling of titles.
2458 set style highlight foreground COLOR
2459 set style highlight background COLOR
2460 set style highlight intensity VALUE
2461 Control the styling of highlightings.
2463 maint set worker-threads
2464 maint show worker-threads
2465 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
2466 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
2467 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
2468 the names of linker symbols.
2470 set style tui-border foreground COLOR
2471 set style tui-border background COLOR
2472 Control the styling of TUI borders.
2474 set style tui-active-border foreground COLOR
2475 set style tui-active-border background COLOR
2476 Control the styling of the active TUI border.
2478 maint set test-settings KIND
2479 maint show test-settings KIND
2480 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
2483 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
2484 maint show tui-resize-message
2485 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
2486 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
2489 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
2490 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
2491 show print frame-info
2492 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
2493 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behavior of 'backtrace',
2494 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
2495 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
2497 set tui compact-source
2498 show tui compact-source
2500 Enable the "compact" display mode for the TUI source window. The
2501 compact display uses only as much space as is needed for the line
2502 numbers in the current file, and only a single space to separate the
2503 line numbers from the source.
2505 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
2506 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
2509 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
2510 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
2511 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
2512 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
2513 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
2514 matches against the function name.
2516 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
2517 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
2518 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
2519 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
2520 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
2521 against the variable name.
2523 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
2524 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
2525 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
2527 The default is 512 bytes.
2530 Lists the target connections currently in use.
2535 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
2536 readability of its output by styling the classes and
2540 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
2541 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
2542 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
2543 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
2544 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
2548 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
2549 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
2550 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
2551 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
2553 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
2554 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
2555 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
2556 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
2560 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
2561 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
2562 the user visualize the different styles.
2564 set print frame-arguments
2565 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
2566 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
2568 set print raw-frame-arguments
2569 show print raw-frame-arguments
2571 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
2572 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
2573 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
2576 add-inferior [-no-connection]
2577 The add-inferior command now supports a "-no-connection" flag that
2578 makes the new inferior start with no target connection associated.
2579 By default, the new inferior inherits the target connection of the
2580 current inferior. See also "info connections".
2583 This command's output now includes a new "Connection" column
2584 indicating which target connection an inferior is bound to. See
2585 "info connections" above.
2587 maint test-options require-delimiter
2588 maint test-options unknown-is-error
2589 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
2590 maint show test-options-completion-result
2591 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
2594 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
2595 These commands are now case-sensitive.
2597 * New command options, command completion
2599 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
2600 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
2601 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
2602 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
2603 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
2604 number of commands got support for new command options in this
2607 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
2608 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
2609 set by "set print" subcommands:
2613 -array-indexes [on|off]
2614 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
2618 -raw-values [on|off]
2619 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
2620 -static-members [on|off]
2625 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
2626 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
2627 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
2628 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
2630 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
2631 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
2632 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
2634 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
2635 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
2636 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
2637 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
2638 |location-and-address|short-location
2640 -past-entry [on|off]
2642 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
2643 exposed as command options too:
2649 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
2650 support the following options:
2653 -past-entry [on|off]
2655 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
2656 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
2658 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
2659 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
2660 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
2663 (gdb) p -ra -p -o 0 -- *myptr
2665 The above is equivalent to:
2667 (gdb) print -raw-values -pretty -object off -- *myptr
2669 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
2670 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
2671 variables" and "info functions".
2673 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
2674 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
2675 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
2678 * Completion improvements
2680 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
2681 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
2684 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
2685 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
2688 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
2689 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
2690 completes on filenames.
2692 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
2693 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
2695 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
2697 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
2698 elements unlimited".
2703 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2704 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
2705 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
2707 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
2708 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
2709 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
2711 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
2712 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
2713 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
2715 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
2718 -symbol-info-module-functions and -symbol-info-module-variables.
2719 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
2720 module functions' and 'info module variables'.
2724 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
2726 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
2727 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
2728 the following commands and events:
2732 - =breakpoint-created
2733 - =breakpoint-modified
2735 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
2736 this behavior with previous MI versions.
2738 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
2739 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
2740 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
2745 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
2746 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
2747 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
2748 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
2750 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
2752 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
2753 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
2755 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
2757 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
2758 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
2760 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
2761 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
2762 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
2764 * Removed targets and native configurations
2766 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
2767 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
2768 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
2774 * Removed targets and native configurations
2776 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
2777 sparc*-*-solaris2.10
2779 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
2781 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
2782 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
2785 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
2786 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
2787 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
2790 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
2793 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
2794 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
2795 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
2797 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
2798 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
2800 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
2801 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2802 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2803 in the GDB user manual.
2805 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
2808 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
2810 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
2811 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
2812 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
2813 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
2814 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
2815 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
2816 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
2817 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
2818 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
2819 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
2820 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
2821 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
2823 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
2824 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
2825 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
2828 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
2833 set debug compile-cplus-types
2834 show debug compile-cplus-types
2835 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
2836 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiling
2837 for other languages.
2841 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
2844 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
2845 Apply a command to some frames.
2846 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
2847 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
2850 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
2851 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
2854 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
2855 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
2858 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
2860 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
2862 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
2863 maint show dwarf unwinders
2864 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
2867 Display a list of open files for a process.
2871 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
2872 These commands all now take a frame specification which
2873 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
2874 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
2875 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
2876 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
2877 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
2879 target remote FILENAME
2880 target extended-remote FILENAME
2881 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
2882 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
2884 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
2885 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
2886 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
2887 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
2888 These commands can now print only the searched entities
2889 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
2890 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
2891 printing headers or information messages.
2897 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
2898 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
2899 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
2902 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
2903 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
2904 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
2905 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
2907 set tui tab-width NCHARS
2908 show tui tab-width NCHARS
2909 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
2911 set style enabled [on|off]
2913 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
2914 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
2916 set style sources [on|off]
2918 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
2919 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
2920 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
2922 set style filename foreground COLOR
2923 set style filename background COLOR
2924 set style filename intensity VALUE
2925 Control the styling of file names.
2927 set style function foreground COLOR
2928 set style function background COLOR
2929 set style function intensity VALUE
2930 Control the styling of function names.
2932 set style variable foreground COLOR
2933 set style variable background COLOR
2934 set style variable intensity VALUE
2935 Control the styling of variable names.
2937 set style address foreground COLOR
2938 set style address background COLOR
2939 set style address intensity VALUE
2940 Control the styling of addresses.
2944 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
2945 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
2946 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
2947 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
2948 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
2950 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
2951 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
2953 * New native configurations
2955 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
2956 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
2960 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
2961 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
2962 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
2963 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
2965 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
2969 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
2974 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
2976 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
2977 space associated to that inferior.
2979 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
2980 of objfiles associated to that program space.
2982 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
2983 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
2986 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
2987 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
2988 correct and did not work properly.
2990 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
2991 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
2997 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
2998 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
2999 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
3000 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
3001 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
3003 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
3005 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
3006 for the MIPS target.
3008 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
3009 offset to all sections.
3011 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
3012 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
3013 address of individual sections using '-s'.
3015 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
3016 (address of the text section).
3018 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
3019 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
3020 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
3021 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
3024 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
3025 for the rest of the current command.
3027 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
3028 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
3030 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
3031 files created on FreeBSD systems.
3033 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
3036 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
3037 the vector length while the process is running.
3043 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
3045 set|show varsize-limit
3046 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
3047 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
3048 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
3050 set|show record btrace cpu
3051 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
3052 branch trace decode.
3054 maint check libthread-db
3055 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
3058 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
3059 maint show check-libthread-db
3060 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
3061 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
3062 perform such checks.
3066 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
3068 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
3069 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
3071 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
3073 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
3074 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
3075 of convenience variables.
3077 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
3078 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
3079 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
3083 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
3085 * Removed targets and native configurations
3087 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
3088 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
3089 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
3090 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
3092 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
3094 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
3095 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
3096 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
3097 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
3098 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
3099 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
3104 --enable-codesign=CERT
3105 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
3106 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
3107 gdb to work properly.
3109 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
3110 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
3112 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
3114 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
3115 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
3116 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
3118 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
3119 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
3121 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
3122 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
3123 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
3124 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
3125 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
3127 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
3128 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
3129 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
3130 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
3132 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
3133 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
3135 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
3136 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
3137 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
3139 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
3140 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
3141 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
3143 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
3144 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
3145 environment" command.
3147 * Completion improvements
3149 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
3150 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
3151 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
3152 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
3155 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
3156 (gdb) b function(int)
3158 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
3159 C++ anonymous namespaces:
3162 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
3163 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
3164 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
3166 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
3167 completion support, that better understands what you're
3168 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
3169 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
3170 setting a breakpoint.
3172 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
3174 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
3176 * New command line options (gcore)
3179 Dump all memory mappings.
3181 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
3183 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
3184 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
3185 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
3187 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
3192 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
3195 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
3196 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
3197 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
3198 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
3199 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
3200 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
3201 a breakpoint from Python.
3203 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
3205 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
3206 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
3207 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
3209 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
3211 function[abi:cxx11](int)
3214 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
3217 (gdb) b function(int)
3219 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
3221 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
3223 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
3227 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
3228 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
3229 description of these.
3231 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
3232 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
3233 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
3235 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
3236 manual for a further description of this feature.
3239 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3241 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
3242 specified initial working directory.
3244 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
3245 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
3247 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
3248 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
3250 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
3251 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
3253 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
3254 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
3255 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
3256 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
3257 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
3259 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
3260 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
3261 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
3263 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
3264 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
3265 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
3266 in the *stopped notification.
3268 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
3269 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
3271 * New remote packets
3273 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
3274 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
3275 the inferior when starting it.
3278 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
3279 before starting the remote inferior.
3282 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
3283 user-set environment variables should be unset).
3286 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
3289 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
3292 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
3293 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
3295 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
3296 filter the tests to be run.
3298 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
3299 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
3304 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
3306 set|show compile-gcc
3307 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
3308 with the 'compile' commands.
3310 set debug separate-debug-file
3311 show debug separate-debug-file
3312 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
3314 set dump-excluded-mappings
3315 show dump-excluded-mappings
3316 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
3317 dumped when generating a core file.
3319 maint info selftests
3320 List the registered selftests.
3323 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
3326 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
3328 set|show print type nested-type-limit
3329 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
3330 type printer will show.
3332 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
3335 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
3337 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
3340 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
3341 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
3342 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
3343 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
3345 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
3346 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
3347 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
3348 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
3349 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
3350 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
3352 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
3353 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
3354 unless you tell it the variable's type:
3357 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
3361 * New native configurations
3363 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
3364 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
3368 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
3369 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
3370 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
3372 * Removed targets and native configurations
3374 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
3376 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
3378 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
3379 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
3380 available in future Intel CPUs.
3382 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
3386 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
3387 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
3389 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
3392 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
3394 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
3396 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
3397 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
3400 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
3402 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
3403 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
3405 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
3407 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
3408 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
3409 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
3410 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
3413 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
3415 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
3416 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
3419 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
3421 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
3422 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
3424 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
3426 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
3431 eval "print $arg%d", $i
3436 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
3438 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
3439 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
3441 * New native configurations
3443 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
3447 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
3448 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
3450 * Removed targets and native configurations
3452 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3453 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
3458 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
3460 maint print arc arc-instruction address
3461 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
3465 set disassembler-options
3466 show disassembler-options
3467 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
3468 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
3469 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
3470 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
3471 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
3476 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
3477 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
3479 -file-list-shared-libraries
3480 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
3481 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
3484 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
3485 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
3487 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
3489 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
3491 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
3492 default. One must now explicitly configure with
3493 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
3494 option will be removed in a future release.
3496 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
3499 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
3500 memory backward from the given address. For example:
3503 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
3504 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
3505 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
3506 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
3507 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
3508 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
3509 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
3510 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
3511 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
3513 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
3514 arrays of dynamic types.
3516 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
3517 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
3518 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
3519 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
3520 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
3521 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
3523 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
3526 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
3527 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
3528 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
3530 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
3532 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
3533 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
3534 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
3535 signal received and code location.
3539 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
3540 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
3541 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
3542 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
3544 * Rust language support.
3545 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
3546 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
3549 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
3551 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
3552 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
3553 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
3554 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
3555 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
3556 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
3557 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
3558 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
3559 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
3560 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
3563 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
3565 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
3566 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
3571 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
3572 skip -function function
3573 skip -rfunction regular-expression
3574 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
3575 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
3576 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
3578 maint info line-table REGEXP
3579 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data structure.
3582 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
3585 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
3586 using the TTY file for input/output.
3590 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
3591 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
3592 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
3593 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
3594 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
3596 signal-event EVENTID
3597 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
3598 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
3599 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
3600 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
3601 signalling an event.
3603 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
3604 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
3605 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
3607 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
3610 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
3611 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
3612 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
3613 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
3614 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
3615 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
3617 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
3618 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
3619 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
3620 bytecode into native code.
3622 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
3623 recording. For example:
3625 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
3627 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
3629 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
3633 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
3635 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
3637 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
3639 * Per-inferior thread numbers
3641 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
3642 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
3643 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
3647 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
3648 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
3649 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
3650 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
3652 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
3653 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
3654 are no longer unique between inferiors.
3656 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
3657 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
3658 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
3660 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
3663 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
3664 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
3667 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
3670 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
3671 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
3672 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
3673 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
3676 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
3679 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
3682 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
3685 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
3686 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
3689 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
3690 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
3692 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
3694 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
3696 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
3697 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
3699 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
3700 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
3703 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
3704 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
3707 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
3708 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
3711 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
3713 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
3714 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
3715 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
3717 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
3718 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
3722 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
3723 maint show target-non-stop
3724 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
3725 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
3726 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
3728 maint set bfd-sharing
3729 maint show bfd-sharing
3730 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
3733 show debug bfd-cache
3734 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
3738 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
3740 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
3741 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
3742 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
3744 set remote thread-events
3745 show remote thread-events
3746 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
3748 set ada print-signatures on|off
3749 show ada print-signatures"
3750 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
3751 selection menus. It is activated (@code{on}) by default.
3755 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
3756 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
3757 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
3759 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
3760 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
3761 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
3762 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
3763 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
3764 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
3766 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
3767 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
3769 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
3770 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
3772 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
3774 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
3775 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
3776 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
3777 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
3778 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
3779 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
3781 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
3782 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
3785 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
3787 * New remote packets
3790 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
3792 exec-events feature in qSupported
3793 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
3794 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
3795 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
3796 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
3799 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
3802 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
3803 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
3805 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
3806 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
3809 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
3810 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
3811 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
3812 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
3813 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
3814 stop for that same thread.
3817 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
3818 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
3819 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
3822 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
3823 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
3825 syscall_entry stop reason
3826 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
3828 syscall_return stop reason
3829 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
3831 * Extended-remote exec events
3833 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
3834 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
3835 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
3837 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
3838 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
3839 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
3841 * Thread names in remote protocol
3843 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
3846 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
3848 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
3849 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
3850 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
3851 fork and exec catchpoints.
3853 * Remote syscall events
3855 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
3856 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
3858 set remote catch-syscall-packet
3859 show remote catch-syscall-packet
3860 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
3864 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
3865 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
3870 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
3871 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
3872 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
3873 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
3874 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
3875 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
3877 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
3879 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
3880 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
3881 including advance SIMD instructions.
3883 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
3885 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
3886 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
3887 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
3888 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
3889 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
3890 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
3891 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
3893 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
3895 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
3897 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
3898 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
3901 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
3902 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
3903 and may include things like its command line arguments.
3905 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
3906 is now available on all platforms.
3908 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
3909 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
3910 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
3911 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
3912 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
3913 backward compatibility.
3915 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
3916 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
3917 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
3918 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
3920 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
3921 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
3922 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
3923 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
3926 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
3928 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
3930 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
3931 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
3932 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
3933 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
3934 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
3935 See "New remote packets" below.
3937 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
3938 available register groups, including target specific groups.
3940 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
3941 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
3942 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
3943 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
3948 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
3952 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
3953 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
3954 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
3955 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
3956 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
3957 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
3958 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
3959 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
3960 "const" version of the value respectively.
3964 maint print symbol-cache
3965 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
3967 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
3968 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
3970 maint flush-symbol-cache
3971 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
3975 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
3978 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
3982 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
3985 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
3986 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
3990 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
3993 Print information about branch tracing internals.
3995 maint btrace packet-history
3996 Print the raw branch tracing data.
3998 maint btrace clear-packet-history
3999 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
4002 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
4003 anew by the next "record" command.
4008 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
4009 show debug dwarf-die
4010 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
4012 set debug dwarf-read
4013 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
4014 show debug dwarf-read
4015 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
4017 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
4018 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
4019 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
4020 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
4022 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
4023 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
4024 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
4025 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
4027 set debug dwarf-line
4028 show debug dwarf-line
4029 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
4032 show max-completions
4033 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
4034 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
4035 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
4036 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
4038 set history remove-duplicates
4039 show history remove-duplicates
4040 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
4042 maint set symbol-cache-size
4043 maint show symbol-cache-size
4044 Control the size of the symbol cache.
4046 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
4047 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
4049 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
4050 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
4052 set debug linux-namespaces
4053 show debug linux-namespaces
4054 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
4056 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
4057 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
4058 Intel Processor Trace format.
4059 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
4060 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
4062 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
4063 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
4066 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
4067 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
4069 * Python/Guile scripting
4071 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
4072 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
4074 * New remote packets
4076 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
4077 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
4079 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
4080 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
4083 Enable Intel Processor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
4084 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
4087 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
4088 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
4092 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
4093 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
4094 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
4098 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
4099 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
4102 Return information about files on the remote system.
4104 qXfer:exec-file:read
4105 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
4106 create a process running on the remote system.
4109 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
4110 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
4111 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
4112 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
4115 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
4118 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
4120 vforkdone stop reason
4121 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
4122 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
4124 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
4125 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
4126 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
4127 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
4128 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
4129 whether these features are enabled.
4131 * Extended-remote fork events
4133 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
4134 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
4135 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
4136 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
4138 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
4139 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
4140 the btrace record target.
4141 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
4143 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
4144 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
4146 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
4149 * Removed command line options
4151 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
4153 * Removed targets and native configurations
4155 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
4156 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
4158 * New configure options
4161 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
4162 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
4164 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
4165 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
4166 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
4167 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
4169 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
4173 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
4175 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
4177 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
4181 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
4182 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
4183 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
4184 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
4185 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
4186 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
4187 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
4188 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
4189 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
4190 selecting a new file to debug.
4191 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
4192 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
4194 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
4197 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
4198 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
4199 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
4200 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
4202 * New Python-based convenience functions:
4204 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
4205 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
4206 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
4207 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
4209 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
4210 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
4211 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
4212 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
4213 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
4214 interface with this new feature are:
4216 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
4217 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
4221 demangle [-l language] [--] name
4222 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
4223 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
4224 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
4225 as "maint demangler-warning".
4227 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
4228 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
4230 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
4231 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
4234 maint print user-registers
4235 List all currently available "user" registers.
4237 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
4238 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
4239 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
4241 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
4242 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
4243 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
4246 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
4247 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
4248 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
4249 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
4252 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
4253 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
4254 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
4255 switched threads meanwhile.
4257 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
4259 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
4260 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
4261 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
4262 is now the default mode.
4266 set debug symbol-lookup
4267 show debug symbol-lookup
4268 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
4272 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
4273 inferiors that have exited.
4277 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
4281 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4283 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
4284 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
4285 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
4286 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
4287 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
4289 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
4290 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
4291 its alias "share", instead.
4293 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
4295 * New command line options
4298 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
4300 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
4301 as specified in ISO C99.
4303 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
4304 with or without disassembly.
4308 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
4309 available is determined at configure time.
4310 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
4311 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
4313 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4317 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
4321 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
4323 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
4324 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
4326 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
4327 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
4331 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
4332 show print symbol-loading
4333 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
4334 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
4335 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
4336 becomes less useful.
4338 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
4339 show guile print-stack
4340 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
4342 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
4343 show auto-load guile-scripts
4344 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
4346 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
4347 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
4348 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
4349 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
4350 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
4351 usage of this option.
4353 set auto-connect-native-target
4355 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
4356 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
4357 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
4359 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
4360 show record btrace replay-memory-access
4361 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
4363 maint set target-async (on|off)
4364 maint show target-async
4365 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
4366 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
4367 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
4368 occurring only in synchronous mode.
4370 set mi-async (on|off)
4372 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
4373 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
4375 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
4376 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
4378 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
4379 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
4380 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
4381 "set target-async on" command.
4383 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
4385 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
4386 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
4387 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
4388 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
4389 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
4391 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
4392 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
4393 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
4395 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
4396 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
4397 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
4398 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
4399 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
4400 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
4401 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
4403 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
4404 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
4406 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
4407 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
4408 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
4410 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
4411 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
4412 memory or registers.
4414 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
4416 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
4417 remote. It now works with all targets.
4419 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
4420 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
4421 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
4422 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
4423 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
4424 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
4425 as these commands previously either threw an error, or were
4426 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
4427 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
4430 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
4431 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
4432 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
4434 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
4436 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
4437 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
4438 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
4440 * New remote packets
4442 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
4443 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
4444 branch trace incrementally.
4448 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
4449 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
4451 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
4452 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
4453 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
4454 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
4455 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
4458 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
4460 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
4461 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
4462 its alias "share", instead.
4464 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
4465 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
4470 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
4471 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
4472 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
4473 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
4474 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
4475 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
4476 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
4477 commands and CLI execution commands.
4479 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
4481 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
4482 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
4483 recording has been added.
4485 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
4487 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
4488 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
4490 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
4491 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
4492 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
4493 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
4494 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
4495 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
4498 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
4500 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
4502 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
4503 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
4504 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
4505 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
4510 (gdb) info registers rax
4513 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
4514 "*value not available*".
4516 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
4521 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
4522 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
4523 ** Line tables representation has been added.
4524 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
4525 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
4526 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
4530 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
4531 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
4532 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
4534 * Removed native configurations
4536 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
4537 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
4539 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
4540 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
4541 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
4542 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
4543 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
4544 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
4545 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
4549 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
4550 maint check-psymtabs
4551 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
4553 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
4554 maint expand-symtabs
4555 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
4558 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
4560 maint set|show per-command
4561 maint set|show per-command space
4562 maint set|show per-command time
4563 maint set|show per-command symtab
4564 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
4566 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
4567 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
4568 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
4569 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
4570 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
4573 info exceptions REGEXP
4574 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
4575 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
4580 set debug symfile off|on
4582 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
4583 symbol tables within those files
4585 set print raw frame-arguments
4586 show print raw frame-arguments
4587 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
4588 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
4590 set remote trace-status-packet
4591 show remote trace-status-packet
4592 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
4596 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
4600 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
4602 set startup-with-shell
4603 show startup-with-shell
4604 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
4609 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
4610 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
4612 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
4613 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
4614 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
4615 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
4618 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
4619 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
4620 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
4622 * New command-line options
4624 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
4626 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
4627 buffer in Common Trace Format.
4629 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
4632 * GDB now implements the C++ 'typeid' operator.
4634 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
4635 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
4637 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
4638 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
4640 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
4641 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
4642 due to an uncaught signal.
4646 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
4647 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
4648 command, which should contain "language-option".
4650 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
4651 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
4653 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
4654 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
4655 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
4656 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
4657 "undefined-command-error-code".
4659 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
4662 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
4664 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
4665 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
4668 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
4669 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
4671 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
4672 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
4673 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
4675 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
4676 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
4677 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
4678 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
4679 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
4680 "exec-run-start-option".
4682 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
4683 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
4685 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
4686 the new "info exceptions" command.
4688 * New system-wide configuration scripts
4689 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
4690 configuration scripts for the following systems:
4694 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
4695 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
4696 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
4699 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
4700 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
4702 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
4703 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
4704 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
4706 * New remote packets
4710 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
4711 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
4712 involvemement at each single-step.
4714 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
4715 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
4716 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
4717 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
4718 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
4719 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
4722 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
4724 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
4725 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
4727 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
4728 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
4729 trace state variables.
4731 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
4734 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
4735 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
4737 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
4739 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
4740 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
4741 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
4742 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4744 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
4746 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
4747 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
4748 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
4749 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
4751 set|show record full insn-number-max
4752 set|show record full stop-at-limit
4753 set|show record full memory-query
4755 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
4756 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
4757 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
4758 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
4759 This new recording method can be enabled using:
4763 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
4764 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
4766 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
4767 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
4768 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
4770 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
4771 instruction granularity
4773 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
4774 function granularity
4776 * New native configurations
4778 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
4779 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4780 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
4781 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
4785 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
4786 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
4787 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
4788 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
4789 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
4791 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
4792 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
4793 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
4794 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
4795 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
4796 --data-directory command-line option.
4798 * New command line options:
4800 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
4801 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
4803 * Removed command line options
4805 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
4808 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
4811 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
4815 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
4817 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
4819 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
4821 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
4823 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
4824 of architecture in the Python API.
4826 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
4827 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
4829 * New Python-based convenience functions:
4831 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
4832 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
4834 ** $_regex(str, regex)
4836 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
4839 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
4840 default for GCC since November 2000.
4842 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
4844 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
4845 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
4847 * New configure options
4849 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
4850 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
4851 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
4852 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
4853 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
4854 options allow the user to override that default.
4855 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
4856 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
4857 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
4859 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4862 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
4863 conditions to be attached.
4866 List the BFDs known to GDB.
4868 python-interactive [command]
4870 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
4871 and print the result of expressions.
4874 "py" is a new alias for "python".
4876 enable type-printer [name]...
4877 disable type-printer [name]...
4878 Enable or disable type printers.
4882 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
4883 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
4888 set print type methods (on|off)
4889 show print type methods
4890 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
4891 The default is to show them.
4893 set print type typedefs (on|off)
4894 show print type typedefs
4895 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
4896 The default is to show them.
4898 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
4899 show filename-display
4900 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
4901 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
4903 set trace-buffer-size
4904 show trace-buffer-size
4905 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
4907 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
4908 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
4909 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
4913 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
4916 set debug coff-pe-read
4917 show debug coff-pe-read
4918 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
4923 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
4926 set debug notification
4927 show debug notification
4928 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
4932 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
4933 "=cmd-param-changed".
4934 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
4935 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
4936 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
4937 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
4938 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
4939 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
4940 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
4941 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
4943 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
4944 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
4945 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
4946 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
4947 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
4948 library load/unload events.
4949 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
4950 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
4951 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
4952 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
4953 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
4954 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
4955 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
4956 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
4958 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
4959 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
4960 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
4961 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
4963 * New remote packets
4966 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
4967 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
4970 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
4971 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
4975 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
4976 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
4979 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
4980 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
4982 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
4984 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
4985 for more x32 ABI info.
4987 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
4989 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
4991 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
4992 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
4993 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
4994 "info os files" lists file descriptors
4995 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
4996 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
4997 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
4998 "info os msg" lists message queues
4999 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
5001 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
5002 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
5003 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
5004 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
5005 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
5006 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
5008 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
5009 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
5010 record/replay support.
5012 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
5016 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
5019 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
5021 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
5022 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
5024 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
5026 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
5027 the source at which the symbol was defined.
5029 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
5030 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
5031 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
5034 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
5035 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
5037 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
5038 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
5039 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
5041 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
5042 object associated with a PC value.
5044 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
5045 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
5047 * Go language support.
5048 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
5051 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
5052 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
5054 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
5055 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
5057 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
5058 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
5059 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
5060 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
5061 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
5064 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
5065 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
5066 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
5067 build/libcpp/expr.c.
5069 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
5070 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
5072 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
5073 since December 2007.
5075 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
5076 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
5077 command does. For instance:
5079 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
5081 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
5082 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
5083 created, using the "condition" command.
5085 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
5086 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
5088 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
5090 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
5091 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
5092 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
5093 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
5094 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
5095 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
5096 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
5097 files with older .gdb_index sections.
5099 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
5100 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
5101 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
5102 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
5103 the .gdb_index section.
5105 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
5107 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
5112 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
5114 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
5118 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
5119 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
5120 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
5122 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
5123 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
5125 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
5128 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
5129 C++ and Java objects.
5131 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
5132 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
5133 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
5134 configured with '--with-python'.
5136 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
5137 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
5138 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
5139 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
5140 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
5141 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
5142 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
5144 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
5145 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
5146 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
5147 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
5149 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
5150 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
5151 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
5152 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compile time.
5154 ** "set print symbol"
5156 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
5157 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
5158 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
5160 * Deprecated commands
5162 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
5163 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
5167 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
5168 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
5170 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
5171 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
5172 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
5173 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
5178 set mips compression
5179 show mips compression
5180 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
5181 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
5184 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
5186 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
5187 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
5188 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5189 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
5191 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
5195 Disable auto-loading globally.
5198 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
5200 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
5201 show auto-load gdb-scripts
5202 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
5204 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
5205 show auto-load python-scripts
5206 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
5208 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
5209 show auto-load local-gdbinit
5210 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
5212 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
5213 show auto-load libthread-db
5214 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
5216 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
5217 show auto-load scripts-directory
5218 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
5219 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
5220 of the directories listed by this option.
5221 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
5223 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
5224 show auto-load safe-path
5225 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
5226 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
5228 set debug auto-load on|off
5229 show debug auto-load
5230 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
5232 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
5234 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
5235 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
5236 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
5237 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
5239 set dprintf-function <expr>
5240 show dprintf-function
5241 set dprintf-channel <expr>
5242 show dprintf-channel
5243 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
5244 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
5246 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
5247 show disconnected-dprintf
5248 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
5249 after GDB disconnects.
5251 * New configure options
5253 --with-auto-load-dir
5254 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
5255 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
5256 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
5257 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
5258 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
5260 --with-auto-load-safe-path
5261 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
5262 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
5264 --without-auto-load-safe-path
5265 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
5268 * New remote packets
5270 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
5272 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
5273 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
5274 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
5275 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
5279 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
5280 program without GDB involvement.
5282 * New command line options
5284 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
5285 before loading inferior.
5286 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
5287 execute it before loading inferior.
5289 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
5291 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
5292 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
5293 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
5294 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
5297 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
5298 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
5300 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
5301 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
5302 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
5303 target hardware watchpoint.
5305 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
5306 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
5307 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
5308 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
5312 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
5313 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
5316 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
5317 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
5318 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
5319 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
5320 now "message", which just prints the error message without
5323 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
5326 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
5327 modules library. This module provides functionality for
5328 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
5329 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
5330 corresponding value.
5332 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
5333 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
5334 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
5337 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
5338 static_block will return the global and static blocks
5339 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
5340 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
5342 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
5344 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
5347 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
5348 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
5349 available in the CLI.
5351 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
5352 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
5353 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
5354 "some_type.items()".
5356 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
5359 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
5360 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
5361 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
5362 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
5363 any anonymous fields.
5367 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
5370 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
5371 "=breakpoint-modified".
5373 ** New command -ada-task-info.
5375 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
5376 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
5377 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
5380 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
5381 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
5382 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
5383 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
5384 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
5386 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
5387 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
5389 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
5390 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
5391 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
5392 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
5393 use this option to specify where to find it.
5395 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
5396 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
5397 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
5398 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
5399 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
5400 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
5401 section in the user manual for more details.
5403 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
5404 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
5405 become available after that.
5407 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
5409 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
5410 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
5416 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
5417 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
5421 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
5422 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
5423 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
5425 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
5426 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
5427 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
5429 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
5430 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
5431 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
5432 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
5433 name starts with a hyphen.
5435 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
5436 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
5437 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
5438 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
5439 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
5440 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
5441 number of bytes that will be collected.
5444 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
5445 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
5446 setting the variable trace-notes.
5449 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
5450 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
5451 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
5454 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
5455 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
5456 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
5457 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
5458 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
5461 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
5462 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
5463 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
5467 set debug dwarf2-read
5468 show debug dwarf2-read
5469 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
5470 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
5472 set debug symtab-create
5473 show debug symtab-create
5474 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
5475 creation. The default is off.
5478 show extended-prompt
5479 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
5480 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
5481 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
5482 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
5483 prompt is displayed.
5485 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
5486 show print entry-values
5487 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
5488 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
5489 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
5491 set debug entry-values
5492 show debug entry-values
5493 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
5494 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
5496 set basenames-may-differ
5497 show basenames-may-differ
5498 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
5499 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
5500 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
5501 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
5502 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
5503 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
5504 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
5505 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
5511 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
5512 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
5513 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
5514 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
5516 set trace-stop-notes
5517 show trace-stop-notes
5518 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
5519 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
5520 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
5521 started by someone else.
5523 * New remote packets
5527 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
5531 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
5535 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
5539 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
5543 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
5546 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
5547 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
5551 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
5555 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
5557 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
5559 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
5561 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
5563 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
5564 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
5565 matches the given regular expression.
5567 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
5569 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
5570 dumping the instruction opcodes.
5572 * New command line options
5574 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
5575 This is mostly for testing purposes.
5577 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
5578 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
5580 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
5581 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
5582 source path list instead of augmenting it.
5584 * GDB now understands thread names.
5586 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
5587 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
5589 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
5590 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
5593 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
5594 has been integrated into GDB.
5598 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
5599 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
5600 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
5602 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
5603 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
5604 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
5605 and allows for more dynamic content.
5607 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
5608 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
5609 have an is_valid method.
5611 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
5612 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
5613 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
5615 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
5617 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
5618 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
5619 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
5620 that function like so:
5622 result = some_value (10,20)
5624 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
5625 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
5626 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
5628 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
5629 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
5630 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
5631 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
5632 New function: register_pretty_printer.
5634 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
5635 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
5637 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
5639 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
5642 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
5643 holds the thread's name.
5645 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
5646 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
5647 occurring in the process being debugged.
5648 The following events are currently supported:
5649 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
5650 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
5651 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
5655 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
5656 instantiation. For example, if you have:
5658 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
5660 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
5661 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
5662 was added to GCC 4.5.
5664 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
5665 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
5666 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
5667 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
5668 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
5669 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
5671 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
5672 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
5673 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
5674 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
5675 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
5677 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
5678 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
5679 execution to a label.
5681 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
5682 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
5683 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
5684 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
5686 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
5687 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
5688 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
5691 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
5693 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
5694 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
5695 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
5696 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
5697 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
5698 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
5701 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
5703 While now you see this:
5706 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
5708 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
5711 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
5712 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
5713 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
5714 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
5716 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
5717 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
5718 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
5719 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
5720 section in the user manual for more details.
5722 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
5724 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
5725 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
5727 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
5729 * New native configurations
5731 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
5735 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
5737 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
5738 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
5739 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
5740 in the GDB user manual.
5742 * Guile support was removed.
5744 * New features in the GNU simulator
5746 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
5748 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
5750 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
5752 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
5754 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
5755 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
5756 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
5757 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
5758 was always disabled for such configurations.
5762 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
5764 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
5765 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
5775 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
5776 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
5777 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
5779 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
5781 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
5782 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
5783 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
5784 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
5786 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
5787 mentioned flavors of operators.
5789 ** static const class members
5791 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
5792 class definition has been fixed.
5794 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
5796 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
5797 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
5798 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
5799 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
5800 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
5801 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
5803 * Static tracepoints
5805 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
5806 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
5807 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
5808 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
5809 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
5810 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
5811 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
5812 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
5813 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
5814 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
5815 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
5816 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
5817 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
5818 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
5819 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
5820 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
5821 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
5822 the "New remote packets" section below.
5824 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
5826 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
5827 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
5828 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
5829 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
5833 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
5834 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
5835 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
5836 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
5837 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
5838 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
5839 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
5841 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
5844 * New remote packets
5848 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
5852 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
5853 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
5854 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
5855 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
5856 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
5857 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
5861 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
5865 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
5868 qXfer:statictrace:read
5870 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
5871 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
5872 to gdb's qSupported query.
5876 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
5880 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
5881 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
5883 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
5884 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
5887 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
5889 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
5890 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
5891 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
5892 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
5894 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
5895 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
5896 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
5897 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
5898 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
5899 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
5900 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
5902 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
5903 for static tracepoints support.
5905 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
5907 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
5908 it understands register description.
5910 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
5912 * X86 general purpose registers
5914 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
5915 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
5916 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
5917 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
5918 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
5920 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
5921 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
5922 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
5923 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
5924 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
5925 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
5927 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
5928 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
5929 in the specified file.
5931 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
5932 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
5933 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
5934 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
5935 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
5936 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
5937 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
5938 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
5939 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
5940 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
5944 eval template, expressions...
5945 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
5946 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
5948 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
5949 show target-file-system-kind
5950 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
5953 save breakpoints <filename>
5954 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
5955 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
5956 definitions, use the `source' command.
5958 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
5961 info static-tracepoint-markers
5962 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
5964 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
5965 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
5966 function, line, address, or marker ID.
5970 Enable and disable observer mode.
5972 set may-write-registers on|off
5973 set may-write-memory on|off
5974 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
5975 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
5976 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
5977 set may-interrupt on|off
5978 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
5979 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
5980 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
5981 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
5982 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
5983 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
5984 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
5986 set record memory-query on|off
5987 show record memory-query
5988 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
5989 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
5994 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
5998 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
5999 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
6000 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
6001 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
6002 GDB using Python' in the manual.
6004 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
6005 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
6006 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
6007 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
6009 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
6010 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
6012 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
6014 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
6016 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
6018 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
6019 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
6020 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
6022 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
6023 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
6024 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
6025 regular breakpoints.
6029 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
6031 * D language support.
6032 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
6035 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
6036 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
6037 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
6038 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
6039 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
6041 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
6042 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
6043 conditions of the form:
6045 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
6047 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
6048 interface mentioned above.
6050 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
6054 ** Namespace Support
6056 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
6057 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
6058 namespace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
6059 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namespace C=A; ) the user can
6060 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
6064 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
6065 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
6070 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
6071 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
6075 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
6080 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
6083 * Multi-program debugging.
6085 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
6086 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
6087 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
6088 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
6089 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
6090 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
6091 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
6092 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
6094 * New tracing features
6096 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
6098 ** Trace state variables
6100 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
6101 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
6102 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
6103 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
6104 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
6105 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
6106 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
6107 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
6108 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
6109 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
6113 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
6114 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
6115 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
6116 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
6117 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
6118 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
6119 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
6120 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
6121 the regular trace command.
6123 ** Disconnected tracing
6125 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
6126 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
6127 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
6128 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
6129 connection is lost unexpectedly.
6133 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
6134 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
6135 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
6136 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
6137 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
6138 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
6141 ** Circular trace buffer
6143 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
6144 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
6145 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
6146 not be available for all target agents.
6151 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
6152 the arguments to be comma-separated.
6155 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
6156 which only declare a variable are not shown.
6159 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
6160 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
6163 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
6164 "set script-extension" (see below).
6166 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
6168 record save [<FILENAME>]
6169 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
6170 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
6172 record restore <FILENAME>
6173 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
6174 earlier time, for replay debugging.
6176 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
6179 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
6180 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
6181 inferior has loaded.
6186 maint info program-spaces
6187 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
6189 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
6190 show remote interrupt-sequence
6191 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
6192 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
6193 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
6194 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
6195 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
6197 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
6198 show remote interrupt-on-connect
6199 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
6200 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
6203 set remotebreak [on | off]
6205 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
6207 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
6208 Create or modify a trace state variable.
6211 List trace state variables and their values.
6213 delete tvariable $NAME ...
6214 Delete one or more trace state variables.
6217 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
6218 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
6220 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
6221 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
6223 * New expression syntax
6225 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
6226 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
6230 set follow-exec-mode new|same
6231 show follow-exec-mode
6232 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
6233 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
6234 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
6236 set default-collect EXPR, ...
6237 show default-collect
6238 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
6239 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
6240 such as registers or a critical global variable.
6242 set disconnected-tracing
6243 show disconnected-tracing
6244 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
6245 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
6248 set circular-trace-buffer
6249 show circular-trace-buffer
6250 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
6251 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
6252 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
6253 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
6255 set script-extension off|soft|strict
6256 show script-extension
6257 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
6258 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
6259 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
6260 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
6262 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
6264 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
6265 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
6266 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
6267 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
6268 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
6269 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
6270 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
6273 * Python API Improvements
6275 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
6276 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
6277 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
6279 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
6280 `is_base_class' attribute.
6282 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
6284 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
6285 evaluate an expression.
6287 * New remote packets
6290 Define a trace state variable.
6293 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
6296 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
6299 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
6302 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
6306 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
6308 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
6309 much more reliable. In particular:
6310 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
6311 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
6312 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
6313 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
6314 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
6315 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
6316 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
6317 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
6318 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
6319 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
6320 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
6321 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
6322 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
6323 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
6324 non-threaded programs.
6326 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
6327 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
6328 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
6331 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
6333 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
6334 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
6335 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
6336 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
6337 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
6339 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
6340 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
6341 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
6342 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
6343 for tracepoint actions.
6345 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
6346 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
6347 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
6349 * Process record and replay
6351 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
6352 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
6353 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
6356 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
6357 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
6358 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
6361 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
6362 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
6365 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
6366 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
6367 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
6368 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
6369 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
6370 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
6371 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
6372 the installation instructions for more information.
6374 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
6375 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
6376 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
6377 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
6379 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
6380 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
6382 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
6383 now complete on file names.
6385 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
6386 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
6387 For instance, consider:
6389 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
6390 # struct example variable;
6393 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
6394 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
6396 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
6397 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
6399 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
6400 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
6403 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
6404 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
6405 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
6407 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
6408 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
6409 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
6410 and simulator targets may also provide them.
6412 * New remote packets
6415 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
6418 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
6419 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
6420 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
6423 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
6424 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
6427 Obtains additional operating system information
6431 Read or write additional signal information.
6433 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
6435 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
6436 packet that permitted the stub to pass a process id was removed.
6437 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
6439 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
6440 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
6442 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
6443 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
6444 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
6446 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
6447 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
6449 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
6451 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
6453 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
6454 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
6456 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote protocol packet now allows passing a
6457 list of section offsets.
6459 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
6460 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
6461 have also been fixed.
6463 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
6464 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
6465 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
6467 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
6470 template<typename T> class C { };
6473 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
6475 ptype C<char const *>
6476 ptype C<char const*>
6477 ptype C<const char *>
6478 ptype C<const char*>
6480 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
6482 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
6483 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
6485 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
6486 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
6487 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
6489 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
6490 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
6492 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
6495 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
6496 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
6498 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
6499 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
6504 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
6505 available is determined at configure time.
6507 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
6509 * Ada tasking support
6511 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
6515 Print the list of Ada tasks.
6517 Print detailed information about task number N.
6519 Print the task number of the current task.
6521 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
6523 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
6524 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
6526 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
6528 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
6529 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
6530 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
6531 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
6532 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
6533 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
6536 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
6537 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
6540 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
6541 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
6542 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
6543 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
6546 * Multi-architecture debugging.
6548 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
6549 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
6550 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
6551 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
6552 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
6554 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
6555 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
6556 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
6557 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
6558 --enable-targets configure option.
6560 * Non-stop mode debugging.
6562 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
6563 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
6564 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
6565 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
6566 section in the user manual for more information.
6568 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
6569 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
6570 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
6571 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
6572 extensions on linux targets.
6574 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
6576 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
6577 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
6578 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
6579 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
6580 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
6581 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
6582 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
6583 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
6584 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
6586 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
6588 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
6590 maint set python print-stack
6591 maint show python print-stack
6592 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
6595 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
6600 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
6604 Show operating system information about processes.
6607 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
6610 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
6613 Detach from inferior number NUM.
6616 Kill inferior number NUM.
6620 set spu stop-on-load
6621 show spu stop-on-load
6622 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
6624 set spu auto-flush-cache
6625 show spu auto-flush-cache
6626 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
6627 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
6629 set sh calling-convention
6630 show sh calling-convention
6631 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
6634 show debug timestamp
6635 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
6637 set disassemble-next-line
6638 show disassemble-next-line
6639 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
6642 set remote noack-packet
6643 show remote noack-packet
6644 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
6645 under "New remote packets."
6647 set remote query-attached-packet
6648 show remote query-attached-packet
6649 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
6651 set remote read-siginfo-object
6652 show remote read-siginfo-object
6653 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
6656 set remote write-siginfo-object
6657 show remote write-siginfo-object
6658 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
6661 set remote reverse-continue
6662 show remote reverse-continue
6663 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
6665 set remote reverse-step
6666 show remote reverse-step
6667 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
6669 set displaced-stepping
6670 show displaced-stepping
6671 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
6672 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
6673 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
6676 show debug displaced
6677 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
6679 maint set internal-error
6680 maint show internal-error
6681 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
6683 maint set internal-warning
6684 maint show internal-warning
6685 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
6690 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
6692 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
6693 show multiple-symbols
6694 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
6695 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
6696 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
6698 set breakpoint always-inserted
6699 show breakpoint always-inserted
6700 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
6701 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
6702 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
6704 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
6705 show arm fallback-mode
6706 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
6708 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
6709 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
6710 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
6711 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
6713 set arm unwind-secure-frames
6714 Enable unwinding from Non-secure to Secure mode on Cortex-M with
6716 This can trigger security exceptions when unwinding exception stacks.
6718 set disable-randomization
6719 show disable-randomization
6720 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
6721 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
6722 multiple debugging sessions.
6726 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
6731 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
6732 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
6733 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
6734 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
6736 set target-wide-charset
6737 show target-wide-charset
6738 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
6739 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
6741 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
6743 set tcp connect-timeout
6744 show tcp connect-timeout
6745 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
6746 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
6747 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
6749 set libthread-db-search-path
6750 show libthread-db-search-path
6751 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
6754 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
6755 show schedule-multiple
6756 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
6757 the current process.
6761 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
6762 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
6763 affecting correctness.
6765 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
6766 show interactive-mode
6767 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
6768 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
6769 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
6770 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
6771 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
6776 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
6777 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
6778 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
6782 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
6783 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
6784 alias for the `fork' command.
6787 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
6788 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
6789 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
6792 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
6793 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
6794 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
6798 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
6799 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
6800 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
6803 * New native configurations
6805 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
6807 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
6811 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
6812 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
6813 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
6816 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
6817 (mingw32ce) debugging.
6823 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
6825 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
6827 * New native configurations
6829 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
6830 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
6834 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
6835 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
6837 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
6839 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
6840 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
6841 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
6842 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
6844 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
6845 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
6847 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
6850 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
6851 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
6852 and in inlined functions.
6854 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
6855 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
6856 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
6858 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
6860 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
6861 registers on PowerPC targets.
6863 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
6864 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
6866 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
6867 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
6869 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
6870 extended-remote mode.
6872 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
6873 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
6874 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
6875 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
6877 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
6878 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
6879 target architectures.
6881 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
6882 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
6883 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
6884 stored in two consecutive float registers.
6886 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
6889 * Improved support for debugging Ada
6890 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
6892 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
6893 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
6894 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
6895 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
6897 - Improved command completion in Ada
6900 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
6905 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
6906 show print frame-arguments
6907 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
6908 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
6913 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
6920 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
6922 * New remote packets
6929 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
6932 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
6936 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
6938 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
6940 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
6941 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
6942 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
6944 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
6945 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
6946 -Bsymbolic linker option.
6948 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
6949 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
6952 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
6953 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
6955 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
6956 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
6958 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
6960 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
6961 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
6962 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
6964 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
6965 automatically displayed as character or string data.
6967 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
6968 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
6971 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
6972 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
6973 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
6975 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
6978 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
6979 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
6980 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
6982 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
6984 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
6986 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
6987 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
6988 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
6990 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
6991 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
6993 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
6994 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
6995 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
6996 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
6997 Windows and SymbianOS).
6999 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
7000 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
7002 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
7003 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
7009 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
7010 when debugging using remote targets.
7012 set mem inaccessible-by-default
7013 show mem inaccessible-by-default
7014 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
7015 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
7016 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
7017 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
7018 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
7020 set breakpoint auto-hw
7021 show breakpoint auto-hw
7022 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
7023 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
7024 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
7025 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
7026 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
7027 including "next" and "finish".
7030 catch exception unhandled
7031 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
7034 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
7038 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
7039 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
7040 an alias to "set sysroot".
7043 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
7044 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
7047 * New native configurations
7049 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
7052 unset tdesc filename
7054 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
7055 not query the target for its built-in description.
7059 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
7060 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
7061 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
7063 * New remote packets
7066 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
7067 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
7069 qXfer:features:read:
7070 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
7075 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
7076 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
7078 qXfer:libraries:read:
7079 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
7080 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
7081 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
7082 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
7086 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
7094 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
7095 i[34567]86-*-netware*
7096 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
7097 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
7099 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
7102 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
7103 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
7112 * Other removed features
7119 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
7126 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
7131 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
7132 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
7137 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
7138 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
7140 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
7142 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
7143 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
7144 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
7145 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
7147 MIPS ".pdr" sections
7149 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
7150 in debugging information.
7154 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
7155 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
7157 set mips stack-arg-size
7158 set mips saved-gpreg-size
7160 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
7162 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
7167 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
7169 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
7170 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
7171 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
7173 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
7174 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
7177 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
7178 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
7180 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
7181 stub provides the required support.
7183 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
7184 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
7189 unset substitute-path
7190 show substitute-path
7191 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
7192 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
7193 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
7194 between compilation and debugging.
7198 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
7199 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
7200 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
7204 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
7206 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
7207 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
7209 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
7211 * New remote packets
7214 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
7215 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
7216 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
7217 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
7221 Fetch an OS auxiliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
7222 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
7224 qXfer:memory-map:read:
7225 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
7226 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
7231 Erase and program a flash memory device.
7233 * Removed remote packets
7236 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
7237 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
7239 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
7243 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
7245 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
7249 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
7250 only if it doesn't already have a value.
7252 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
7254 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
7256 restart <n> Return the program state to a
7257 previously saved state.
7259 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
7261 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
7263 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
7264 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
7266 info forks List forks of the user program that
7267 are available to be debugged.
7269 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
7270 forks of the user program that are
7271 available to be debugged.
7273 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
7274 that are available to be debugged (and
7275 kill the forked process).
7277 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
7278 that are available to be debugged (and
7279 allow the process to continue).
7283 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
7285 * Improved Windows host support
7287 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
7288 native console support, and remote communications using either
7289 network sockets or serial ports.
7291 * Improved Modula-2 language support
7293 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
7294 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
7295 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
7296 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
7297 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
7298 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
7302 The ARM rdi-share module.
7304 The Netware NLM debug server.
7306 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
7308 * New native configurations
7310 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
7311 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
7315 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
7317 * New command line options
7319 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
7320 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
7321 the child (debugged) program exited with.
7322 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
7323 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
7324 specified multiple times and in conjunction
7325 with the --command (-x) option.
7327 * Deprecated commands removed
7329 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
7333 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
7334 othernames set arm disassembler
7335 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
7336 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
7337 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
7340 * New BSD user-level threads support
7342 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
7343 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
7346 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
7347 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
7348 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
7350 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
7351 are not yet supported.
7353 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
7354 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
7356 * REMOVED configurations and files
7358 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
7359 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
7360 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
7362 * New "set print array-indexes" command
7364 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
7365 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
7368 * VAX floating point support
7370 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
7372 * User-defined command support
7374 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
7375 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
7376 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
7378 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
7380 * New command line option
7382 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
7385 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
7387 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
7388 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
7389 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
7390 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
7391 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
7393 * Internationalization
7395 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
7396 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
7397 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
7401 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
7402 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
7403 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
7405 * New native configurations
7407 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
7411 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
7412 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
7414 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
7416 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
7417 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
7418 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
7421 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the registers[]
7422 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
7423 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
7433 powerpc bdm protocol
7435 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
7436 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
7438 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
7440 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
7441 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
7442 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
7443 permanently REMOVED.
7452 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
7454 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
7456 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
7457 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
7460 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
7462 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
7463 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
7464 IRIX long double values).
7468 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
7469 command. This problem has been fixed.
7471 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
7473 * Fix for ``many threads''
7475 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
7476 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
7479 ptrace: No such process.
7480 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
7482 This problem has been fixed.
7484 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
7486 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
7489 * New ``start'' command.
7491 This command runs the program until the beginning of the main procedure.
7493 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
7495 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
7496 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
7497 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
7499 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
7500 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
7501 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
7502 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
7503 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
7504 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
7505 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
7506 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
7507 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
7509 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
7511 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
7512 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
7513 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
7514 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
7515 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
7517 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
7518 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
7519 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
7521 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
7523 * New native configurations
7525 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
7526 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
7527 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
7528 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
7529 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
7530 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
7531 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
7533 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
7535 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
7536 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
7537 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
7538 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
7539 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
7540 work, was also included.
7542 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
7543 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
7553 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
7554 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
7556 * REMOVED configurations and files
7558 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
7559 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
7560 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
7561 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
7562 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
7563 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
7564 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
7565 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
7566 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
7567 sonymips mips-sony-*
7568 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
7570 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
7572 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
7574 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
7575 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
7576 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
7577 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
7580 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
7582 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
7583 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
7584 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
7585 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
7586 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
7587 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
7590 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
7592 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
7594 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
7595 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
7596 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
7598 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
7600 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
7601 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
7603 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
7605 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
7606 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
7607 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
7609 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
7611 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
7612 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
7614 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
7616 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
7617 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
7618 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
7620 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
7622 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
7623 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
7624 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
7626 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
7628 * Removed --with-mmalloc
7630 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
7631 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
7633 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
7635 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
7636 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
7637 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
7638 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
7640 * Revised SPARC target
7642 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
7643 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
7644 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
7645 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
7646 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
7650 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
7651 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
7652 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
7655 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
7657 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
7658 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
7661 * C++ nested types and namespaces
7663 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
7664 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
7665 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
7666 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
7667 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
7668 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
7669 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
7670 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
7671 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
7673 * New native configurations
7675 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
7676 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
7677 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
7678 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
7679 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
7681 * New debugging protocols
7683 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
7685 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
7687 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
7688 and its very obscure effect on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
7689 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
7691 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
7693 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
7694 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
7695 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
7696 permanently REMOVED.
7698 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
7699 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
7700 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
7701 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
7702 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
7703 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
7704 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
7705 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
7706 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
7707 sonymips mips-sony-*
7708 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
7710 * REMOVED configurations and files
7712 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7713 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7714 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7715 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
7716 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7717 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
7718 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
7719 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
7720 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
7721 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
7722 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
7723 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
7724 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
7725 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
7726 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
7727 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
7728 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7730 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
7734 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
7735 integrated into GDB.
7737 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
7739 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
7740 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
7741 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
7744 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
7745 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
7746 DWARF 2 CFI support.
7750 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
7751 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
7752 remote protocol documentation for details.
7754 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
7756 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
7757 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
7758 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
7761 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
7763 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
7764 per-thread variables.
7766 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
7768 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
7769 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
7771 * Separate debug info.
7773 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
7774 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
7775 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
7776 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
7777 and optional debug files.
7779 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
7781 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
7782 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
7785 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
7786 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
7790 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
7791 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
7792 considered "usable".
7794 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
7796 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
7797 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
7800 * GDB supports logging output to a file
7802 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
7803 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
7805 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
7807 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
7808 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
7811 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
7813 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
7814 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
7818 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
7819 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
7820 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
7821 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
7822 data, for more informative profiling results.
7824 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
7826 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
7827 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
7828 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
7830 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
7833 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
7834 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
7835 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
7836 in a subsequent -var-update.
7838 * New native configurations.
7840 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
7842 * Multi-arched targets.
7844 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
7845 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
7847 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
7849 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
7850 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
7851 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
7852 permanently REMOVED.
7854 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
7855 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
7856 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
7857 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
7858 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
7859 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
7860 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
7861 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
7862 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
7863 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
7864 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
7865 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7867 * REMOVED configurations and files
7870 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7871 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7872 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
7873 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
7874 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
7875 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
7877 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
7878 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
7879 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
7880 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7881 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7882 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
7884 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
7886 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
7887 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
7888 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
7889 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
7890 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
7892 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
7894 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
7896 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
7897 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
7898 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
7899 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
7900 shared libs like mad''.
7902 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
7904 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
7905 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
7906 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
7907 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
7909 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
7911 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
7912 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
7915 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
7916 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
7918 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
7919 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
7921 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
7922 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
7923 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
7924 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
7926 * Multi-arched targets.
7928 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
7929 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
7931 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
7932 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
7933 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
7937 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
7940 * New native configurations
7942 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
7943 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
7944 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
7945 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
7947 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
7949 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
7950 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
7951 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
7952 permanently REMOVED.
7954 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
7955 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
7956 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7957 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7958 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7959 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
7960 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
7961 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
7962 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
7963 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
7965 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
7966 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
7968 * OBSOLETE languages
7970 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
7972 * REMOVED configurations and files
7974 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
7975 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
7976 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7977 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7978 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7980 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
7982 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
7984 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
7985 commands. The default is 1024.
7987 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
7989 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
7991 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
7993 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
7994 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
7995 from a file into memory (restore).
7997 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
7999 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
8000 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
8001 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
8003 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
8011 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
8012 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
8013 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
8015 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
8016 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
8017 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
8019 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
8020 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
8021 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
8023 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
8024 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
8025 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
8027 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
8029 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
8031 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
8032 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
8033 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
8034 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
8035 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
8036 (notably embedded) targets.
8038 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
8040 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
8041 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
8042 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
8043 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
8045 * New command line option
8047 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
8049 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
8051 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
8052 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
8053 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
8054 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
8055 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
8056 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
8057 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
8058 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
8059 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
8060 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
8062 * Changes in ARM configurations.
8064 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
8065 configuration is fully multi-arch.
8067 * New native configurations
8069 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
8070 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
8071 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
8072 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
8076 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
8078 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
8080 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
8081 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
8082 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
8083 permanently REMOVED.
8085 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
8086 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
8087 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
8088 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
8089 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
8091 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
8093 * REMOVED configurations and files
8095 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
8097 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
8098 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
8099 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
8100 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
8101 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
8102 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
8103 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
8104 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
8105 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
8106 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
8107 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
8109 * Changes to command line processing
8111 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
8112 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
8114 * Changes to key bindings
8116 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
8118 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
8120 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
8122 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
8125 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
8127 Numerous documentation fixes.
8129 Numerous testsuite fixes.
8131 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
8133 * New native configurations
8135 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
8136 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
8137 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
8138 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
8139 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
8140 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
8144 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
8146 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
8148 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
8150 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
8151 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
8152 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
8153 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
8154 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
8156 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
8157 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
8158 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
8159 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
8160 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
8161 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
8162 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
8163 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
8165 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
8166 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
8168 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
8169 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
8170 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
8171 permanently REMOVED.
8173 * REMOVED configurations and files
8175 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
8176 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
8178 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
8182 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
8184 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
8185 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
8190 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
8192 * The MI enabled by default.
8194 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
8195 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
8196 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
8197 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
8198 which is now deprecated.
8200 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
8202 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
8203 main features are supported:
8205 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
8207 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
8210 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
8212 - a Pascal expression parser.
8214 However, some important features are not yet supported.
8216 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
8218 - there are some problems with boolean types;
8220 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
8221 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
8223 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
8225 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
8227 * Changes in completion.
8229 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
8230 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
8231 users expect at the shell prompt.
8233 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
8234 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
8235 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
8236 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
8237 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
8238 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
8239 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
8241 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
8243 * New platform-independent commands:
8245 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
8246 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
8247 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
8249 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
8251 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
8252 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
8253 many threads as your system allows you to have.
8255 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
8257 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
8258 multi-threaded programs though.
8260 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
8262 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
8264 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
8265 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
8268 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
8270 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
8271 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
8272 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
8273 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
8274 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
8277 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
8278 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
8279 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
8281 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
8283 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
8284 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
8286 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
8287 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
8290 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
8291 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
8292 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
8293 a given linear address.
8295 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
8296 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
8297 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
8299 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
8301 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
8303 * Changes in documentation.
8305 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
8306 Documentation License.
8308 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
8311 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
8313 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
8316 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
8317 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
8318 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
8320 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
8322 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
8323 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
8324 contents of this file.
8328 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
8330 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
8332 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
8334 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
8335 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
8336 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
8337 greater level of detail.
8339 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
8341 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
8342 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
8343 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
8346 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
8348 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
8349 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
8350 machines ``out of the box''.
8352 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
8353 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
8354 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
8355 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
8356 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
8358 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
8359 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
8360 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
8361 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
8362 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
8364 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
8365 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
8368 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
8371 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
8372 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
8373 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
8374 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
8376 * New native configurations
8378 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
8379 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
8383 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
8384 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
8385 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
8386 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
8388 * OBSOLETE configurations
8390 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
8391 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
8393 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
8396 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
8397 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
8398 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
8399 be permanently REMOVED.
8401 * Gould support removed
8403 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
8405 * New features for SVR4
8407 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
8408 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
8409 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
8411 * Many C++ enhancements
8413 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
8414 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
8416 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
8418 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
8419 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
8420 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
8421 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
8423 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
8424 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
8426 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
8428 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
8429 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transferred as 32
8430 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
8432 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
8433 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
8435 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
8437 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
8438 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
8439 include ``set remote P-packet''.
8441 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
8443 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
8444 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
8445 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
8447 * ``apropos'' command added.
8449 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
8450 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
8451 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
8455 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
8456 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
8457 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
8458 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
8459 enabled by configuring with:
8461 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
8463 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
8465 * New native configurations
8467 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
8468 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
8469 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
8473 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
8474 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
8475 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
8477 * OBSOLETE configurations
8479 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
8481 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
8482 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
8483 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
8484 be permanently REMOVED.
8488 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
8489 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
8490 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
8491 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
8492 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
8493 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
8494 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
8499 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
8501 * set extension-language
8503 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
8504 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
8505 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
8506 set extension-language .c c++
8507 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
8508 and their associated languages.
8510 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
8512 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
8513 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
8514 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
8518 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
8519 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
8521 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
8522 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
8524 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
8525 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
8526 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
8527 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
8528 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
8529 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
8530 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
8531 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
8533 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
8534 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
8535 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
8536 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
8540 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
8541 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
8542 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
8543 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
8544 for xdb and dbx commands.
8548 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
8549 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
8550 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
8552 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
8553 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
8554 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
8556 * Debugging across forks
8558 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
8563 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
8564 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
8565 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
8567 * GDB remote protocol additions
8569 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
8570 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
8571 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
8572 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
8574 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
8575 full 64-bit address. The command
8577 set remoteaddresssize 32
8579 can be used to revert to the old behavior. For existing remote stubs
8580 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
8583 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
8584 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
8586 maint packet heythere
8588 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
8589 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
8592 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
8593 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
8594 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
8596 * Tracing can collect general expressions
8598 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
8599 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
8600 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
8602 * mask-address variable for Mips
8604 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
8605 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
8606 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
8608 * Higher serial baud rates
8610 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
8611 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
8612 to achieve all of these rates.)
8616 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
8617 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
8620 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
8622 * New native configurations
8624 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
8625 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
8626 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
8627 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
8628 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
8629 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
8630 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
8634 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
8635 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
8636 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
8637 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
8638 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
8639 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
8640 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
8641 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
8642 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
8643 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
8644 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
8646 * New debugging protocols
8648 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
8649 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
8650 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
8651 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
8652 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
8653 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
8657 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
8658 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
8663 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
8664 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
8666 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
8668 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
8669 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
8670 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
8672 * Live range splitting
8674 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
8675 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
8676 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
8680 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
8681 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
8685 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
8686 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
8687 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
8692 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
8697 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
8698 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
8699 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
8700 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
8701 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
8702 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
8706 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
8707 the symbol at the specified address.
8711 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
8712 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
8713 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
8714 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
8715 file tracepoint.c for more details.
8719 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
8720 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
8721 of most MIPS variants.
8725 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
8726 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
8727 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
8731 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
8732 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
8733 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
8734 the possible architectures.
8736 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
8738 * New native configurations
8740 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
8741 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
8742 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
8743 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
8744 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
8745 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
8749 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
8750 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
8751 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
8752 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
8753 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
8755 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
8759 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
8760 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
8761 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
8762 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
8763 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
8767 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
8769 * Windows 95/NT native
8771 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
8772 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
8773 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
8774 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
8775 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
8777 * dont-repeat command
8779 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
8780 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
8781 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
8782 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
8784 * Send break instead of ^C
8786 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
8787 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
8788 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
8790 * Remote protocol timeout
8792 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
8793 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
8794 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
8796 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
8798 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
8799 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
8800 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
8801 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
8802 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
8804 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
8805 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
8806 automatically on hpux10.
8808 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
8810 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
8812 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
8814 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
8815 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
8816 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
8817 every character. The default value is 1050.
8819 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
8821 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
8822 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
8823 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
8824 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
8825 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
8826 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
8828 * Speedups for remote debugging
8830 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
8831 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
8832 and more efficient S-record downloading.
8834 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
8836 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
8837 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
8839 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
8841 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
8843 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
8844 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
8846 * Remote targets use caching
8848 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
8849 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
8850 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
8851 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
8852 off' turns the data cache off.
8854 * Remote targets may have threads
8856 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
8857 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
8858 gdb/remote.c for details.
8862 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
8863 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
8864 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
8865 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
8866 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
8867 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
8868 sequence is something like
8870 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
8872 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
8876 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
8877 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
8878 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
8879 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
8880 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
8881 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
8882 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
8883 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
8887 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
8888 but does simplify configuration and building.
8892 GDB now supports hpux10.
8894 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
8896 * New native configurations
8898 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
8899 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
8900 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
8901 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
8905 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
8906 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
8907 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
8908 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
8911 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
8913 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
8914 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
8915 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
8916 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
8917 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
8919 * Arguments to user-defined commands
8921 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
8922 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
8925 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
8927 To execute the command use:
8930 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
8931 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
8932 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
8934 * New `if' and `while' commands
8936 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
8937 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
8938 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
8939 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
8940 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
8941 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
8942 if the expression is zero.
8944 * Fortran source language mode
8946 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
8947 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
8948 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
8949 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
8952 * Better HPUX support
8954 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
8955 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
8956 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
8957 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
8958 that behavior do the following before running the program:
8964 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
8965 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
8971 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
8972 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
8975 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
8976 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
8978 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
8980 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
8981 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
8982 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
8983 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
8984 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
8985 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
8987 * New DOS host serial code
8989 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
8990 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
8993 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
8995 * New "complete" command
8997 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
8998 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
9000 * Trailing space optional in prompt
9002 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
9003 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
9005 * Breakpoint hit counts
9007 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
9008 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
9009 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
9010 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
9011 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
9014 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
9016 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
9017 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
9018 arrays actually contain only short strings.
9020 * Shared library breakpoints
9022 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
9023 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
9025 * Hardware watchpoints
9027 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
9028 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
9030 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
9034 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
9035 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
9037 * Improved Irix 5 support
9039 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
9041 * Improved HPPA support
9043 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
9045 * New native configurations
9047 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
9048 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
9049 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
9050 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
9054 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
9055 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
9058 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
9060 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
9061 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
9065 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
9066 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
9068 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
9070 * Irix 5 is now supported
9074 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
9075 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
9076 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
9077 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
9078 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
9081 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
9083 * User visible changes:
9087 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
9088 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
9089 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
9090 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
9091 debugging info for the mips target).
9093 * DEC Alpha native support
9095 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
9096 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
9097 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
9098 Alpha-specific notes.
9100 * Preliminary thread implementation
9102 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
9104 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
9106 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
9107 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
9110 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
9112 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
9113 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
9114 call methods, ...etc.
9116 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
9118 * User visible changes:
9120 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
9121 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
9122 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
9123 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
9125 Filename completion now works.
9127 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
9128 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
9129 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
9131 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
9132 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
9133 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
9134 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
9135 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
9139 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
9140 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
9143 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
9147 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
9148 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
9149 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
9153 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
9154 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
9155 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
9156 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
9157 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
9161 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
9162 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
9163 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
9165 * New targets supported
9167 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
9168 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
9169 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
9170 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
9171 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
9173 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
9174 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
9175 GO32 memory extender.
9177 * New remote protocols
9179 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
9181 * New source languages supported
9183 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
9184 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
9185 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publicly available.
9188 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
9190 * HP Precision Architecture supported
9192 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
9193 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
9194 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
9195 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
9196 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
9197 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
9199 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
9201 * Faster and better demangling
9203 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
9204 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
9205 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
9206 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
9207 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
9208 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
9211 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
9212 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
9213 compiler does not actually implement.
9215 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
9217 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
9218 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
9219 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
9220 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
9221 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
9222 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
9225 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
9226 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
9228 * Improved configure script
9230 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
9231 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
9232 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
9233 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
9235 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
9236 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
9237 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
9238 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
9239 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
9240 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
9242 * Documentation improvements
9244 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
9245 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
9246 before submitting changes.
9248 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
9249 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
9250 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
9251 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
9252 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
9254 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
9255 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
9256 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
9257 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
9258 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
9259 around this problem.
9263 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
9264 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
9265 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
9268 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
9269 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
9271 * New native hosts supported
9273 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
9274 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
9276 * New targets supported
9278 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
9280 * New file formats supported
9282 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
9283 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
9287 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
9289 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
9290 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
9292 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
9293 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
9294 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
9296 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
9297 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
9299 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
9300 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
9301 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
9304 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
9305 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
9306 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
9307 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
9308 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
9310 * Internal improvements
9312 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
9313 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
9315 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
9316 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
9317 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
9318 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
9319 shared code that handles any of them.
9321 * New command line options
9323 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
9327 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
9328 General Public License.
9330 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
9332 * Host/native/target split
9334 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
9335 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
9336 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
9337 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
9338 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
9340 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
9341 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
9342 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
9343 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
9344 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
9345 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
9346 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
9348 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
9349 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
9350 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
9352 * New hosts supported
9354 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
9355 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
9356 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
9358 * New targets supported
9360 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
9361 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
9363 * New native hosts supported
9365 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
9366 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
9367 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
9369 * New file formats supported
9371 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
9372 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
9373 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
9377 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
9378 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
9379 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
9381 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
9383 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
9384 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
9385 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
9386 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
9390 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
9391 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
9392 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
9394 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
9398 The crash that occurred when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
9399 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
9402 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
9403 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
9405 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
9406 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
9407 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
9408 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
9409 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
9410 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
9412 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
9413 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
9414 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
9415 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
9419 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
9420 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
9421 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
9422 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
9423 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
9425 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
9426 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
9427 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
9428 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
9432 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
9433 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
9434 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
9435 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
9436 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
9437 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
9438 each instruction being stepped through.
9440 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
9441 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
9443 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
9444 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
9445 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
9446 processor with a serial port.
9450 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
9451 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
9452 supported, and what files each one uses.
9456 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
9457 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
9458 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
9459 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
9461 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
9462 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
9463 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
9464 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
9468 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
9469 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
9470 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
9471 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
9472 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
9473 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
9475 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
9478 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
9480 * Better support for C++ function names
9482 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
9483 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
9484 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
9485 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
9486 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
9488 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
9489 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
9490 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
9491 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
9492 for the list of formats.
9494 * G++ symbol mangling problem
9496 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
9497 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
9498 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
9499 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compiling gdb/symtab.c. The
9500 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
9501 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
9504 * New 'maintenance' command
9506 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
9507 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
9508 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
9510 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
9511 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
9512 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
9513 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
9514 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
9515 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
9517 The following commands are new:
9519 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
9520 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
9521 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
9523 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
9525 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
9526 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
9527 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
9528 read after argv processing.
9530 * New hosts supported
9532 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
9534 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
9536 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
9537 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
9538 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
9539 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
9540 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
9543 * New targets supported
9545 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
9547 * More smarts about finding #include files
9549 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
9550 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
9551 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
9552 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
9553 the one that contains your sources.
9555 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
9556 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
9557 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
9559 * Interesting infernals change
9561 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
9562 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
9563 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
9564 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
9566 * Bug fixes (of course!)
9568 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
9569 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
9570 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
9572 See the ChangeLog for details.
9574 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
9576 * New machines supported (host and target)
9578 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
9580 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
9582 * New malloc package
9584 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
9585 Mmalloc is capable of handling multiple heaps of memory. It is also
9586 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
9587 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
9588 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
9589 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
9593 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
9594 'help info proc' for details.
9596 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
9598 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
9599 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
9602 * File name changes for MS-DOS
9604 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
9605 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
9606 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
9607 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
9608 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
9609 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
9611 * Cross byte order fixes
9613 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
9614 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
9616 * New -mapped and -readnow options
9618 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
9619 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
9620 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
9621 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
9622 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
9623 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
9624 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
9625 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
9626 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
9627 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
9629 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
9630 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
9631 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
9632 slower, but makes future operations faster.
9634 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
9635 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
9636 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
9639 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
9641 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
9642 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
9643 shared across multiple host platforms.
9645 * longjmp() handling
9647 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
9648 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
9649 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
9650 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
9654 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
9655 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
9660 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
9661 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
9662 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
9664 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
9666 * New machines supported (host and target)
9668 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
9670 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
9671 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
9673 * New machines supported (target)
9675 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
9679 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
9680 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
9681 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
9683 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
9684 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
9685 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
9686 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
9687 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
9690 * New features for SVR4
9692 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
9693 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
9694 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
9696 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
9697 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
9698 it prints the address mappings of the process.
9700 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
9701 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were required (if any).
9703 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
9705 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
9706 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
9707 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
9708 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
9709 same code linked statically.
9713 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
9714 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
9715 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
9716 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicitly
9717 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
9718 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
9722 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
9723 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
9724 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
9727 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
9729 * New machines supported (host and target)
9731 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
9732 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
9733 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
9735 * Almost SCO Unix support
9737 We had hoped to support:
9738 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
9739 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
9740 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
9741 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
9743 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
9745 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
9746 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
9747 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
9748 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
9753 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
9754 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
9755 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
9759 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
9760 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
9761 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
9763 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
9765 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
9766 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
9767 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
9769 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
9770 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
9771 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
9772 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
9775 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
9776 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
9777 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
9778 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
9781 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
9782 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
9785 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
9786 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
9787 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
9790 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
9792 * Improved configuration
9794 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
9795 Porting BFD is simpler.
9799 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
9800 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
9801 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
9802 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
9806 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
9808 * New host supported (not target)
9810 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
9813 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
9815 * Multiple source language support
9817 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
9818 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
9819 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
9820 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
9821 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
9822 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
9826 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
9827 currently under development at the State University of New York at
9828 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
9829 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
9831 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
9832 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
9833 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
9835 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
9836 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
9840 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
9841 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
9842 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
9843 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
9846 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
9848 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
9849 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
9850 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
9851 examining core files.
9855 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
9858 * New machines supported (host and target)
9860 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
9861 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
9862 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
9864 * New hosts supported (not targets)
9866 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
9868 * New targets supported (not hosts)
9870 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
9871 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
9872 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
9874 * New remote interfaces
9880 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
9884 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
9886 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
9887 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
9888 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
9889 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
9890 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
9891 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
9892 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
9893 stub on the target system.
9895 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
9897 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
9898 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
9899 object file types such as a.out and coff.
9901 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
9902 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
9905 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
9907 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
9908 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
9910 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
9911 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
9912 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
9914 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
9915 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
9916 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
9917 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
9919 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
9920 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
9921 it is already running. Default is ON.
9923 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
9924 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
9925 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
9926 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
9929 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
9930 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
9931 or the value of the environment variable
9934 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
9935 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
9938 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
9939 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
9940 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
9942 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
9943 history expansion will be performed on
9944 command line input. The default is OFF.
9946 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
9947 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
9948 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
9950 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
9951 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
9952 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
9955 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
9956 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
9957 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
9960 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
9961 ``set width'' instead.
9963 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
9964 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
9965 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
9966 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
9968 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
9971 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
9974 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
9977 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
9980 * Support for Epoch Environment.
9982 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
9983 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
9984 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
9988 * Support for Shared Libraries
9990 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
9991 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
9992 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
9993 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
9994 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
9995 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
9996 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
9997 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
9999 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
10000 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
10001 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
10003 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
10008 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
10009 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
10010 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
10011 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
10012 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
10013 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
10015 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
10017 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
10019 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
10020 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
10021 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
10024 * C++ multiple inheritance
10026 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
10029 * C++ exception handling
10031 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
10032 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
10033 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
10034 handler's context).
10036 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
10037 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
10038 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
10040 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
10041 current stack frame.
10044 * Minor command changes
10046 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
10047 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
10048 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
10050 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
10051 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
10052 frames without printing.
10054 * New directory command
10056 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
10057 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
10058 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
10059 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
10060 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
10062 * Configuring GDB for compilation
10064 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
10067 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
10068 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
10069 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
10070 where the program that you are debugging will run.