* breakpoint.c (remove_breakpoints): If removing one breakpoint
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
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6* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
7breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
8or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
9the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
10for tracepoint actions.
11
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12* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
13in hex as well as in symbolic form."
14
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15* Process record and replay
16
17 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
18 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
19 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
20 execute commands.
21
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22* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
23step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
24set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
25reverse execution.
26
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27* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
28feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
292.6.28 or later.
30
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31* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
32target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
33char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
34literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
35U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
36`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
37system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
38the installation instructions for more information.
39
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40* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
41remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
42with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
43the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
44
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45* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
46now complete on file names.
47
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48* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
49completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
50For instance, consider:
51
52 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
53 # struct example variable;
54 (gdb) p variable.
55
56If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
57completions will be "f1" and "f2".
58
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59* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
60the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
61
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62* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
63operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
64macros.
65
47a3467a 66* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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67the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
68implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
69
70* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
71registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
72can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
73and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 74
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75* New remote packets
76
77qSearch:memory:
78 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
79
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80QStartNoAckMode
81 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
82 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
83 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
84
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85vKill
86 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
87 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
88
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89qXfer:osdata:read
90 Obtains additional operating system information
91
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92qXfer:siginfo:read
93qXfer:siginfo:write
94 Read or write additional signal information.
95
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96* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
97
98 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
99 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
100 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
101
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102* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
103source+assembly.
104
c055b101 105* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 106DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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107
108* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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109and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
110`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 111
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112* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
113with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
114
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115* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
116
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117* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
118
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119* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
120which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
121
1fddbabb 122* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 123list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 124
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125* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
126conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
127have also been fixed.
128
bfb8797a 129* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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130From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
131are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 132
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133* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
134example, given:
135
136 template<typename T> class C { };
137 C<char const *> c;
138
139GDB will now correctly handle all of:
140
141 ptype C<char const *>
142 ptype C<char const*>
143 ptype C<const char *>
144 ptype C<const char*>
145
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146* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
147
148 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
149 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
150
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151 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
152 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
153 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
154
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155 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
156 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
157
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158 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
159 gdbserver.
160
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161 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
162 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
163
164 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
165 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
166 as appropriate.
167
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168* Python scripting
169
170 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
171 available is determined at configure time.
172
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173 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
174
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175* Ada tasking support
176
177 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
178 been introduced:
179
180 info tasks
181 Print the list of Ada tasks.
182 info task N
183 Print detailed information about task number N.
184 task
185 Print the task number of the current task.
186 task N
187 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
188
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189* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
190add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
191
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192* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
193
194 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
195 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
196 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
197 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
198 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
199 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
200 below.
201
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202* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
203"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
204information.
205
d7713ae0 206* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 207
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208find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
209 val1 [, val2, ...]
210 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
211
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212maint set python print-stack
213maint show python print-stack
214 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
215
216python [CODE]
217 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
218
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219macro define
220macro list
221macro undef
222 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
223 interactively.
224
225info os processes
226 Show operating system information about processes.
227
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228info inferiors
229 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
230
231inferior NUM
232 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
233
234detach inferior NUM
235 Detach from inferior number NUM.
236
237kill inferior NUM
238 Kill inferior number NUM.
239
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240* New options
241
242set sh calling-convention
243show sh calling-convention
244 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
245
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246set print symbol-loading
247show print symbol-loading
248 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
249
e0a3ce09 250set debug timestamp
75feb17d 251show debug timestamp
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252 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
253
254set disassemble-next-line
255show disassemble-next-line
256 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
257 the debuggee stops.
258
259set remote noack-packet
260show remote noack-packet
261 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
262 under "New remote packets."
263
264set remote query-attached-packet
265show remote query-attached-packet
266 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
267
268set remote read-siginfo-object
269show remote read-siginfo-object
270 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
271 packet.
272
273set remote write-siginfo-object
274show remote write-siginfo-object
275 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
276 packet.
277
278set displaced-stepping
279show displaced-stepping
280 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
281 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
282 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
283
284set debug displaced
285show debug displaced
286 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
287
288maint set internal-error
289maint show internal-error
290 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
291
292maint set internal-warning
293maint show internal-warning
294 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 295
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296set exec-wrapper
297show exec-wrapper
298unset exec-wrapper
299 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 300
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301set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
302show multiple-symbols
303 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
304 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
305 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
306
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307set breakpoint always-inserted
308show breakpoint always-inserted
309 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
310 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
311 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
312
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313set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
314show arm fallback-mode
315set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
316show arm force-mode
317 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
318 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
319 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
320 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
321
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322set disable-randomization
323show disable-randomization
324 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
325 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
326 multiple debugging sessions.
327
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328set non-stop
329show non-stop
330 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
331 a breakpoint.
332
b3eb342c 333set target-async
d7713ae0 334show target-async
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335 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
336 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
337 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
338 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
339
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340set target-wide-charset
341show target-wide-charset
342 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
343 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
344
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345set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
346show tcp auto-retry
347set tcp connect-timeout
348show tcp connect-timeout
349 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
350 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
351 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
352
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353set libthread-db-search-path
354show libthread-db-search-path
355 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
356 libthread_db.
357
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358set schedule-multiple (on|off)
359show schedule-multiple
360 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
361 the current process.
362
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363* Removed commands
364
365info forks
366 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
367 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
368 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
369 command.
370
371fork NUM
372 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
373 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
374 alias for the `fork' command.
375
376process PID
377 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
378 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
379 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
380
381delete fork NUM
382 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
383 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
384 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
385 fork' command.
386
387detach fork NUM
388 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
389 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
390 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
391 fork' command.
392
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393* New native configurations
394
395x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
396
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397x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
398
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399* New targets
400
c28c63d8 401Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 402x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 403x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
75a2d5e7 404
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405* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
406 (mingw32ce) debugging.
407
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408* Removed commands
409
410catch load
411catch unload
412 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
413
75feb17d 414*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 415
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416* New native configurations
417
418NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 419Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
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420
421* New targets
422
423NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 424Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 425
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426* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
427
428 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
429 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
430 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
431 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
432
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433* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
434(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
435
fe6fbf8b 436* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 437is resolved.
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438
439* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
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440including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
441and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 442
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443* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
444accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
445more than one contiguous range of addresses.
446
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447* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
448
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449* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
450registers on PowerPC targets.
451
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452* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
453targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
454
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455* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
456commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
457
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458* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
459extended-remote mode.
460
24a836bd 461* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
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462The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
463error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
464The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 465
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466* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
467building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
468target architectures.
469
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470* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
471Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
472now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
473stored in two consecutive float registers.
474
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475* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
476breakpoints now.
477
b93b6ca7 478* Improved support for debugging Ada
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479Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
480include:
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481 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
482 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
483 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
484 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
485 of an assignment
486 - Improved command completion in Ada
487 - Several bug fixes
488
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489* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
490process.
491
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492* New commands
493
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494set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
495show print frame-arguments
496 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
497 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
498
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499remote put
500remote get
501remote delete
502 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
503
504* New MI commands
505
506-target-file-put
507-target-file-get
508-target-file-delete
509 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
510
511* New remote packets
512
513vFile:open:
514vFile:close:
515vFile:pread:
516vFile:pwrite:
517vFile:unlink:
518 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 519
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520vAttach
521 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
522 mode.
523
524vRun
525 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
526
8d5f9c6f 527*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 528
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529* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
530bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
531Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
532
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533* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
534symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
535-Bsymbolic linker option.
536
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537* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
538recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
539is not supported.
540
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541* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
542frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
543
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544* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
54532-bit or 64-bit register values.
546
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547* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
548
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549* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
550target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
551a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
552
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553* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
554automatically displayed as character or string data.
555
556* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
557arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
558as strings.
e1f48ead 559
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560* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
561for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 562only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 563
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564* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
565iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 566
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567* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
568ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
569has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
570
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571* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
572
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573* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
574
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575* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
576layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
577segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
578
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579* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
580immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
581
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582* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
583"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
584packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
585where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
586Windows and SymbianOS).
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587
588* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
589(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
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590
591* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
592according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 593
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594* New commands
595
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596set remoteflow
597show remoteflow
598 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
599 when debugging using remote targets.
600
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601set mem inaccessible-by-default
602show mem inaccessible-by-default
603 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
604 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
605 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
606 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
607 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
608
609set breakpoint auto-hw
610show breakpoint auto-hw
611 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
612 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
613 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
614 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
615 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
616 including "next" and "finish".
617
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618catch exception
619catch exception unhandled
620 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
621
622catch assert
623 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
624
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625set sysroot
626show sysroot
627 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
628 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
629 an alias to "set sysroot".
630
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631info spu
632 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
633 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
634 architecture.
635
bd372731
MK
636* New native configurations
637
638OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
639
23181151
DJ
640set tdesc filename
641unset tdesc filename
642show tdesc filename
643 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
644 not query the target for its built-in description.
645
c9bb8148
DJ
646* New targets
647
54fe9172 648OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 649MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 650Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 651
6dd09645
JB
652* New remote packets
653
654QPassSignals:
655 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
656 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
657
23181151
DJ
658qXfer:features:read:
659 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
660 features.
6dd09645 661
83cc5c53
UW
662qXfer:spu:read:
663qXfer:spu:write:
664 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
665 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
666
cfa9d6d9
DJ
667qXfer:libraries:read:
668 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
669 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
670 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
671 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
672
483367ee
DJ
673* Removed targets
674
675Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
676
d08950c4
UW
677alpha*-*-osf1*
678alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 679d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
680hppa*-*-hiux*
681i[34567]86-ncr-*
682i[34567]86-*-dgux*
683i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
684i[34567]86-*-netware*
685i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
686i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
687i[34567]86-*-sco*
688i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
689i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
690i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
691i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
692i[34567]86-*-unixware*
693i[34567]86-*-sysv*
694i[34567]86-*-isc*
695m68*-cisco*-*
696m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 697mips*-*-pe
483367ee 698rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 699sh*-*-pe
483367ee 700
7ce59000
DJ
701* Other removed features
702
703target abug
704target cpu32bug
705target est
706target rom68k
707
708 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
709
ea35711c
DJ
710target hms
711target e7000
712target sh3
713target sh3e
714
715 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
716 H8/300.
717
718target ocd
719
720 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
721 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
722 interfaces.
723
7ce59000
DJ
724DWARF 1 support
725
726 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
727 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
728
54d61198
DJ
729Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
730
731 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
732 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
733 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
734 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
735
ea35711c
DJ
736MIPS ".pdr" sections
737
738 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
739 in debugging information.
740
741Scheme support
742
743 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
744 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
745
1a69e1e4
DJ
746set mips stack-arg-size
747set mips saved-gpreg-size
748
749 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
750
6dd09645 751*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 752
ca3bf3bd
DJ
753* New targets
754
755Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 756Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 757
6aec2e11
DJ
758* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
759(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
760running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
761
762* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
763Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
764supported.
765
17218d91
DJ
766* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
767broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
768
9ebce043
DJ
769* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
770stub provides the required support.
771
7d3d3ece
DJ
772* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
773longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
774
4f8253f3
JB
775* New commands
776
777set substitute-path
778unset substitute-path
779show substitute-path
780 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
781 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
782 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
783 between compilation and debugging.
784
9fa66fd7
AS
785set trace-commands
786show trace-commands
787 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
788 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
789 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
790
1f5befc1
DJ
791* REMOVED features
792
793The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
794
2ec3381a
DJ
795Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
796an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
797
3d00d119
DJ
798The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
799
be2a5f71
DJ
800* New remote packets
801
802qSupported:
803 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
804 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
805 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
806 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
807 target.
808
0876f84a
DJ
809qXfer:auxv:read:
810 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
811 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
812
9ebce043
DJ
813qXfer:memory-map:read:
814 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
815 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
816
817vFlashErase:
818vFlashWrite:
819vFlashDone:
820 Erase and program a flash memory device.
821
0876f84a
DJ
822* Removed remote packets
823
824qPart:auxv:read:
825 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
826 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
827
e374b601 828*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 829
96309189
MS
830* New targets
831
832Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
833
834Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
835
53e5f3cf
AS
836* New commands
837
838init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
839 only if it doesn't already have a value.
840
ac264b3b
MS
841The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
842
843checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
844
845restart <n> Return the program state to a
846 previously saved state.
847
848info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
849
850delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
851
852set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
853 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
854
855info forks List forks of the user program that
856 are available to be debugged.
857
858fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
859 forks of the user program that are
860 available to be debugged.
861
862delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
863 that are available to be debugged (and
864 kill the forked process).
865
866detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
867 that are available to be debugged (and
868 allow the process to continue).
869
3950dc3f
NS
870* New architecture
871
872Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
873
0ea3f30e
DJ
874* Improved Windows host support
875
876GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
877native console support, and remote communications using either
878network sockets or serial ports.
879
f79daebb
GM
880* Improved Modula-2 language support
881
882GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
883basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
884pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
885printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
886written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
887GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
888
acab6ab2
MM
889* REMOVED features
890
891The ARM rdi-share module.
892
f4267320
DJ
893The Netware NLM debug server.
894
53e5f3cf 895*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 896
e0ecbda1
MK
897* New native configurations
898
02a677ac 899OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
900OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
901
d64a6579
KB
902* New targets
903
904Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
905
b33a6190
AS
906* New command line options
907
908--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
909--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
910 the child (debugged) program exited with.
911--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
912 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
913 specified multiple times and in conjunction
914 with the --command (-x) option.
915
11dced61
AC
916* Deprecated commands removed
917
918The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
919removed:
920
921 Command Replacement
922 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
923 othernames set arm disassembler
924 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
925 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
926 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
927 regs info registers
928
6fe85783
MK
929* New BSD user-level threads support
930
931It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
932library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
933configurations are:
934
935FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
936FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
937OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
938
939Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
940are not yet supported.
941
5260ca71
MS
942* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
943(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
944
e84ecc99
AC
945* REMOVED configurations and files
946
947VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 948Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 949National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 950
31e35378
JB
951* New "set print array-indexes" command
952
953After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
954when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
955behavior.
956
e85e5c83
MK
957* VAX floating point support
958
959GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
960
d91e9901
AS
961* User-defined command support
962
963In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
964to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
965section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
966
f2cb65ca
MC
967*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
968
f47b1503
AS
969* New command line option
970
971GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
972debugging.
973
f2cb65ca
MC
974* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
975
976GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
977information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
978by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
979proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
980to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 981
d08c0230
AC
982* Internationalization
983
984When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
985internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
986continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
987
117ea3cf
PH
988* Ada
989
990Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
991implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
992into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
993
d08c0230
AC
994* New native configurations
995
996GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
997
998* Remote 'p' packet
999
1000GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1001packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1002
1003* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1004
1005GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1006The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1007features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1008i386 application).
1009
1010GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1011compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1012continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1013configurations:
1014
1015hppa-*-hpux
1016ia64-*-aix
1017mips-*-irix*
1018*-*-lynx
1019mips-*-linux-gnu
1020sds protocol
1021xdr protocol
1022powerpc bdm protocol
1023
1024Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1025made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1026
1027* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1028
1029Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1030been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1031configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1032permanently REMOVED.
1033
1034h8300-*-*
1035mcore-*-*
1036mn10300-*-*
1037ns32k-*-*
1038sh64-*-*
1039v850-*-*
1040
ebb7c577
AC
1041*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1042
1043* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1044
1045When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1046heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1047been fixed.
1048
1049* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1050
1051When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1052fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1053IRIX long double values).
1054
1055* VAX and "next"
1056
1057A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1058command. This problem has been fixed.
1059
860660cb 1060*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1061
0dea2468
AC
1062* Fix for ``many threads''
1063
1064On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1065rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1066error message:
1067
1068 ptrace: No such process.
1069 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1070
1071This problem has been fixed.
1072
2c07db7a
AC
1073* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1074
1075Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1076GDB to dump core).
1077
c23968a2
JB
1078* New ``start'' command.
1079
1080This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1081
71009278
MK
1082* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1083
1084Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1085live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1086platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1087
1088FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1089FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1090NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1091NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1092NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1093OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1094OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1095OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1096OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1097
3c0b7db2
AC
1098* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1099
1100Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1101These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1102of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1103call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1104signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1105
73cc75f3
AC
1106Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1107features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1108include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1109
7243600a
BF
1110* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1111
6f606e1c
MK
1112* New native configurations
1113
97dc871c 1114GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1115OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1116OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1117OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1118OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1119NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1120OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1121
a1b461bf
AC
1122* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1123
1124GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1125The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1126including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1127migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1128compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1129work, was also included.
1130
1131GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1132module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1133
1134h8300-*-*
1135mcore-*-*
1136mn10300-*-*
1137ns32k-*-*
1138sh64-*-*
1139v850-*-*
1140xstormy16-*-*
1141
1142Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1143made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1144
3c7012f5
AC
1145* REMOVED configurations and files
1146
1147Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1148Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1149Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1150Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1151Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1152AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1153Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1154decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1155riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1156sonymips mips-sony-*
1157sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1158
e5fe55f7
AC
1159*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1160
1161* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1162
1163The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1164GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1165command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1166program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1167with GDB".
1168
1169* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1170
1171Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1172libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1173cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1174GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1175shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1176the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1177are created.
1178
1179Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1180
1181* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1182
1183The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1184non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1185compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1186
1187* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1188
1189Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1190wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1191
1192* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1193
1194The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1195permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1196systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1197
1198* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1199
1200Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1201has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1202
1203* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1204
1205GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1206its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1207panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1208
1209* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1210
1211When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1212by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1213not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1214
faae5abe 1215*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1216
9175c9a3
MC
1217* Removed --with-mmalloc
1218
1219Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1220conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1221
3cc87ec0
MK
1222* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1223
1224The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1225the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1226and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1227you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1228
f0424ef6
MK
1229* Revised SPARC target
1230
1231The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1232FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1233support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1234from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1235(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1236
59659be2
ILT
1237* New C++ demangler
1238
1239GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1240names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1241with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1242programs.
1243
9e08b29b
DJ
1244* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1245
1246GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1247arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1248encountered these.
1249
8dfe8985
DC
1250* C++ nested types and namespaces
1251
1252GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1253improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1254is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1255Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1256namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1257"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1258frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1259if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1260GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1261
cced5e27
MK
1262* New native configurations
1263
1264NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1265OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1266OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1267OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1268OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1269
b4b4b794
KI
1270* New debugging protocols
1271
1272M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1273
7989c619
AC
1274* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1275
1276The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1277and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1278tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1279
5994185b
AC
1280* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1281
1282Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1283been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1284configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1285permanently REMOVED.
1286
1287Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1288Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1289Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1290Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1291Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1292AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1293Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1294decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1295riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1296sonymips mips-sony-*
1297sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1298
0ddabb4c
AC
1299* REMOVED configurations and files
1300
1301SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1302SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1303Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1304Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1305H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1306HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1307HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1308HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1309PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1310386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1311Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1312 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1313 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1314SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1315SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1316Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1317Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1318
c7f1390e
DJ
1319*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1320
1fe43d45
AC
1321* Objective-C
1322
1323Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1324integrated into GDB.
1325
e6beb428
AC
1326* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1327
1328DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1329information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1330By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1331backtraces.
1332
1333The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1334have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1335DWARF 2 CFI support.
1336
1337* Hosted file I/O.
1338
1339GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1340file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1341remote protocol documentation for details.
1342
1343* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1344
1345All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1346architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1347to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1348ppc32 on ppc64).
1349
1350* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1351
1352GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1353per-thread variables.
1354
1355* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1356
1357GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1358GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1359
1360* Separate debug info.
1361
1362GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1363automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1364of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1365system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1366and optional debug files.
1367
1368* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1369
1370DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1371describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1372debugger.
1373
1374GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1375for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1376
1377* Java
1378
1379A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1380Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1381considered "useable".
1382
85f8f974
DJ
1383* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1384
1385The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1386commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1387kernel.
1388
0fac0b41
DJ
1389* GDB supports logging output to a file
1390
1391There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1392used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1393
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1394* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1395
1396The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1397disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1398command.
1399
e286caf2 1400* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1401
1402The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1403registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1404
d28f9cdf
DJ
1405* Profiling support
1406
1407A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1408be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1409session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1410"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1411data, for more informative profiling results.
1412
da0f9dcd
AC
1413* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1414
1415The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1416option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1417"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1418
1419Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1420removed.
1421
fb9b6b35
JJ
1422Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1423Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1424Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1425 in a subsequent -var-update.
1426
954a4db8
MK
1427* New native configurations.
1428
1429FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1430
6760f9e6
JB
1431* Multi-arched targets.
1432
b4263afa 1433HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1434Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1435
1b831c93
AC
1436* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1437
1438Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1439been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1440configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1441permanently REMOVED.
1442
8b0e5691 1443Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1444Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1445H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1446HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1447HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1448HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1449PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1450Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1451 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1452 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1453Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1454Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1455
5835abe7
NC
1456* REMOVED configurations and files
1457
1458V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1459Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1460IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1461i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1462i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1463i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1464HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1465 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1466 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1467Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1468Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1469Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1470OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1471I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1472
a094c6fb
AC
1473* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1474
1475The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1476the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1477context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1478address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1479The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1480
299ffc64 1481*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1482
46248966
AC
1483* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1484
1485When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1486`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1487in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1488library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1489shared libs like mad''.
1490
b9d14705 1491* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1492
b9d14705
DJ
1493Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1494the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1495arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1496powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1497
e0e9281e
JB
1498* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1499
1500GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1501and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1502they expand.
1503
dd73b9bb
AC
1504The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1505invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1506
1507The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1508macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1509
e0e9281e
JB
1510Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1511information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1512your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1513information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1514
2250ee0c
CV
1515* Multi-arched targets.
1516
6e3ba3b8
JT
1517DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1518DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1519NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1520National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1521Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1522Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1523
cd9bfe15 1524* New targets.
e33ce519 1525
456f8b9d
DB
1526Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1527
e33ce519 1528
da8ca43d
JT
1529* New native configurations
1530
1531Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1532SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1533MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1534UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1535
cd9bfe15
AC
1536* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1537
1538Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1539been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1540configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1541permanently REMOVED.
1542
92eb23c5 1543Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1544OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1545IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1546Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1547Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1548Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1549i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1550i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1551i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1552HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1553 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1554 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1555I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1556
db034ac5
AC
1557* OBSOLETE languages
1558
1559CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1560
cd9bfe15
AC
1561* REMOVED configurations and files
1562
1563AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1564A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1565AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1566AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1567AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1568
1569testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1570
20f01a46
DH
1571* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1572
1573This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1574commands. The default is 1024.
1575
a5941fbf
MK
1576* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1577
1578Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1579
89743e04
MS
1580* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1581
1582These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1583to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1584from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1585
9fb14e79
JB
1586* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1587
1588The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1589including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1590of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1591
2037aebb
AC
1592*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1593
1594* New targets.
1595
1596Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1597
1598* Bug fixes
1599
1600gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1601mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1602Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1603
1604gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1605dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1606Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1607
1608Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1609Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1610By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1611
1612i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1613avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1614By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1615
37057839 1616*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1617
1a703748
MS
1618* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1619
1620This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1621really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1622In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1623target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1624This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1625(notably embedded) targets.
1626
cefd4ef5
MS
1627* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1628
55241689
AC
1629This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1630process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1631GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1632hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1633
352ed7b4
MS
1634* New command line option
1635
1636GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1637
1638* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1639
1640There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1641command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1642a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1643be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1644open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1645issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1646a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1647it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1648GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1649is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1650
fe419ffc
RE
1651* Changes in ARM configurations.
1652
1653Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1654configuration is fully multi-arch.
1655
eb7cedd9
MK
1656* New native configurations
1657
fe419ffc 1658ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1659x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1660AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1661Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1662
c9f63e6b
CV
1663* New targets
1664
1665Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1666
9b4ff276
AC
1667* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1668
1669Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1670been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1671configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1672permanently REMOVED.
1673
1674AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1675A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1676AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1677AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1678AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1679
b4ceaee6 1680testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1681
e2caac18
AC
1682* REMOVED configurations and files
1683
1684TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1685WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1686PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1687PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1688PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1689Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1690Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1691 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1692SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1693Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1694Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1695ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1696Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1697
c2a727fa
TT
1698* Changes to command line processing
1699
1700The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1701for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1702
467d8519
TT
1703* Changes to key bindings
1704
1705There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1706
7072a954
AC
1707*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1708
1709Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1710
1711Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1712corrupted.
1713
1714Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1715
1716Numerous documentation fixes.
1717
1718Numerous testsuite fixes.
1719
34f47bc4 1720*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1721
1722* New native configurations
1723
1724Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1725x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1726MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1727MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1728ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1729s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1730
bf64bfd6
AC
1731* New targets
1732
def90278 1733Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1734CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1735UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1736
17e78a56 1737* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1738
1739x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1740Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1741Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1742 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1743TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1744WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1745Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1746PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1747PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1748PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1749SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1750Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1751ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1752Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1753
17e78a56
AC
1754stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1755kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1756
7fcca85b
AC
1757Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1758been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1759configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1760permanently REMOVED.
1761
a196c81c 1762* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1763
1764Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1765Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1766Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1767ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1768Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1769ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1770
6d6b80e5 1771* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1772
6d6b80e5 1773GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1774sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1775present.
1776
bf64bfd6
AC
1777* Other news:
1778
e23194cb
EZ
1779* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1780
1781* The MI enabled by default.
1782
1783The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1784revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1785engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1786using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1787which is now deprecated.
1788
1789* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1790
1791GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1792main features are supported:
1793
1794 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1795
1796 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1797 extension;
1798
1799 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1800
1801 - a Pascal expression parser.
1802
1803However, some important features are not yet supported.
1804
1805 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1806
1807 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1808
1809 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1810 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1811
1812 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1813
1814 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1815
1816* Changes in completion.
1817
1818Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1819to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1820users expect at the shell prompt.
1821
1822Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1823`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1824program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1825files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1826be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1827considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1828name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1829
1830`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1831
1832* New platform-independent commands:
1833
1834It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1835hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1836documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1837
1838* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1839
d7275149
MK
1840Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1841revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1842many threads as your system allows you to have.
1843
e23194cb
EZ
1844Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1845
d7275149
MK
1846Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1847multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1848
1849* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1850
1851Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1852
e23194cb
EZ
1853GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1854debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1855supported.)
1856
1857* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1858
1859Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1860breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1861implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1862put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1863and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1864registers.
1865
1866The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1867debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1868watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1869
1870* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1871
1872New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1873the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1874
1875New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1876display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1877IDT.
1878
1879New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1880from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1881New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1882a given linear address.
1883
1884GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1885program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1886which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1887
1888DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1889
6c56c069
EZ
1890It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1891
e23194cb
EZ
1892* Changes in documentation.
1893
1894All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1895Documentation License.
1896
1897Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1898manual.
1899
1900TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1901
1902Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1903manual.
1904
1905The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1906documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1907hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1908
5d6640b1
AC
1909* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1910
1911The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1912``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1913contents of this file.
1914
1a1d8446
AC
1915* gdba.el deleted
1916
1917GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1918
9debab2f 1919*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1920
c63ce875
EZ
1921* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1922
1923Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1924programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1925displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1926greater level of detail.
1927
1928* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1929
1930It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1931bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1932on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1933written.
1934
1935* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1936
1937The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1938necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1939machines ``out of the box''.
1940
1941The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1942possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1943signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1944would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1945interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1946
1947It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1948standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1949even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1950and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1951terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1952
1953The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1954enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1955also works.
1956
1957DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1958GDB.
1959
1960It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1961directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1962times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1963breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1964
ed9a39eb
JM
1965* New native configurations
1966
1967ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1968PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1969
7a292a7a
SS
1970* New targets
1971
96baa820 1972Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1973x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1974PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1975TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1976
085dd6e6
JM
1977* OBSOLETE configurations
1978
1979Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1980Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1981Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1982ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1983Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1984
9debab2f
AC
1985Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1986but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1987these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1988be permanently REMOVED.
1989
5330533d
SS
1990* Gould support removed
1991
1992Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1993
bc9e5bbf
AC
1994* New features for SVR4
1995
1996On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1997without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1998load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1999
2000* Many C++ enhancements
2001
2002C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2003in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2004
adf40b2e
JM
2005* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2006
2007A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2008sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2009with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2010``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2011
2012 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2013 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2014
43e526b9
JM
2015* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2016
2017A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2018expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2019instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2020
2021The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2022added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2023
96baa820
JM
2024* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2025
2026The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2027``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2028include ``set remote P-packet''.
2029
11cf8741
JM
2030* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2031
2032The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2033accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2034``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2035
7876dd43
DB
2036* ``apropos'' command added.
2037
2038The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2039documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2040try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2041
bc9e5bbf
AC
2042* New MI interface
2043
2044A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2045interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2046process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2047"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2048enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2049
2050 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2051
c906108c
SS
2052*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2053
2054* New native configurations
2055
2056HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2057HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2058M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2059
2060* New targets
2061
2062Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2063Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2064Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2065
2066* OBSOLETE configurations
2067
2068Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2069
2070Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2071but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2072these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2073be permanently REMOVED.
2074
2075* ANSI/ISO C
2076
2077As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2078buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2079containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2080use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2081available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2082configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2083information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2084already.
2085
2086* Readline 2.2
2087
2088GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2089
2090* set extension-language
2091
2092You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2093languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2094you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2095 set extension-language .c c++
2096The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2097and their associated languages.
2098
2099* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2100
2101When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2102you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2103PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2104
2105 set processor NAME
2106
2107sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2108following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2109
2110 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2111 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2112 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2113 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2114 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2115 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2116 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2117 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2118 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2119 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2120 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2121
2122At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2123special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2124registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2125only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2126
2127* HP-UX support
2128
2129Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2130more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2131library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2132support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2133for xdb and dbx commands.
2134
2135* Catchpoints
2136
2137HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2138generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2139to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2140
2141This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2142argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2143output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2144
2145* Debugging across forks
2146
2147On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2148in the inferior.
2149
2150* TUI
2151
2152HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2153it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2154configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2155
2156* GDB remote protocol additions
2157
2158A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2159Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2160fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2161allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2162
2163For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2164full 64-bit address. The command
2165
2166 set remoteaddresssize 32
2167
2168can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2169the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2170will be discarded.
2171
2172In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2173command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2174
2175 maint packet heythere
2176
2177sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2178disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2179time.
2180
2181The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2182target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2183downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2184
2185* Tracing can collect general expressions
2186
2187You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2188further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2189doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2190
2191* mask-address variable for Mips
2192
2193For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2194a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2195of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2196
2197* Higher serial baud rates
2198
2199GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2200230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2201to achieve all of these rates.)
2202
2203* i960 simulator
2204
2205The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2206builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2207
2208
2209*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2210
2211* New native configurations
2212
2213Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2214Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2215Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2216PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2217PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2218Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2219Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2220
2221* New targets
2222
2223Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2224Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2225Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2226Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2227MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2228MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2229MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2230Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2231Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2232Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2233NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2234
2235* New debugging protocols
2236
2237ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2238M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2239DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2240PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2241PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2242Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2243
2244* DWARF 2
2245
2246All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2247format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2248information.
2249
2250* Java frontend
2251
2252GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2253only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2254
2255* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2256
2257For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2258loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2259locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2260
2261* Live range splitting
2262
2263GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2264range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2265more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2266
2267* Hurd support
2268
2269GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2270updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2271
2272* ARM Thumb support
2273
2274GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2275instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2276instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2277accordingly.
2278
2279* MIPS16 support
2280
2281GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2282instruction set.
2283
2284* Overlay support
2285
2286GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2287linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2288will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2289control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2290additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2291in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2292
2293* info symbol
2294
2295The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2296the symbol at the specified address.
2297
2298* Trace support
2299
2300The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2301asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2302extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2303includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2304file tracepoint.c for more details.
2305
2306* MIPS simulator
2307
2308Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2309by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2310of most MIPS variants.
2311
2312* Sparc simulator
2313
2314Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2315by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2316Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2317
2318* set architecture
2319
2320For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2321basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2322architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2323the possible architectures.
2324
2325*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2326
2327* New native configurations
2328
2329Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2330M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2331PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2332PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2333PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2334RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2335
2336* New targets
2337
2338ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2339I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2340MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2341MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2342PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2343Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2344Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2345
2346* PowerPC simulator
2347
2348The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2349contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2350PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2351basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2352performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2353
2354* Solaris 2.5
2355
2356GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2357
2358* Windows 95/NT native
2359
2360GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2361To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2362which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2363Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2364ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2365
2366* dont-repeat command
2367
2368If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2369command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2370useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2371extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2372
2373* Send break instead of ^C
2374
2375The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2376rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2377GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2378
2379* Remote protocol timeout
2380
2381The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2382that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2383to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2384
2385* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2386
2387By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2388loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2389stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2390when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2391in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2392
2393Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2394/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2395automatically on hpux10.
2396
2397* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2398
2399Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2400
2401* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2402
2403When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2404may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2405the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2406every character. The default value is 1050.
2407
2408* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2409
2410If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2411a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2412replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2413details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2414remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2415to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2416
2417* Speedups for remote debugging
2418
2419GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2420the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2421and more efficient S-record downloading.
2422
2423* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2424
2425GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2426Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2427
2428*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2429
2430* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2431
2432The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2433can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2434
2435* Remote targets use caching
2436
2437Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2438remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2439it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2440debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2441off' turns the the data cache off.
2442
2443* Remote targets may have threads
2444
2445The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2446in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2447gdb/remote.c for details.
2448
2449* NetROM support
2450
2451If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2452support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2453acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2454write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2455support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2456another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2457sequence is something like
2458
2459 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2460 load <prog>
2461 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2462
2463* Macintosh host
2464
2465GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2466may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2467it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2468available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2469device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2470directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2471scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2472mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2473
2474* Autoconf
2475
2476GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2477but does simplify configuration and building.
2478
2479* hpux10
2480
2481GDB now supports hpux10.
2482
2483*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2484
2485* New native configurations
2486
2487x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2488x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2489NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2490Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2491
2492* New targets
2493
2494A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2495HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2496CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2497PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2498WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2499
2500* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2501
2502GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2503possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2504filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2505the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2506if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2507
2508* Arguments to user-defined commands
2509
2510User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2511Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2512trivial example:
2513define adder
2514 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2515
2516To execute the command use:
2517adder 1 2 3
2518
2519Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2520Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2521use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2522
2523* New `if' and `while' commands
2524
2525This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2526commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2527expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2528execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2529terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2530`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2531if the expression is zero.
2532
2533* Fortran source language mode
2534
2535GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2536Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2537variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2538with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2539Fortran compilers.
2540
2541* Better HPUX support
2542
2543Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2544running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2545processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2546for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2547that behavior do the following before running the program:
2548
2549 adb -w a.out
2550 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2551 control-d
2552
2553This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2554To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2555
2556 adb -w a.out
2557 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2558 control-d
2559
2560You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2561the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2562external linkage.
2563
2564GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2565HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2566
2567* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2568
2569You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2570commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2571current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2572"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2573associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2574configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2575
2576* New DOS host serial code
2577
2578This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2579no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2580a PC's serial port.
2581
2582*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2583
2584* New "complete" command
2585
2586This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2587were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2588
2589* Trailing space optional in prompt
2590
2591"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2592allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2593
2594* Breakpoint hit counts
2595
2596"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2597has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2598can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2599to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2600less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2601that breakpoint.
2602
2603* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2604
2605"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2606an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2607arrays actually contain only short strings.
2608
2609* Shared library breakpoints
2610
2611In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2612breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2613
2614* Hardware watchpoints
2615
2616There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2617targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2618
55241689 2619Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2620
2621* Annotations
2622
2623Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2624and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2625
2626* Improved Irix 5 support
2627
2628GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2629
2630* Improved HPPA support
2631
2632GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2633
2634* New native configurations
2635
2636Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2637HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2638Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2639RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2640
2641* New targets
2642
2643OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2644MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2645Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2646
2647* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2648
2649There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2650This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2651
2652* Fixes
2653
2654As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2655and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2656
2657*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2658
2659* Irix 5 is now supported
2660
2661* HPPA support
2662
2663GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2664to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2665GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2666of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2667can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2668
2669
2670*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2671
2672* User visible changes:
2673
2674* Remote Debugging
2675
2676The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2677target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2678debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2679integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2680debugging info for the mips target).
2681
2682* DEC Alpha native support
2683
2684GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2685debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2686work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2687Alpha-specific notes.
2688
2689* Preliminary thread implementation
2690
2691GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2692
2693* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2694
2695This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2696to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2697for details).
2698
2699* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2700
2701This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2702mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2703call methods, ...etc.
2704
2705*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2706
2707 * User visible changes:
2708
2709Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2710supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2711other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2712somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2713
2714Filename completion now works.
2715
2716When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2717arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2718addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2719
2720All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2721vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2722should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2723your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2724to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2725
2726 * DEC alpha support
2727
2728This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2729cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2730
2731
2732*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2733
2734 * Testsuite
2735
2736This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2737The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2738via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2739
2740 * C++ demangling
2741
2742'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2743emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2744Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2745disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2746use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2747
2748 * Simulators
2749
2750GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2751So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2752Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2753
2754 * New targets supported
2755
2756H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2757H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2758SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2759Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2760IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2761
2762Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2763version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2764GO32 memory extender.
2765
2766 * New remote protocols
2767
2768MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2769
2770 * New source languages supported
2771
2772This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2773used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2774into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2775
2776
2777*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2778
2779 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2780
2781GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2782version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2783University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2784compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2785format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2786(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2787
2788Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2789
2790 * Faster and better demangling
2791
2792We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2793demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2794character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2795only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2796This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2797increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2798symbol lookups.
2799
2800`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2801from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2802compiler does not actually implement.
2803
2804 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2805
2806In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2807inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2808recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2809very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2810The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2811circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2812fix.
2813
2814The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2815release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2816
2817 * Improved configure script
2818
2819The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2820you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2821host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2822done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2823
2824We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2825version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2826`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2827The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2828only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2829We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2830
2831 * Documentation improvements
2832
2833There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2834produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2835before submitting changes.
2836
2837The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2838M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2839`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2840you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2841a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2842
2843*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2844We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2845been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2846or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2847`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2848around this problem.
2849
2850 * New features
2851
2852GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2853the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2854`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2855the target program.
2856
2857The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2858how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2859
2860 * New native hosts supported
2861
2862HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2863386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2864
2865 * New targets supported
2866
2867AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2868
2869 * New file formats supported
2870
2871BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2872HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2873
2874 * Major bug fixes
2875
2876Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2877
2878We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2879printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2880
2881We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2882for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2883release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2884
2885You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2886will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2887
2888We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2889for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2890especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2891libraries.
2892
2893The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2894information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2895command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2896any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2897when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2898
2899 * Internal improvements
2900
2901GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2902debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2903
2904GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2905Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2906symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2907contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2908shared code that handles any of them.
2909
2910 * New command line options
2911
2912We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2913
2914 * Mmalloc licensing
2915
2916The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2917General Public License.
2918
2919*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2920
2921 * Host/native/target split
2922
2923GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2924hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2925target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2926local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2927ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2928
2929The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2930GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2931is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2932code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2933any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2934built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2935handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2936
2937GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2938It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2939plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2940
2941 * New hosts supported
2942
2943HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2944386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2945386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2946
2947 * New targets supported
2948
2949Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
295068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2951
2952 * New native hosts supported
2953
2954386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2955 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2956386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2957
2958 * New file formats supported
2959
2960BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2961supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2962format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2963
2964 * New commands
2965
2966`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2967`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2968These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2969
2970`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2971
2972You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2973scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2974prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2975executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2976
2977 * C++ improvements
2978
2979We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2980info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2981symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2982
2983Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2984
2985 * Major bug fixes
2986
2987The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2988fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2989by the compiler.
2990
2991We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2992support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2993
2994John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2995slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2996that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2997purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2998the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2999mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3000
3001Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3002about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3003completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3004we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3005
3006 * AMD 29k support
3007
3008A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3009specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3010calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3011usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3012in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3013
3014We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3015Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3016of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3017resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3018
3019 * Remote interfaces
3020
3021We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3022with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3023message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3024This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3025needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3026breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3027each instruction being stepped through.
3028
3029The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3030registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3031
3032There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3033find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3034Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3035processor with a serial port.
3036
3037 * Configuration
3038
3039Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3040`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3041supported, and what files each one uses.
3042
3043 * Library changes
3044
3045There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3046disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3047Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3048disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3049
3050The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3051Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3052can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3053grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3054
3055 * Documentation
3056
3057The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3058reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3059as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3060encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3061system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3062bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3063
3064And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3065
3066
3067*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3068
3069 * Better support for C++ function names
3070
3071GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3072names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3073(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3074single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3075Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3076
3077GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3078the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3079You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3080lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3081for the list of formats.
3082
3083 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3084
3085Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3086C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3087directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3088can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3089usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3090about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3091this problem.)
3092
3093 * New 'maintenance' command
3094
3095All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3096the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3097can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3098
3099 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3100 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3101 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3102 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3103 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3104 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3105
3106The following commands are new:
3107
3108 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3109 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3110 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3111
3112 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3113
3114We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3115(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3116be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3117read after argv processing.
3118
3119 * New hosts supported
3120
3121Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3122
55241689 3123GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3124
3125We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3126is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3127for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3128masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3129fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3130It costs extra.
3131
3132 * New targets supported
3133
3134Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3135
3136 * More smarts about finding #include files
3137
3138GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3139all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3140greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3141especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3142the one that contains your sources.
3143
3144We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3145breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3146try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3147
3148 * Interesting infernals change
3149
3150GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3151section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3152target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3153stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3154
3155 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3156
3157There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3158 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3159 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3160
3161See the ChangeLog for details.
3162
3163*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3164
3165 * New machines supported (host and target)
3166
3167IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3168
3169SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3170
3171 * New malloc package
3172
3173GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3174Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3175capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3176This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3177pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3178more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3179
3180 * info proc
3181
3182The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3183'help info proc' for details.
3184
3185 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3186
3187The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3188Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3189possible.
3190
3191 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3192
3193Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3194support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3195conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3196environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3197that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3198in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3199
3200 * Cross byte order fixes
3201
3202Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3203targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3204
3205 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3206
3207If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3208system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3209`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3210program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3211called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3212Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3213and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3214the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3215option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3216starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3217
3218You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3219the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3220information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3221slower, but makes future operations faster.
3222
3223The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3224build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3225A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3226use is:
3227
3228 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3229
3230The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3231It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3232shared across multiple host platforms.
3233
3234 * longjmp() handling
3235
3236GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3237siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3238all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3239platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3240
3241 * Solaris 2.0
3242
3243Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3244this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3245reading symbols.
3246
3247 * Bug fixes
3248
3249As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3250People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3251crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3252
3253*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3254
3255 * New machines supported (host and target)
3256
3257SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3258 (except core files)
3259BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3260Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3261
3262 * New machines supported (target)
3263
3264AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3265
3266 * C++ support
3267
3268GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3269The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3270per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3271
3272GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3273`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3274extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3275good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3276will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3277released.
3278
3279 * New features for SVR4
3280
3281GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3282shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3283only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3284
3285The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3286on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3287it prints the address mappings of the process.
3288
3289If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3290bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3291
3292 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3293
3294Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3295now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3296skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3297make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3298same code linked statically.
3299
3300 * New Getopt
3301
3302GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3303version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3304continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3305Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3306added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3307future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3308
3309 * Bugs fixed
3310
3311The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3312Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3313See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3314
3315
3316*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3317
3318 * New machines supported (host and target)
3319
3320Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3321NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3322Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3323
3324 * Almost SCO Unix support
3325
3326We had hoped to support:
3327SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3328(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3329that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3330about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3331
3332 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3333
3334GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3335debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3336is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3337send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3338reqired (if any).
3339
3340 * New Readline
3341
3342GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3343is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3344required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3345
3346 * Bugs fixed
3347
3348The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3349Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3350See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3351
3352 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3353
3354GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3355supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3356symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3357
3358Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3359mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3360debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3361mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3362version 2.
3363
3364Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3365really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3366line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3367variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3368situation somewhat.
3369
3370When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3371However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3372methods.
3373
3374We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3375DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3376encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3377
3378
3379*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3380
3381 * Improved configuration
3382
3383Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3384Porting BFD is simpler.
3385
3386 * Stepping improved
3387
3388The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3389of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3390in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3391function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3392
3393 * Bug fixing
3394
3395Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3396
3397 * New host supported (not target)
3398
3399Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3400
3401
3402*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3403
3404 * Multiple source language support
3405
3406GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3407It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3408and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3409language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3410You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3411`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3412
3413 * GDB and Modula-2
3414
3415GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3416currently under development at the State University of New York at
3417Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3418continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3419
3420Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3421debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3422symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3423
3424There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3425in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3426
3427 * set write on/off
3428
3429GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3430a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3431the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3432by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3433effect immediately.
3434
3435 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3436
3437When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3438shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3439The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3440examining core files.
3441
3442 * set listsize
3443
3444You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3445The default is 10.
3446
3447 * New machines supported (host and target)
3448
3449SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3450Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3451Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3452
3453 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3454
3455IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3456
3457 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3458
3459AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3460AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3461Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3462
3463 * New remote interfaces
3464
3465AMD 29000 Adapt
3466AMD 29000 Minimon
3467
3468
3469*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3470
3471 * New Facilities
3472
3473Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3474
3475Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3476target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3477is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3478remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3479remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3480also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3481using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3482stub on the target system.
3483
3484New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3485
3486GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3487library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3488object file types such as a.out and coff.
3489
3490There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3491refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3492
3493
3494 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3495
3496All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3497by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3498
3499For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3500``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3501Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3502
3503What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3504print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3505will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3506all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3507
3508confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3509 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3510 it is already running. Default is ON.
3511
3512editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3513 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3514 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3515 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3516 Default is ON.
3517
3518history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3519 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3520 or the value of the environment variable
3521 GDBHISTFILE.
3522
3523history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3524 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3525 HISTSIZE.
3526
3527history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3528 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3529 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3530
3531history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3532 history expansion will be performed on
3533 command line input. The default is OFF.
3534
3535radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3536 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3537 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3538
3539height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3540 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3541 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3542 variable TERM.
3543
3544width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3545 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3546 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3547 variable TERM.
3548
3549Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3550``set width'' instead.
3551
3552print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3553 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3554 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3555 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3556
3557print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3558 is OFF.
3559
3560print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3561 "raw" form if off.
3562
3563print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3564 like instructions.
3565
3566print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3567
3568
3569 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3570
3571The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3572new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3573are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3574window.
3575
3576
3577 * Support for Shared Libraries
3578
3579GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3580Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3581before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3582happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3583At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3584from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3585shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3586It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3587
3588sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3589 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3590 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3591
3592info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3593
3594
3595 * Watchpoints
3596
3597A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3598expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3599tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3600quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3601problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3602more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3603
3604watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3605
3606info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3607
3608delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3609disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3610enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3611
3612
3613 * C++ multiple inheritance
3614
3615When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3616for C++ programs.
3617
3618 * C++ exception handling
3619
3620Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3621ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3622the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3623handler's context).
3624
3625catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3626 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3627 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3628
3629info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3630 current stack frame.
3631
3632
3633 * Minor command changes
3634
3635The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3636command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3637is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3638
3639The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3640at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3641frames without printing.
3642
3643 * New directory command
3644
3645'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3646The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3647about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3648with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3649find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3650
3651 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3652
3653For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3654for more details.
3655
3656GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3657two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3658Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3659where the program that you are debugging will run.
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