* linux-arm-low.c (arm_reinsert_addr): New function.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
f2c06f52
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.0:
5
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6*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
7
0fac0b41
DJ
8* GDB supports logging output to a file
9
10There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
11used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 12
6ad8ae5c
DJ
13* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
14
15The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
16disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
17command.
18
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19* d10v `regs' command deprecated
20
21The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
22registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
23
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24* Profiling support
25
26A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
27be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
28session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
29"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
30data, for more informative profiling results.
31
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32* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
33
34The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
35option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 36"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
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37
38Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
39removed.
40
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41Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
42Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
43Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
44 in a subsequent -var-update.
45
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46* Multi-arched targets.
47
48HP/PA HPUX11, 32bit ABI (partial) hppa*-*-hpux* except hppa*64*-*-hpux11*
49
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50* OBSOLETE configurations and files
51
52Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
53been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
54configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
55permanently REMOVED.
56
05d57f6f 57Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
8b0e5691 58Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 59Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 60H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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61HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
62HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
63HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 64PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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65Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
66 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
67 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
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68Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
69Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 70
5835abe7
NC
71* REMOVED configurations and files
72
73V850EA ISA
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74Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
75IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
76i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
77i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
78i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
79HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
80 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
81 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
82Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
83Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
84Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
85OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
86I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 87
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88* MIPS $fp behavior changed
89
90The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
91the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
92context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
93address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
94The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
95
299ffc64 96*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 97
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98* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
99
100When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
101`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
102in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
103library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
104shared libs like mad''.
105
b9d14705 106* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 107
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108Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
109the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
110arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
111powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 112
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113* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
114
115GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
116and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
117they expand.
118
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119The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
120invocations in expression, and shows the result.
121
122The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
123macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
124
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125Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
126information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
127your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
128information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
129
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130* Multi-arched targets.
131
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132DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
133DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 134NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 135National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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136Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
137Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 138
cd9bfe15 139* New targets.
e33ce519 140
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141Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
142
e33ce519 143
da8ca43d
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144* New native configurations
145
146Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 147SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 148MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 149UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 150
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151* OBSOLETE configurations and files
152
153Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
154been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
155configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
156permanently REMOVED.
157
92eb23c5 158Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 159OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 160IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 161Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 162Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 163Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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164i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
165i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
166i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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167HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
168 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
169 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 170I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 171
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172* OBSOLETE languages
173
174CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
175
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176* REMOVED configurations and files
177
178AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
179A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
180AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
181AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
182AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
183
184testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
185
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186* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
187
188This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
189commands. The default is 1024.
190
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191* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
192
193Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
194
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195* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
196
197These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
198to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
199from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 200
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201* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
202
203The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
204including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
205of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
206
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207*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
208
209* New targets.
210
211Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
212
213* Bug fixes
214
215gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
216mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
217Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
218
219gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
220dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
221Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
222
223Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
224Surprisingly enough, it works now.
225By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
226
227i386 hardware watchpoint support:
228avoid misses on second run for some targets.
229By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
230
37057839 231*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 232
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233* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
234
235This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
236really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
237In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
238target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
239This can be a significant performance improvement on some
240(notably embedded) targets.
241
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242* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
243
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244This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
245process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
246GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
247hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 248
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249* New command line option
250
251GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
252
253* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
254
255There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
256command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
257a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
258be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
259open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
260issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
261a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
262it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
263GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
264is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
265
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266* Changes in ARM configurations.
267
268Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
269configuration is fully multi-arch.
270
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271* New native configurations
272
fe419ffc 273ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 274x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 275AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 276Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 277
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278* New targets
279
280Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
281
9b4ff276
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282* OBSOLETE configurations and files
283
284Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
285been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
286configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
287permanently REMOVED.
288
289AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
290A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
291AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
292AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
293AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
294
b4ceaee6 295testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 296
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297* REMOVED configurations and files
298
299TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 300WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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301PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
302PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
303PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 304Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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305Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
306 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 307SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 308Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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309Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
310ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 311Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 312
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313* Changes to command line processing
314
315The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
316for the inferior from gdb's command line.
317
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318* Changes to key bindings
319
320There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
321
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322*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
323
324Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
325
326Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
327corrupted.
328
329Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
330
331Numerous documentation fixes.
332
333Numerous testsuite fixes.
334
34f47bc4 335*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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336
337* New native configurations
338
339Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
340x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 341MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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342MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
343ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 344s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 345
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346* New targets
347
def90278 348Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 349CRIS cris-axis
55241689 350UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 351
17e78a56 352* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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353
354x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 355Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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356Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
357 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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358TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
359WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 360Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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361PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
362PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
363PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 364SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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365Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
366ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 367Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 368
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369stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
370kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
371
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372Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
373been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
374configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
375permanently REMOVED.
376
a196c81c 377* REMOVED configurations and files
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378
379Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
380Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
381Pyramid pyramid-*-*
382ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
383Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 384ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 385
6d6b80e5 386* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 387
6d6b80e5 388GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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389sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
390present.
391
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392* Other news:
393
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394* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
395
396* The MI enabled by default.
397
398The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
399revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
400engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
401using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
402which is now deprecated.
403
404* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
405
406GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
407main features are supported:
408
409 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
410
411 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
412 extension;
413
414 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
415
416 - a Pascal expression parser.
417
418However, some important features are not yet supported.
419
420 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
421
422 - there are some problems with boolean types;
423
424 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
425 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
426
427 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
428
429 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
430
431* Changes in completion.
432
433Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
434to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
435users expect at the shell prompt.
436
437Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
438`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
439program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
440files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
441be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
442considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
443name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
444
445`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
446
447* New platform-independent commands:
448
449It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
450hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
451documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
452
453* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
454
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455Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
456revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
457many threads as your system allows you to have.
458
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459Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
460
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461Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
462multi-threaded programs though.
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463
464* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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465
466Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
467
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468GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
469debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
470supported.)
471
472* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
473
474Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
475breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
476implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
477put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
478and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
479registers.
480
481The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
482debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
483watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
484
485* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
486
487New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
488the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
489
490New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
491display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
492IDT.
493
494New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
495from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
496New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
497a given linear address.
498
499GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
500program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
501which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
502
503DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
504
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505It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
506
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507* Changes in documentation.
508
509All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
510Documentation License.
511
512Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
513manual.
514
515TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
516
517Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
518manual.
519
520The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
521documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
522hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
523
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524* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
525
526The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
527``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
528contents of this file.
529
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AC
530* gdba.el deleted
531
532GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 533
9debab2f 534*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 535
c63ce875
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536* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
537
538Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
539programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
540displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
541greater level of detail.
542
543* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
544
545It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
546bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
547on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
548written.
549
550* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
551
552The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
553necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
554machines ``out of the box''.
555
556The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
557possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
558signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
559would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
560interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
561
562It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
563standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
564even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
565and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
566terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
567
568The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
569enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
570also works.
571
572DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
573GDB.
574
575It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
576directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
577times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
578breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
579
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580* New native configurations
581
582ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 583PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 584
7a292a7a
SS
585* New targets
586
96baa820 587Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
588x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
589PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
590TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
591
085dd6e6
JM
592* OBSOLETE configurations
593
594Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
595Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 596Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 597ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 598Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 599
9debab2f
AC
600Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
601but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
602these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
603be permanently REMOVED.
604
5330533d
SS
605* Gould support removed
606
607Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
608
bc9e5bbf
AC
609* New features for SVR4
610
611On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
612without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
613load symbols from the running process's executable file.
614
615* Many C++ enhancements
616
617C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
618in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
619
adf40b2e
JM
620* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
621
622A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
623sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
624with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
625``|<program> <args>'' vis:
626
627 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
628 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
629
43e526b9
JM
630* MIPS 64 remote protocol
631
632A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
633expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
634instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
635
636The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
637added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
638
96baa820
JM
639* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
640
641The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
642``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
643include ``set remote P-packet''.
644
11cf8741
JM
645* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
646
647The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
648accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
649``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
650
7876dd43
DB
651* ``apropos'' command added.
652
653The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
654documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
655try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
656
bc9e5bbf
AC
657* New MI interface
658
659A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
660interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
661process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
662"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
663enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
664
665 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
666
c906108c
SS
667*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
668
669* New native configurations
670
671HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
672HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 673M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
674
675* New targets
676
677Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
678Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
679Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
680
681* OBSOLETE configurations
682
683Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
684
685Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
686but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
687these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
688be permanently REMOVED.
689
690* ANSI/ISO C
691
692As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
693buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
694containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
695use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
696available. If this is not true, please report the affected
697configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
698information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
699already.
700
701* Readline 2.2
702
703GDB now uses readline 2.2.
704
705* set extension-language
706
707You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
708languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
709you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
710 set extension-language .c c++
711The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
712and their associated languages.
713
714* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
715
716When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
717you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
718PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
719
720 set processor NAME
721
722sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
723following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
724
725 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
726 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
727 403 IBM PowerPC 403
728 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
729 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
730 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
731 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
732 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
733 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
734 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
735 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
736
737At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
738special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
739registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
740only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
741
742* HP-UX support
743
744Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
745more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
746library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
747support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
748for xdb and dbx commands.
749
750* Catchpoints
751
752HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
753generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
754to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
755
756This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
757argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
758output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
759
760* Debugging across forks
761
762On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
763in the inferior.
764
765* TUI
766
767HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
768it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
769configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
770
771* GDB remote protocol additions
772
773A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
774Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
775fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
776allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
777
778For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
779full 64-bit address. The command
780
781 set remoteaddresssize 32
782
783can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
784the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
785will be discarded.
786
787In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
788command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
789
790 maint packet heythere
791
792sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
793disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
794time.
795
796The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
797target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
798downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
799
800* Tracing can collect general expressions
801
802You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
803further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
804doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
805
806* mask-address variable for Mips
807
808For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
809a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
810of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
811
812* Higher serial baud rates
813
814GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
815230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
816to achieve all of these rates.)
817
818* i960 simulator
819
820The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
821builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
822
823
824*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
825
826* New native configurations
827
828Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
829Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
830Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
831PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
832PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
833Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
834Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
835
836* New targets
837
838Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
839Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
840Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
841Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
842MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
843MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
844MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
845Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
846Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
847Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
848NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
849
850* New debugging protocols
851
852ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
853M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
854DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
855PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
856PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
857Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
858
859* DWARF 2
860
861All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
862format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
863information.
864
865* Java frontend
866
867GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
868only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
869
870* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
871
872For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
873loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
874locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
875
876* Live range splitting
877
878GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
879range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
880more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
881
882* Hurd support
883
884GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
885updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
886
887* ARM Thumb support
888
889GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
890instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
891instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
892accordingly.
893
894* MIPS16 support
895
896GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
897instruction set.
898
899* Overlay support
900
901GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
902linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
903will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
904control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
905additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
906in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
907
908* info symbol
909
910The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
911the symbol at the specified address.
912
913* Trace support
914
915The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
916asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
917extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
918includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
919file tracepoint.c for more details.
920
921* MIPS simulator
922
923Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
924by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
925of most MIPS variants.
926
927* Sparc simulator
928
929Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
930by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
931Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
932
933* set architecture
934
935For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
936basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
937architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
938the possible architectures.
939
940*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
941
942* New native configurations
943
944Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
945M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
946PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
947PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
948PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
949RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
950
951* New targets
952
953ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
954I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
955MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
956MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
957PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
958Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
959Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
960
961* PowerPC simulator
962
963The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
964contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
965PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
966basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
967performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
968
969* Solaris 2.5
970
971GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
972
973* Windows 95/NT native
974
975GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
976To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
977which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
978Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
979ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
980
981* dont-repeat command
982
983If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
984command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
985useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
986extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
987
988* Send break instead of ^C
989
990The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
991rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
992GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
993
994* Remote protocol timeout
995
996The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
997that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
998to read from the target. The default value is 2.
999
1000* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1001
1002By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1003loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1004stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1005when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1006in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1007
1008Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1009/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1010automatically on hpux10.
1011
1012* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1013
1014Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1015
1016* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1017
1018When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1019may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1020the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1021every character. The default value is 1050.
1022
1023* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1024
1025If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1026a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1027replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1028details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1029remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1030to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1031
1032* Speedups for remote debugging
1033
1034GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1035the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1036and more efficient S-record downloading.
1037
1038* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1039
1040GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1041Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1042
1043*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1044
1045* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1046
1047The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1048can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1049
1050* Remote targets use caching
1051
1052Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1053remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1054it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1055debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1056off' turns the the data cache off.
1057
1058* Remote targets may have threads
1059
1060The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1061in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1062gdb/remote.c for details.
1063
1064* NetROM support
1065
1066If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1067support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1068acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1069write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1070support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1071another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1072sequence is something like
1073
1074 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1075 load <prog>
1076 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1077
1078* Macintosh host
1079
1080GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1081may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1082it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1083available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1084device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1085directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1086scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1087mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1088
1089* Autoconf
1090
1091GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1092but does simplify configuration and building.
1093
1094* hpux10
1095
1096GDB now supports hpux10.
1097
1098*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1099
1100* New native configurations
1101
1102x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1103x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1104NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1105Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1106
1107* New targets
1108
1109A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1110HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1111CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1112PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1113WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1114
1115* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1116
1117GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1118possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1119filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1120the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1121if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1122
1123* Arguments to user-defined commands
1124
1125User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1126Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1127trivial example:
1128define adder
1129 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1130
1131To execute the command use:
1132adder 1 2 3
1133
1134Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1135Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1136use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1137
1138* New `if' and `while' commands
1139
1140This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1141commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1142expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1143execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1144terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1145`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1146if the expression is zero.
1147
1148* Fortran source language mode
1149
1150GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1151Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1152variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1153with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1154Fortran compilers.
1155
1156* Better HPUX support
1157
1158Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1159running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1160processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1161for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1162that behavior do the following before running the program:
1163
1164 adb -w a.out
1165 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1166 control-d
1167
1168This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1169To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1170
1171 adb -w a.out
1172 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1173 control-d
1174
1175You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1176the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1177external linkage.
1178
1179GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1180HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1181
1182* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1183
1184You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1185commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1186current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1187"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1188associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1189configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1190
1191* New DOS host serial code
1192
1193This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1194no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1195a PC's serial port.
1196
1197*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1198
1199* New "complete" command
1200
1201This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1202were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1203
1204* Trailing space optional in prompt
1205
1206"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1207allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1208
1209* Breakpoint hit counts
1210
1211"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1212has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1213can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1214to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1215less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1216that breakpoint.
1217
1218* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1219
1220"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1221an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1222arrays actually contain only short strings.
1223
1224* Shared library breakpoints
1225
1226In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1227breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1228
1229* Hardware watchpoints
1230
1231There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1232targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1233
55241689 1234Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1235
1236* Annotations
1237
1238Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1239and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1240
1241* Improved Irix 5 support
1242
1243GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1244
1245* Improved HPPA support
1246
1247GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1248
1249* New native configurations
1250
1251Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1252HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1253Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1254RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1255
1256* New targets
1257
1258OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1259MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1260Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1261
1262* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1263
1264There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1265This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1266
1267* Fixes
1268
1269As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1270and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1271
1272*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1273
1274* Irix 5 is now supported
1275
1276* HPPA support
1277
1278GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1279to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1280GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1281of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1282can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1283
1284
1285*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1286
1287* User visible changes:
1288
1289* Remote Debugging
1290
1291The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1292target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1293debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1294integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1295debugging info for the mips target).
1296
1297* DEC Alpha native support
1298
1299GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1300debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1301work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1302Alpha-specific notes.
1303
1304* Preliminary thread implementation
1305
1306GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1307
1308* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1309
1310This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1311to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1312for details).
1313
1314* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1315
1316This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1317mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1318call methods, ...etc.
1319
1320*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1321
1322 * User visible changes:
1323
1324Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1325supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1326other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1327somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1328
1329Filename completion now works.
1330
1331When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1332arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1333addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1334
1335All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1336vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1337should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1338your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1339to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1340
1341 * DEC alpha support
1342
1343This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1344cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1345
1346
1347*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1348
1349 * Testsuite
1350
1351This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1352The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1353via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1354
1355 * C++ demangling
1356
1357'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1358emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1359Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1360disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1361use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1362
1363 * Simulators
1364
1365GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1366So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1367Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1368
1369 * New targets supported
1370
1371H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1372H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1373SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1374Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1375IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1376
1377Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1378version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1379GO32 memory extender.
1380
1381 * New remote protocols
1382
1383MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1384
1385 * New source languages supported
1386
1387This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1388used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1389into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1390
1391
1392*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1393
1394 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1395
1396GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1397version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1398University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1399compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1400format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1401(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1402
1403Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1404
1405 * Faster and better demangling
1406
1407We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1408demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1409character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1410only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1411This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1412increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1413symbol lookups.
1414
1415`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1416from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1417compiler does not actually implement.
1418
1419 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1420
1421In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1422inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1423recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1424very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1425The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1426circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1427fix.
1428
1429The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1430release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1431
1432 * Improved configure script
1433
1434The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1435you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1436host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1437done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1438
1439We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1440version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1441`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1442The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1443only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1444We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1445
1446 * Documentation improvements
1447
1448There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1449produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1450before submitting changes.
1451
1452The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1453M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1454`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1455you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1456a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1457
1458*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1459We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1460been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1461or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1462`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1463around this problem.
1464
1465 * New features
1466
1467GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1468the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1469`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1470the target program.
1471
1472The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1473how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1474
1475 * New native hosts supported
1476
1477HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1478386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1479
1480 * New targets supported
1481
1482AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1483
1484 * New file formats supported
1485
1486BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1487HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1488
1489 * Major bug fixes
1490
1491Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1492
1493We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1494printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1495
1496We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1497for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1498release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1499
1500You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1501will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1502
1503We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1504for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1505especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1506libraries.
1507
1508The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1509information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1510command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1511any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1512when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1513
1514 * Internal improvements
1515
1516GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1517debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1518
1519GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1520Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1521symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1522contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1523shared code that handles any of them.
1524
1525 * New command line options
1526
1527We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1528
1529 * Mmalloc licensing
1530
1531The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1532General Public License.
1533
1534*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1535
1536 * Host/native/target split
1537
1538GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1539hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1540target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1541local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1542ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1543
1544The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1545GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1546is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1547code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1548any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1549built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1550handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1551
1552GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1553It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1554plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1555
1556 * New hosts supported
1557
1558HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1559386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1560386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1561
1562 * New targets supported
1563
1564Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
156568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1566
1567 * New native hosts supported
1568
1569386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1570 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1571386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1572
1573 * New file formats supported
1574
1575BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1576supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1577format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1578
1579 * New commands
1580
1581`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1582`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1583These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1584
1585`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1586
1587You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1588scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1589prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1590executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1591
1592 * C++ improvements
1593
1594We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1595info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1596symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1597
1598Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1599
1600 * Major bug fixes
1601
1602The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1603fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1604by the compiler.
1605
1606We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1607support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1608
1609John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1610slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1611that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1612purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1613the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1614mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1615
1616Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1617about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1618completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1619we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1620
1621 * AMD 29k support
1622
1623A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1624specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1625calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1626usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1627in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1628
1629We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1630Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1631of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1632resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1633
1634 * Remote interfaces
1635
1636We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1637with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1638message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1639This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1640needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1641breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1642each instruction being stepped through.
1643
1644The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1645registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1646
1647There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1648find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1649Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1650processor with a serial port.
1651
1652 * Configuration
1653
1654Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1655`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1656supported, and what files each one uses.
1657
1658 * Library changes
1659
1660There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1661disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1662Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1663disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1664
1665The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1666Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1667can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1668grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1669
1670 * Documentation
1671
1672The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1673reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1674as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1675encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1676system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1677bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1678
1679And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1680
1681
1682*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1683
1684 * Better support for C++ function names
1685
1686GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1687names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1688(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1689single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1690Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1691
1692GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1693the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1694You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1695lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1696for the list of formats.
1697
1698 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1699
1700Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1701C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1702directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1703can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1704usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1705about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1706this problem.)
1707
1708 * New 'maintenance' command
1709
1710All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1711the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1712can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1713
1714 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1715 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1716 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1717 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1718 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1719 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1720
1721The following commands are new:
1722
1723 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1724 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1725 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1726
1727 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1728
1729We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1730(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1731be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1732read after argv processing.
1733
1734 * New hosts supported
1735
1736Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1737
55241689 1738GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1739
1740We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1741is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1742for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1743masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1744fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1745It costs extra.
1746
1747 * New targets supported
1748
1749Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1750
1751 * More smarts about finding #include files
1752
1753GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1754all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1755greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1756especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1757the one that contains your sources.
1758
1759We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1760breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1761try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1762
1763 * Interesting infernals change
1764
1765GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1766section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1767target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1768stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1769
1770 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1771
1772There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1773 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1774 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1775
1776See the ChangeLog for details.
1777
1778*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1779
1780 * New machines supported (host and target)
1781
1782IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1783
1784SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1785
1786 * New malloc package
1787
1788GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1789Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1790capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1791This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1792pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1793more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1794
1795 * info proc
1796
1797The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1798'help info proc' for details.
1799
1800 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1801
1802The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1803Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1804possible.
1805
1806 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1807
1808Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1809support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1810conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1811environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1812that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1813in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1814
1815 * Cross byte order fixes
1816
1817Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1818targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1819
1820 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1821
1822If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1823system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1824`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1825program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1826called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1827Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1828and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1829the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1830option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1831starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1832
1833You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1834the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1835information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1836slower, but makes future operations faster.
1837
1838The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1839build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1840A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1841use is:
1842
1843 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1844
1845The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1846It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1847shared across multiple host platforms.
1848
1849 * longjmp() handling
1850
1851GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1852siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1853all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1854platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1855
1856 * Solaris 2.0
1857
1858Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1859this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1860reading symbols.
1861
1862 * Bug fixes
1863
1864As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1865People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1866crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1867
1868*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1869
1870 * New machines supported (host and target)
1871
1872SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1873 (except core files)
1874BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1875Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1876
1877 * New machines supported (target)
1878
1879AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1880
1881 * C++ support
1882
1883GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1884The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1885per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1886
1887GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1888`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1889extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1890good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1891will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1892released.
1893
1894 * New features for SVR4
1895
1896GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1897shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1898only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1899
1900The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1901on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1902it prints the address mappings of the process.
1903
1904If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1905bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1906
1907 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1908
1909Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1910now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1911skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1912make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1913same code linked statically.
1914
1915 * New Getopt
1916
1917GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1918version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1919continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1920Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1921added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1922future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1923
1924 * Bugs fixed
1925
1926The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1927Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1928See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1929
1930
1931*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1932
1933 * New machines supported (host and target)
1934
1935Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1936NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1937Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1938
1939 * Almost SCO Unix support
1940
1941We had hoped to support:
1942SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1943(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1944that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1945about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1946
1947 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1948
1949GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1950debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1951is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1952send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1953reqired (if any).
1954
1955 * New Readline
1956
1957GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1958is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1959required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1960
1961 * Bugs fixed
1962
1963The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1964Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1965See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1966
1967 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1968
1969GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1970supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1971symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1972
1973Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1974mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1975debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1976mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1977version 2.
1978
1979Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1980really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1981line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1982variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1983situation somewhat.
1984
1985When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1986However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1987methods.
1988
1989We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1990DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1991encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1992
1993
1994*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1995
1996 * Improved configuration
1997
1998Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1999Porting BFD is simpler.
2000
2001 * Stepping improved
2002
2003The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2004of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2005in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2006function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2007
2008 * Bug fixing
2009
2010Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2011
2012 * New host supported (not target)
2013
2014Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2015
2016
2017*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2018
2019 * Multiple source language support
2020
2021GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2022It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2023and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2024language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2025You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2026`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2027
2028 * GDB and Modula-2
2029
2030GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2031currently under development at the State University of New York at
2032Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2033continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2034
2035Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2036debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2037symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2038
2039There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2040in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2041
2042 * set write on/off
2043
2044GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2045a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2046the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2047by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2048effect immediately.
2049
2050 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2051
2052When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2053shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2054The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2055examining core files.
2056
2057 * set listsize
2058
2059You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2060The default is 10.
2061
2062 * New machines supported (host and target)
2063
2064SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2065Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2066Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2067
2068 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2069
2070IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2071
2072 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2073
2074AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2075AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2076Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2077
2078 * New remote interfaces
2079
2080AMD 29000 Adapt
2081AMD 29000 Minimon
2082
2083
2084*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2085
2086 * New Facilities
2087
2088Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2089
2090Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2091target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2092is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2093remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2094remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2095also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2096using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2097stub on the target system.
2098
2099New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2100
2101GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2102library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2103object file types such as a.out and coff.
2104
2105There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2106refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2107
2108
2109 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2110
2111All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2112by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2113
2114For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2115``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2116Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2117
2118What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2119print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2120will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2121all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2122
2123confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2124 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2125 it is already running. Default is ON.
2126
2127editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2128 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2129 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2130 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2131 Default is ON.
2132
2133history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2134 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2135 or the value of the environment variable
2136 GDBHISTFILE.
2137
2138history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2139 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2140 HISTSIZE.
2141
2142history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2143 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2144 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2145
2146history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2147 history expansion will be performed on
2148 command line input. The default is OFF.
2149
2150radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2151 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2152 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2153
2154height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2155 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2156 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2157 variable TERM.
2158
2159width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2160 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2161 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2162 variable TERM.
2163
2164Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2165``set width'' instead.
2166
2167print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2168 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2169 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2170 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2171
2172print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2173 is OFF.
2174
2175print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2176 "raw" form if off.
2177
2178print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2179 like instructions.
2180
2181print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2182
2183
2184 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2185
2186The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2187new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2188are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2189window.
2190
2191
2192 * Support for Shared Libraries
2193
2194GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2195Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2196before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2197happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2198At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2199from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2200shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2201It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2202
2203sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2204 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2205 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2206
2207info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2208
2209
2210 * Watchpoints
2211
2212A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2213expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2214tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2215quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2216problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2217more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2218
2219watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2220
2221info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2222
2223delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2224disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2225enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2226
2227
2228 * C++ multiple inheritance
2229
2230When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2231for C++ programs.
2232
2233 * C++ exception handling
2234
2235Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2236ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2237the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2238handler's context).
2239
2240catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2241 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2242 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2243
2244info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2245 current stack frame.
2246
2247
2248 * Minor command changes
2249
2250The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2251command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2252is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2253
2254The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2255at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2256frames without printing.
2257
2258 * New directory command
2259
2260'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2261The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2262about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2263with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2264find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2265
2266 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2267
2268For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2269for more details.
2270
2271GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2272two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2273Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2274where the program that you are debugging will run.
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