2003-09-25 David Carlton <carlton@kealia.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.0:
5
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6* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
7
8The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
9and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
10tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
11
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12* REMOVED configurations and files
13
14SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
15SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
16
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17*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
18
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19* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
20
21The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
22commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
23kernel.
24
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25* GDB supports logging output to a file
26
27There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
28used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 29
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30* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
31
32The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
33disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
34command.
35
e286caf2 36* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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37
38The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
39registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
40
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41* Profiling support
42
43A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
44be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
45session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
46"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
47data, for more informative profiling results.
48
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49* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
50
51The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
52option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 53"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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54
55Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
56removed.
57
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58Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
59Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
60Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
61 in a subsequent -var-update.
62
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63* New native configurations.
64
65FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
66
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67* Multi-arched targets.
68
b4263afa 69HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
880bc914 70Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 71
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72* OBSOLETE configurations and files
73
74Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
75been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
76configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
77permanently REMOVED.
78
8b0e5691 79Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 80Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 81H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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82HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
83HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
84HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 85PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
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86Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
87 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
88 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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89Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
90Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 91
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92* REMOVED configurations and files
93
94V850EA ISA
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95Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
96IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
97i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
98i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
99i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
100HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
101 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
102 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
103Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
104Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
105Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
106OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
107I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 108
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109* MIPS $fp behavior changed
110
111The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
112the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
113context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
114address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
115The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
116
299ffc64 117*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 118
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119* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
120
121When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
122`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
123in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
124library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
125shared libs like mad''.
126
b9d14705 127* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 128
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129Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
130the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
131arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
132powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 133
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134* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
135
136GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
137and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
138they expand.
139
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140The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
141invocations in expression, and shows the result.
142
143The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
144macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
145
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146Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
147information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
148your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
149information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
150
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151* Multi-arched targets.
152
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153DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
154DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 155NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 156National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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157Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
158Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 159
cd9bfe15 160* New targets.
e33ce519 161
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162Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
163
e33ce519 164
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165* New native configurations
166
167Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 168SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 169MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 170UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 171
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172* OBSOLETE configurations and files
173
174Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
175been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
176configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
177permanently REMOVED.
178
92eb23c5 179Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 180OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 181IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 182Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 183Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 184Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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185i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
186i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
187i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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188HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
189 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
190 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 191I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 192
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193* OBSOLETE languages
194
195CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
196
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197* REMOVED configurations and files
198
199AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
200A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
201AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
202AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
203AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
204
205testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
206
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207* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
208
209This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
210commands. The default is 1024.
211
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212* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
213
214Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
215
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216* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
217
218These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
219to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
220from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 221
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222* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
223
224The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
225including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
226of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
227
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228*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
229
230* New targets.
231
232Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
233
234* Bug fixes
235
236gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
237mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
238Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
239
240gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
241dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
242Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
243
244Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
245Surprisingly enough, it works now.
246By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
247
248i386 hardware watchpoint support:
249avoid misses on second run for some targets.
250By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
251
37057839 252*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 253
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254* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
255
256This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
257really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
258In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
259target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
260This can be a significant performance improvement on some
261(notably embedded) targets.
262
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263* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
264
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265This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
266process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
267GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
268hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 269
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270* New command line option
271
272GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
273
274* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
275
276There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
277command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
278a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
279be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
280open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
281issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
282a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
283it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
284GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
285is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
286
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287* Changes in ARM configurations.
288
289Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
290configuration is fully multi-arch.
291
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292* New native configurations
293
fe419ffc 294ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 295x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 296AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 297Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 298
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299* New targets
300
301Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
302
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303* OBSOLETE configurations and files
304
305Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
306been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
307configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
308permanently REMOVED.
309
310AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
311A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
312AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
313AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
314AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
315
b4ceaee6 316testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 317
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318* REMOVED configurations and files
319
320TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 321WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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322PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
323PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
324PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 325Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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326Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
327 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 328SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 329Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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330Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
331ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 332Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 333
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334* Changes to command line processing
335
336The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
337for the inferior from gdb's command line.
338
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339* Changes to key bindings
340
341There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
342
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343*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
344
345Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
346
347Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
348corrupted.
349
350Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
351
352Numerous documentation fixes.
353
354Numerous testsuite fixes.
355
34f47bc4 356*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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357
358* New native configurations
359
360Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
361x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 362MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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363MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
364ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 365s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 366
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367* New targets
368
def90278 369Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 370CRIS cris-axis
55241689 371UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 372
17e78a56 373* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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374
375x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 376Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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377Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
378 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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379TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
380WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 381Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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382PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
383PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
384PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 385SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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386Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
387ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 388Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 389
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390stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
391kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
392
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393Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
394been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
395configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
396permanently REMOVED.
397
a196c81c 398* REMOVED configurations and files
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399
400Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
401Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
402Pyramid pyramid-*-*
403ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
404Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 405ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 406
6d6b80e5 407* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 408
6d6b80e5 409GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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410sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
411present.
412
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413* Other news:
414
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415* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
416
417* The MI enabled by default.
418
419The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
420revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
421engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
422using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
423which is now deprecated.
424
425* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
426
427GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
428main features are supported:
429
430 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
431
432 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
433 extension;
434
435 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
436
437 - a Pascal expression parser.
438
439However, some important features are not yet supported.
440
441 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
442
443 - there are some problems with boolean types;
444
445 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
446 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
447
448 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
449
450 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
451
452* Changes in completion.
453
454Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
455to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
456users expect at the shell prompt.
457
458Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
459`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
460program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
461files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
462be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
463considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
464name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
465
466`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
467
468* New platform-independent commands:
469
470It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
471hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
472documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
473
474* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
475
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476Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
477revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
478many threads as your system allows you to have.
479
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480Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
481
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482Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
483multi-threaded programs though.
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484
485* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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486
487Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
488
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489GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
490debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
491supported.)
492
493* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
494
495Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
496breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
497implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
498put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
499and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
500registers.
501
502The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
503debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
504watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
505
506* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
507
508New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
509the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
510
511New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
512display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
513IDT.
514
515New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
516from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
517New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
518a given linear address.
519
520GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
521program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
522which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
523
524DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
525
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526It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
527
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528* Changes in documentation.
529
530All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
531Documentation License.
532
533Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
534manual.
535
536TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
537
538Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
539manual.
540
541The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
542documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
543hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
544
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545* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
546
547The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
548``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
549contents of this file.
550
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551* gdba.el deleted
552
553GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 554
9debab2f 555*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 556
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557* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
558
559Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
560programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
561displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
562greater level of detail.
563
564* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
565
566It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
567bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
568on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
569written.
570
571* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
572
573The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
574necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
575machines ``out of the box''.
576
577The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
578possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
579signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
580would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
581interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
582
583It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
584standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
585even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
586and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
587terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
588
589The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
590enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
591also works.
592
593DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
594GDB.
595
596It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
597directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
598times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
599breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
600
ed9a39eb
JM
601* New native configurations
602
603ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 604PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 605
7a292a7a
SS
606* New targets
607
96baa820 608Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
609x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
610PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
611TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
612
085dd6e6
JM
613* OBSOLETE configurations
614
615Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
616Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 617Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 618ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 619Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 620
9debab2f
AC
621Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
622but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
623these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
624be permanently REMOVED.
625
5330533d
SS
626* Gould support removed
627
628Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
629
bc9e5bbf
AC
630* New features for SVR4
631
632On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
633without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
634load symbols from the running process's executable file.
635
636* Many C++ enhancements
637
638C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
639in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
640
adf40b2e
JM
641* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
642
643A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
644sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
645with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
646``|<program> <args>'' vis:
647
648 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
649 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
650
43e526b9
JM
651* MIPS 64 remote protocol
652
653A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
654expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
655instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
656
657The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
658added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
659
96baa820
JM
660* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
661
662The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
663``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
664include ``set remote P-packet''.
665
11cf8741
JM
666* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
667
668The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
669accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
670``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
671
7876dd43
DB
672* ``apropos'' command added.
673
674The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
675documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
676try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
677
bc9e5bbf
AC
678* New MI interface
679
680A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
681interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
682process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
683"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
684enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
685
686 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
687
c906108c
SS
688*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
689
690* New native configurations
691
692HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
693HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 694M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
695
696* New targets
697
698Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
699Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
700Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
701
702* OBSOLETE configurations
703
704Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
705
706Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
707but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
708these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
709be permanently REMOVED.
710
711* ANSI/ISO C
712
713As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
714buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
715containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
716use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
717available. If this is not true, please report the affected
718configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
719information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
720already.
721
722* Readline 2.2
723
724GDB now uses readline 2.2.
725
726* set extension-language
727
728You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
729languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
730you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
731 set extension-language .c c++
732The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
733and their associated languages.
734
735* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
736
737When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
738you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
739PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
740
741 set processor NAME
742
743sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
744following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
745
746 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
747 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
748 403 IBM PowerPC 403
749 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
750 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
751 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
752 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
753 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
754 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
755 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
756 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
757
758At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
759special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
760registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
761only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
762
763* HP-UX support
764
765Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
766more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
767library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
768support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
769for xdb and dbx commands.
770
771* Catchpoints
772
773HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
774generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
775to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
776
777This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
778argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
779output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
780
781* Debugging across forks
782
783On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
784in the inferior.
785
786* TUI
787
788HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
789it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
790configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
791
792* GDB remote protocol additions
793
794A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
795Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
796fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
797allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
798
799For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
800full 64-bit address. The command
801
802 set remoteaddresssize 32
803
804can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
805the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
806will be discarded.
807
808In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
809command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
810
811 maint packet heythere
812
813sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
814disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
815time.
816
817The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
818target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
819downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
820
821* Tracing can collect general expressions
822
823You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
824further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
825doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
826
827* mask-address variable for Mips
828
829For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
830a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
831of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
832
833* Higher serial baud rates
834
835GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
836230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
837to achieve all of these rates.)
838
839* i960 simulator
840
841The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
842builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
843
844
845*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
846
847* New native configurations
848
849Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
850Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
851Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
852PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
853PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
854Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
855Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
856
857* New targets
858
859Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
860Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
861Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
862Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
863MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
864MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
865MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
866Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
867Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
868Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
869NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
870
871* New debugging protocols
872
873ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
874M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
875DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
876PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
877PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
878Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
879
880* DWARF 2
881
882All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
883format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
884information.
885
886* Java frontend
887
888GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
889only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
890
891* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
892
893For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
894loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
895locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
896
897* Live range splitting
898
899GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
900range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
901more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
902
903* Hurd support
904
905GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
906updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
907
908* ARM Thumb support
909
910GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
911instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
912instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
913accordingly.
914
915* MIPS16 support
916
917GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
918instruction set.
919
920* Overlay support
921
922GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
923linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
924will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
925control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
926additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
927in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
928
929* info symbol
930
931The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
932the symbol at the specified address.
933
934* Trace support
935
936The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
937asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
938extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
939includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
940file tracepoint.c for more details.
941
942* MIPS simulator
943
944Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
945by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
946of most MIPS variants.
947
948* Sparc simulator
949
950Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
951by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
952Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
953
954* set architecture
955
956For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
957basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
958architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
959the possible architectures.
960
961*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
962
963* New native configurations
964
965Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
966M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
967PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
968PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
969PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
970RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
971
972* New targets
973
974ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
975I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
976MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
977MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
978PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
979Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
980Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
981
982* PowerPC simulator
983
984The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
985contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
986PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
987basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
988performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
989
990* Solaris 2.5
991
992GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
993
994* Windows 95/NT native
995
996GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
997To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
998which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
999Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1000ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1001
1002* dont-repeat command
1003
1004If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1005command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1006useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1007extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1008
1009* Send break instead of ^C
1010
1011The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1012rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1013GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1014
1015* Remote protocol timeout
1016
1017The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1018that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1019to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1020
1021* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1022
1023By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1024loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1025stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1026when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1027in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1028
1029Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1030/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1031automatically on hpux10.
1032
1033* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1034
1035Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1036
1037* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1038
1039When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1040may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1041the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1042every character. The default value is 1050.
1043
1044* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1045
1046If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1047a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1048replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1049details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1050remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1051to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1052
1053* Speedups for remote debugging
1054
1055GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1056the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1057and more efficient S-record downloading.
1058
1059* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1060
1061GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1062Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1063
1064*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1065
1066* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1067
1068The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1069can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1070
1071* Remote targets use caching
1072
1073Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1074remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1075it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1076debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1077off' turns the the data cache off.
1078
1079* Remote targets may have threads
1080
1081The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1082in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1083gdb/remote.c for details.
1084
1085* NetROM support
1086
1087If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1088support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1089acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1090write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1091support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1092another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1093sequence is something like
1094
1095 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1096 load <prog>
1097 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1098
1099* Macintosh host
1100
1101GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1102may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1103it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1104available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1105device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1106directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1107scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1108mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1109
1110* Autoconf
1111
1112GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1113but does simplify configuration and building.
1114
1115* hpux10
1116
1117GDB now supports hpux10.
1118
1119*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1120
1121* New native configurations
1122
1123x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1124x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1125NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1126Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1127
1128* New targets
1129
1130A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1131HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1132CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1133PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1134WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1135
1136* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1137
1138GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1139possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1140filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1141the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1142if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1143
1144* Arguments to user-defined commands
1145
1146User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1147Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1148trivial example:
1149define adder
1150 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1151
1152To execute the command use:
1153adder 1 2 3
1154
1155Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1156Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1157use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1158
1159* New `if' and `while' commands
1160
1161This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1162commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1163expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1164execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1165terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1166`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1167if the expression is zero.
1168
1169* Fortran source language mode
1170
1171GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1172Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1173variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1174with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1175Fortran compilers.
1176
1177* Better HPUX support
1178
1179Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1180running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1181processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1182for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1183that behavior do the following before running the program:
1184
1185 adb -w a.out
1186 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1187 control-d
1188
1189This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1190To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1191
1192 adb -w a.out
1193 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1194 control-d
1195
1196You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1197the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1198external linkage.
1199
1200GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1201HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1202
1203* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1204
1205You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1206commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1207current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1208"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1209associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1210configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1211
1212* New DOS host serial code
1213
1214This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1215no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1216a PC's serial port.
1217
1218*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1219
1220* New "complete" command
1221
1222This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1223were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1224
1225* Trailing space optional in prompt
1226
1227"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1228allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1229
1230* Breakpoint hit counts
1231
1232"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1233has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1234can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1235to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1236less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1237that breakpoint.
1238
1239* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1240
1241"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1242an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1243arrays actually contain only short strings.
1244
1245* Shared library breakpoints
1246
1247In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1248breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1249
1250* Hardware watchpoints
1251
1252There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1253targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1254
55241689 1255Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1256
1257* Annotations
1258
1259Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1260and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1261
1262* Improved Irix 5 support
1263
1264GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1265
1266* Improved HPPA support
1267
1268GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1269
1270* New native configurations
1271
1272Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1273HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1274Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1275RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1276
1277* New targets
1278
1279OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1280MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1281Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1282
1283* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1284
1285There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1286This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1287
1288* Fixes
1289
1290As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1291and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1292
1293*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1294
1295* Irix 5 is now supported
1296
1297* HPPA support
1298
1299GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1300to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1301GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1302of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1303can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1304
1305
1306*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1307
1308* User visible changes:
1309
1310* Remote Debugging
1311
1312The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1313target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1314debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1315integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1316debugging info for the mips target).
1317
1318* DEC Alpha native support
1319
1320GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1321debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1322work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1323Alpha-specific notes.
1324
1325* Preliminary thread implementation
1326
1327GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1328
1329* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1330
1331This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1332to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1333for details).
1334
1335* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1336
1337This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1338mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1339call methods, ...etc.
1340
1341*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1342
1343 * User visible changes:
1344
1345Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1346supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1347other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1348somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1349
1350Filename completion now works.
1351
1352When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1353arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1354addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1355
1356All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1357vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1358should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1359your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1360to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1361
1362 * DEC alpha support
1363
1364This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1365cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1366
1367
1368*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1369
1370 * Testsuite
1371
1372This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1373The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1374via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1375
1376 * C++ demangling
1377
1378'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1379emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1380Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1381disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1382use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1383
1384 * Simulators
1385
1386GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1387So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1388Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1389
1390 * New targets supported
1391
1392H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1393H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1394SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1395Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1396IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1397
1398Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1399version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1400GO32 memory extender.
1401
1402 * New remote protocols
1403
1404MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1405
1406 * New source languages supported
1407
1408This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1409used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1410into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1411
1412
1413*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1414
1415 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1416
1417GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1418version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1419University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1420compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1421format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1422(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1423
1424Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1425
1426 * Faster and better demangling
1427
1428We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1429demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1430character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1431only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1432This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1433increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1434symbol lookups.
1435
1436`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1437from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1438compiler does not actually implement.
1439
1440 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1441
1442In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1443inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1444recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1445very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1446The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1447circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1448fix.
1449
1450The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1451release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1452
1453 * Improved configure script
1454
1455The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1456you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1457host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1458done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1459
1460We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1461version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1462`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1463The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1464only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1465We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1466
1467 * Documentation improvements
1468
1469There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1470produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1471before submitting changes.
1472
1473The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1474M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1475`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1476you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1477a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1478
1479*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1480We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1481been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1482or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1483`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1484around this problem.
1485
1486 * New features
1487
1488GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1489the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1490`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1491the target program.
1492
1493The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1494how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1495
1496 * New native hosts supported
1497
1498HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1499386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1500
1501 * New targets supported
1502
1503AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1504
1505 * New file formats supported
1506
1507BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1508HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1509
1510 * Major bug fixes
1511
1512Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1513
1514We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1515printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1516
1517We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1518for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1519release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1520
1521You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1522will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1523
1524We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1525for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1526especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1527libraries.
1528
1529The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1530information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1531command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1532any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1533when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1534
1535 * Internal improvements
1536
1537GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1538debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1539
1540GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1541Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1542symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1543contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1544shared code that handles any of them.
1545
1546 * New command line options
1547
1548We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1549
1550 * Mmalloc licensing
1551
1552The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1553General Public License.
1554
1555*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1556
1557 * Host/native/target split
1558
1559GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1560hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1561target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1562local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1563ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1564
1565The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1566GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1567is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1568code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1569any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1570built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1571handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1572
1573GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1574It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1575plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1576
1577 * New hosts supported
1578
1579HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1580386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1581386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1582
1583 * New targets supported
1584
1585Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
158668030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1587
1588 * New native hosts supported
1589
1590386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1591 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1592386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1593
1594 * New file formats supported
1595
1596BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1597supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1598format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1599
1600 * New commands
1601
1602`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1603`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1604These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1605
1606`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1607
1608You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1609scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1610prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1611executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1612
1613 * C++ improvements
1614
1615We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1616info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1617symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1618
1619Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1620
1621 * Major bug fixes
1622
1623The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1624fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1625by the compiler.
1626
1627We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1628support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1629
1630John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1631slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1632that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1633purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1634the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1635mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1636
1637Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1638about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1639completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1640we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1641
1642 * AMD 29k support
1643
1644A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1645specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1646calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1647usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1648in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1649
1650We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1651Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1652of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1653resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1654
1655 * Remote interfaces
1656
1657We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1658with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1659message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1660This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1661needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1662breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1663each instruction being stepped through.
1664
1665The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1666registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1667
1668There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1669find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1670Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1671processor with a serial port.
1672
1673 * Configuration
1674
1675Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1676`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1677supported, and what files each one uses.
1678
1679 * Library changes
1680
1681There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1682disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1683Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1684disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1685
1686The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1687Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1688can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1689grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1690
1691 * Documentation
1692
1693The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1694reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1695as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1696encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1697system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1698bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1699
1700And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1701
1702
1703*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1704
1705 * Better support for C++ function names
1706
1707GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1708names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1709(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1710single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1711Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1712
1713GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1714the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1715You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1716lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1717for the list of formats.
1718
1719 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1720
1721Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1722C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1723directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1724can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1725usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1726about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1727this problem.)
1728
1729 * New 'maintenance' command
1730
1731All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1732the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1733can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1734
1735 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1736 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1737 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1738 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1739 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1740 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1741
1742The following commands are new:
1743
1744 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1745 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1746 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1747
1748 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1749
1750We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1751(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1752be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1753read after argv processing.
1754
1755 * New hosts supported
1756
1757Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1758
55241689 1759GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1760
1761We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1762is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1763for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1764masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1765fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1766It costs extra.
1767
1768 * New targets supported
1769
1770Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1771
1772 * More smarts about finding #include files
1773
1774GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1775all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1776greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1777especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1778the one that contains your sources.
1779
1780We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1781breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1782try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1783
1784 * Interesting infernals change
1785
1786GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1787section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1788target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1789stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1790
1791 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1792
1793There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1794 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1795 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1796
1797See the ChangeLog for details.
1798
1799*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1800
1801 * New machines supported (host and target)
1802
1803IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1804
1805SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1806
1807 * New malloc package
1808
1809GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1810Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1811capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1812This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1813pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1814more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1815
1816 * info proc
1817
1818The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1819'help info proc' for details.
1820
1821 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1822
1823The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1824Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1825possible.
1826
1827 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1828
1829Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1830support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1831conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1832environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1833that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1834in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1835
1836 * Cross byte order fixes
1837
1838Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1839targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1840
1841 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1842
1843If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1844system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1845`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1846program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1847called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1848Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1849and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1850the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1851option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1852starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1853
1854You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1855the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1856information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1857slower, but makes future operations faster.
1858
1859The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1860build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1861A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1862use is:
1863
1864 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1865
1866The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1867It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1868shared across multiple host platforms.
1869
1870 * longjmp() handling
1871
1872GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1873siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1874all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1875platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1876
1877 * Solaris 2.0
1878
1879Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1880this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1881reading symbols.
1882
1883 * Bug fixes
1884
1885As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1886People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1887crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1888
1889*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1890
1891 * New machines supported (host and target)
1892
1893SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1894 (except core files)
1895BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1896Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1897
1898 * New machines supported (target)
1899
1900AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1901
1902 * C++ support
1903
1904GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1905The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1906per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1907
1908GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1909`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1910extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1911good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1912will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1913released.
1914
1915 * New features for SVR4
1916
1917GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1918shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1919only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1920
1921The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1922on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1923it prints the address mappings of the process.
1924
1925If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1926bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1927
1928 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1929
1930Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1931now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1932skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1933make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1934same code linked statically.
1935
1936 * New Getopt
1937
1938GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1939version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1940continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1941Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1942added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1943future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1944
1945 * Bugs fixed
1946
1947The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1948Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1949See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1950
1951
1952*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1953
1954 * New machines supported (host and target)
1955
1956Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1957NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1958Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1959
1960 * Almost SCO Unix support
1961
1962We had hoped to support:
1963SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1964(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1965that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1966about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1967
1968 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1969
1970GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1971debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1972is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1973send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1974reqired (if any).
1975
1976 * New Readline
1977
1978GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1979is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1980required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1981
1982 * Bugs fixed
1983
1984The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1985Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1986See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1987
1988 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1989
1990GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1991supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1992symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1993
1994Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1995mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1996debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1997mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1998version 2.
1999
2000Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2001really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2002line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2003variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2004situation somewhat.
2005
2006When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2007However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2008methods.
2009
2010We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2011DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2012encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2013
2014
2015*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2016
2017 * Improved configuration
2018
2019Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2020Porting BFD is simpler.
2021
2022 * Stepping improved
2023
2024The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2025of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2026in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2027function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2028
2029 * Bug fixing
2030
2031Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2032
2033 * New host supported (not target)
2034
2035Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2036
2037
2038*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2039
2040 * Multiple source language support
2041
2042GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2043It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2044and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2045language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2046You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2047`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2048
2049 * GDB and Modula-2
2050
2051GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2052currently under development at the State University of New York at
2053Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2054continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2055
2056Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2057debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2058symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2059
2060There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2061in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2062
2063 * set write on/off
2064
2065GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2066a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2067the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2068by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2069effect immediately.
2070
2071 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2072
2073When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2074shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2075The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2076examining core files.
2077
2078 * set listsize
2079
2080You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2081The default is 10.
2082
2083 * New machines supported (host and target)
2084
2085SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2086Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2087Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2088
2089 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2090
2091IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2092
2093 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2094
2095AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2096AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2097Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2098
2099 * New remote interfaces
2100
2101AMD 29000 Adapt
2102AMD 29000 Minimon
2103
2104
2105*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2106
2107 * New Facilities
2108
2109Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2110
2111Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2112target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2113is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2114remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2115remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2116also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2117using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2118stub on the target system.
2119
2120New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2121
2122GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2123library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2124object file types such as a.out and coff.
2125
2126There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2127refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2128
2129
2130 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2131
2132All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2133by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2134
2135For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2136``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2137Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2138
2139What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2140print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2141will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2142all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2143
2144confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2145 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2146 it is already running. Default is ON.
2147
2148editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2149 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2150 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2151 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2152 Default is ON.
2153
2154history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2155 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2156 or the value of the environment variable
2157 GDBHISTFILE.
2158
2159history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2160 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2161 HISTSIZE.
2162
2163history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2164 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2165 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2166
2167history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2168 history expansion will be performed on
2169 command line input. The default is OFF.
2170
2171radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2172 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2173 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2174
2175height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2176 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2177 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2178 variable TERM.
2179
2180width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2181 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2182 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2183 variable TERM.
2184
2185Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2186``set width'' instead.
2187
2188print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2189 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2190 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2191 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2192
2193print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2194 is OFF.
2195
2196print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2197 "raw" form if off.
2198
2199print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2200 like instructions.
2201
2202print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2203
2204
2205 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2206
2207The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2208new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2209are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2210window.
2211
2212
2213 * Support for Shared Libraries
2214
2215GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2216Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2217before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2218happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2219At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2220from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2221shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2222It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2223
2224sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2225 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2226 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2227
2228info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2229
2230
2231 * Watchpoints
2232
2233A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2234expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2235tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2236quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2237problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2238more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2239
2240watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2241
2242info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2243
2244delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2245disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2246enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2247
2248
2249 * C++ multiple inheritance
2250
2251When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2252for C++ programs.
2253
2254 * C++ exception handling
2255
2256Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2257ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2258the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2259handler's context).
2260
2261catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2262 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2263 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2264
2265info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2266 current stack frame.
2267
2268
2269 * Minor command changes
2270
2271The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2272command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2273is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2274
2275The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2276at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2277frames without printing.
2278
2279 * New directory command
2280
2281'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2282The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2283about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2284with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2285find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2286
2287 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2288
2289For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2290for more details.
2291
2292GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2293two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2294Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2295where the program that you are debugging will run.
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