bfd/ChangeLog
[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 7.5
5
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6* New command line options:
7
8-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
9 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
10
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11* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
12 type formatting.
13
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14* Python scripting
15
16 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
17
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18 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
19
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20 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
21
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22* New Python-based convenience functions:
23
24 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
25 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
26 ** $_strlen(str)
27 ** $_regex(str, regex)
28
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29* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
30 given an argument.
31
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32* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
33
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34* New configure options
35
36--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
37 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
38 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
39 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
40 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
41 options allow the user to override that default.
42
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43* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
44
45maint info bfds
46 List the BFDs known to GDB.
47
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48python-interactive [command]
49pi [command]
50 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
51 and print the result of expressions.
52
53py [command]
54 "py" is a new alias for "python".
55
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56enable type-printer [name]...
57disable type-printer [name]...
58 Enable or disable type printers.
59
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60* Removed commands
61
62 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
63 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
64 instead.
65
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66* New options
67
68set print type methods (on|off)
69show print type methods
70 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
71 The default is to show them.
72
73set print type typedefs (on|off)
74show print type typedefs
75 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
76 The default is to show them.
77
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78* MI changes
79
80 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
81 "=cmd-param-changed".
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82 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
83 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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84 ** The creation and deletion of trace state variables are now notified
85 using new async records "=tsv-created" and "=tsv-deleted".
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86 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
87 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
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88 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
89 "=memory-changed".
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90 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
91 containing the absolute file name when GDB can determine it and source
92 has been requested.
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93 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
94 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
5b9afe8a 95
80c8d323 96*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 97
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98* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
99 for more x32 ABI info.
100
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101* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
102
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103* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
104
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105* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
106 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
107 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
108 "info os files" lists file descriptors
109 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
110 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
111 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
112 "info os msg" lists message queues
113 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
114
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115* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
116 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
117 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
118 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
119 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
120 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
121
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122* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
123 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
124 record/replay support.
125
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126* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
127
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128* Python scripting
129
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130 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
131 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
132
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133 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
134
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135 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
136 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
137
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138 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
139
140 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
141 the source at which the symbol was defined.
142
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143 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
144 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
145 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
146 symbol's value.
147
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148 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
149 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
150
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151 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
152 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
153 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
154
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155 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
156 object associated with a PC value.
157
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158 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
159 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
160
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161* Go language support.
162 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
163 language.
164
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165* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
166 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
167
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168* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
169 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
170
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171* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
172 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
173 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
174 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
175 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
176 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
177
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178* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
179 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
180 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
181 build/libcpp/expr.c.
182
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183* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
184 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
185
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186* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
187 since December 2007.
188
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189* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
190 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
191 command does. For instance:
192
193 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
194
195 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
196 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
197 created, using the "condition" command.
198
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199* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
200 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
201
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202* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
203
204* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
205 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
206 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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207 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
208 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
209 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
210 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
211 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 212
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213 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
214 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
215 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
216 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
217 the .gdb_index section.
218
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219* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
220
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221* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
222 target.
223
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224* MI changes
225
226 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
227
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228 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
229
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230* New commands
231
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232 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
233 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
234 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
235
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236 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
237 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
238
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239 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
240 several hits.
241
57651221 242 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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243 C++ and Java objects.
244
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245 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
246 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
247 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
248 configured with '--with-python'.
249
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250 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
251 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
252 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
253 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
254 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
255 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
256 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
257
258 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
259 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
260 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
261 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
262
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263 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
264 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
265 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
266 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
267
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268 ** "set print symbol"
269 "show print symbol"
270 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
271 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
272 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
273
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274* Deprecated commands
275
276 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
277 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
278
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279* New targets
280
281Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 282HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 283
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284* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
285 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
286 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
287 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
288 evaluates to true.
289
290* New options
291
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292set mips compression
293show mips compression
294 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
295 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
296 mips16
297 micromips
298 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
299
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300set breakpoint condition-evaluation
301show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 302 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
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303 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
304 available mode.
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305 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
306 target.
307
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308set auto-load off
309 Disable auto-loading globally.
310
311show auto-load
312 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
313
314set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
315show auto-load gdb-scripts
316 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
317
318set auto-load python-scripts on|off
319show auto-load python-scripts
320 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
321
322set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
323show auto-load local-gdbinit
324 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
325
326set auto-load libthread-db on|off
327show auto-load libthread-db
328 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
329
7349ff92 330set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 331show auto-load scripts-directory
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332 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
333 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
334 of the directories listed by this option.
335 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
336
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337set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
338show auto-load safe-path
339 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
340 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
341
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342set debug auto-load on|off
343show debug auto-load
344 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
345
d3ce09f5 346set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 347show dprintf-style
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348 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
349 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
350 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
351 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
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352
353set dprintf-function <expr>
354show dprintf-function
355set dprintf-channel <expr>
356show dprintf-channel
357 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
358 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
359
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360set disconnected-dprintf on|off
361show disconnected-dprintf
362 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
363 after GDB disconnects.
364
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365* New configure options
366
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367--with-auto-load-dir
368 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
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369 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
370 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
371 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
372 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 373
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374--with-auto-load-safe-path
375 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 376 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
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377
378--without-auto-load-safe-path
379 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
380 security feature.
381
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382* New remote packets
383
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384z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
385
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386 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
387 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
388 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
389 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
390
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391QProgramSignals:
392
393 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
394 program without GDB involvement.
395
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396* New command line options
397
398--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
399 before loading inferior.
400--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
401 execute it before loading inferior.
402
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403*** Changes in GDB 7.4
404
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405* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
406 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
407 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
408 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
409 inferior changes.
410
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411* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
412 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
413
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414* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
415 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
416 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
417 target hardware watchpoint.
418
419 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
420 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
421 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
422 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
423
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424* Python scripting
425
32d1c362 426 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 427 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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428 existing one.
429
3a7bf607 430 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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431 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
432 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
433 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
434 now "message", which just prints the error message without
435 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 436
baacfb07 437 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 438 Python API.
713389e0 439
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440 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
441 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 442 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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443 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
444 corresponding value.
445
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446 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
447 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
448 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
449 on GDB start-up.
450
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451 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
452 static_block will return the global and static blocks
453 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
454 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
455
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456 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
457
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458 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
459 "gdb.breakpoints".
460
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461 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
462 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
463 available in the CLI.
464
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465 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
466 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
467 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
468 "some_type.items()".
469
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470 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
471 new object file.
472
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473 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
474 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
475 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
476 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
477 any anonymous fields.
478
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479* MI changes
480
481 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
482 "solib-event".
483
484 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
485 "=breakpoint-modified".
486
487 ** New command -ada-task-info.
488
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489* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
490 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
491 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
492 lives.
493
494 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
495 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
496 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
497 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
498 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
499
500 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
501 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
502
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503* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
504 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
505 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
506 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
507 use this option to specify where to find it.
508
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509* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
510 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
511 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
512 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
513 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
514 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
515 section in the user manual for more details.
516
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517* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
518 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
519 become available after that.
520
71eba9c2 521* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 522
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523* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
524 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
525 gcc version 4.7.
526
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527* New commands
528
529!SHELL COMMAND
530 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
531 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
532
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533* Changed commands
534
535watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
536 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
537 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
538
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539info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
540 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
541 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
542
71eba9c2 543info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
544 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
545 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
546 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
547 name starts with a hyphen.
548
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549collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
550 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
551 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
552 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
553 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
554 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
555 number of bytes that will be collected.
556
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557tstart [NOTES]
558 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
559 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
560 setting the variable trace-notes.
561
562tstop [NOTES]
563 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
564 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
565 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
566 trace-stop-notes.
567
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568* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
569 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
570 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
571 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
572 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
573 is running.
574
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575* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
576 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
577 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
578
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579* New options
580
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581set debug dwarf2-read
582show debug dwarf2-read
583 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
584 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
585
586set debug symtab-create
587show debug symtab-create
588 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
589 creation. The default is off.
590
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591set extended-prompt
592show extended-prompt
593 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
594 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
595 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
596 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
597 prompt is displayed.
598
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599set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
600show print entry-values
601 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
602 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
603 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
604
605set debug entry-values
606show debug entry-values
607 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
608 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
609
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DE
610set basenames-may-differ
611show basenames-may-differ
612 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
613 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
614 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
615 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
616 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
617 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
618 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
619 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
620
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621set trace-user
622show trace-user
623set trace-notes
624show trace-notes
625 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
626 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
627 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
628 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
629
630set trace-stop-notes
631show trace-stop-notes
632 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
633 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
634 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
635 started by someone else.
636
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KY
637* New remote packets
638
639QTEnable
640
641 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
642
643QTDisable
644
645 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
646
f196051f
SS
647QTNotes
648
649 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
650
651qTP
652
653 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
654
405f8e94
SS
655qTMinFTPILen
656
657 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
658 be placed.
659
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PP
660* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
661 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
662
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YQ
663* New targets
664
665Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
666
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DD
667* New Simulators
668
669Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
670
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JB
671*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
672
673* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
674
d6e00af6 675*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 676
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MS
677* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
678 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
679 matches the given regular expression.
680
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DD
681* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
682
b716877b
AB
683* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
684 dumping the instruction opcodes.
685
aae1c79a
DE
686* New command line options
687
688-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
689 This is mostly for testing purposes.
690
a86caf66
DE
691* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
692 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
693
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DE
694* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
695 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
696 source path list instead of augmenting it.
697
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698* GDB now understands thread names.
699
700 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
701 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
702
703 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
704 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
705
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706* OpenCL C
707 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
708 has been integrated into GDB.
709
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710* Python scripting
711
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712 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
713 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
714 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
715
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716 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
717 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
718 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
719 and allows for more dynamic content.
720
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721 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
722 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
723 have an is_valid method.
724
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725 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
726 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
727 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
728
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DE
729 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
730
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PM
731 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
732 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
733 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
734 that function like so:
735
736 result = some_value (10,20)
737
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DE
738 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
739 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
740 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
741
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DE
742 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
743 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
744 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
745 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
746 New function: register_pretty_printer.
747
748 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
749 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
750
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DE
751 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
752
d8e22779
TT
753 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
754 selected thread.
755
4694da01
TT
756 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
757 holds the thread's name.
758
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SW
759 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
760 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 761 occurring in the process being debugged.
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HZ
762 The following events are currently supported:
763 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
764 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
765 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
766
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TT
767* C++ Improvements:
768
769 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
770 instantiation. For example, if you have:
771
772 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
773
774 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
775 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
776 was added to GCC 4.5.
777
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TT
778 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
779 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
780 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
781 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
782 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
783 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
784
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UW
785* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
786 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
787 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
788 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
789 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
790
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TT
791* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
792 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
793 execution to a label.
794
795* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
796 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
797 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
798 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
799
b56df873 800* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 801 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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TT
802 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
803 of scope.
804
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PA
805* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
806
807 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
808 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
809 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
810 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
811 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
812 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
813
814 (gdb) info threads
815 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
816
817 While now you see this:
818
819 (gdb) info threads
820 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
821
822 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
823 dumps.
824
825 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
826 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
827 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
828 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
829
f1310107
TJB
830* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
831 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
832 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
833 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
834 section in the user manual for more details.
835
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JB
836* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
837
1aee7009
JB
838 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
839 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 840
eb826dc6
MF
841 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
842
44603653
JB
843* New native configurations
844
845ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
846
91021223
MF
847* New targets:
848
849Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
850
6e1bb179
JB
851* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
852 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
853 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
854 in the GDB user manual.
855
50c97f38
TT
856* Guile support was removed.
857
448a92bf
MF
858* New features in the GNU simulator
859
860 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
861
66ee2731
MF
862 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
863
76b8507d 864*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 865
ba25b921
PA
866* Shared library support for remote targets by default
867
868 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
869 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
870 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
871 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
872 was always disabled for such configurations.
873
4656f5c6
SW
874* C++ Improvements:
875
876 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
877
878 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
879 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
880 For example:
881 namespace A
882 {
883 class B { };
884 void foo (B) { }
885 }
886 ...
887 A::B b
888 foo(b)
889 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
890 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
891 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
892
893 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
894
895 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
896 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
897 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
898 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
899 entry.
900 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
901 mentioned flavors of operators.
902
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DE
903 ** static const class members
904
905 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
906 class definition has been fixed.
907
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PM
908* Windows Thread Information Block access.
909
910 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
911 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
912 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
913 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
914 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
915 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
916
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PA
917* Static tracepoints
918
919 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
920 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
921 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
922 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
923 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
924 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
925 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
926 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
927 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
928 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
929 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
930 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
931 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
932 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
933 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
934 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
935 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
936 the "New remote packets" section below.
937
ca11e899
SS
938* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
939
940 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
941 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
942 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
943 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
944
945* Observer mode
946
947 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
948 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
949 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
950 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
951 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
952 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
953 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
954
955* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
956 current thread.
957
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958* New remote packets
959
960qGetTIBAddr
961
962 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
963
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PA
964qRelocInsn
965
966 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
967 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
968 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
969 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
970 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
971 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
972
0fb4aa4b
PA
973qTfSTM, qTsSTM
974
975 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
976
977qTSTMat
978
979 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
980 program.
981
982qXfer:statictrace:read
983
984 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
985 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
986 to gdb's qSupported query.
987
ca11e899
SS
988QAllow
989
990 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
991
992QTDPsrc
993
994 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
995 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
996
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DE
997* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
998 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
999 a directory.
1000
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PA
1001* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1002
0fb4aa4b
PA
1003 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1004 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1005 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1006 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1007
1008 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1009 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1010 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1011 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1012 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1013 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1014 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1015
1016 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1017 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1018
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1019 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1020
c8d5aac9
L
1021* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1022 it understands register description.
1023
7c953934
TT
1024* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1025
8685c86f
L
1026* X86 general purpose registers
1027
1028 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1029 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1030 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1031 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1032 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1033
95a42b64 1034* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1035 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1036 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1037 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1038 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1039 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1040
8bd10a10
CM
1041* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1042 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1043 in the specified file.
1044
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PA
1045* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1046 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1047 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1048 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1049 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1050 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1051 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1052 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1053 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1054 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1055
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PA
1056* New commands
1057
f1421989
HZ
1058eval template, expressions...
1059 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1060 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1061
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PA
1062set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1063show target-file-system-kind
1064 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1065 names.
1066
6149aea9
PA
1067save breakpoints <filename>
1068 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1069 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1070 definitions, use the `source' command.
1071
1072`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1073is now deprecated.
1074
0fb4aa4b
PA
1075info static-tracepoint-markers
1076 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1077
1078strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1079 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1080 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1081
ca11e899
SS
1082set observer on|off
1083show observer
1084 Enable and disable observer mode.
1085
1086set may-write-registers on|off
1087set may-write-memory on|off
1088set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1089set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1090set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1091set may-interrupt on|off
1092 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1093 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1094 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1095 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1096 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1097 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1098 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1099
1100set record memory-query on|off
1101show record memory-query
1102 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1103 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1104
53a71c06
CR
1105* Changed commands
1106
1107disassemble
1108 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1109
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PM
1110* Python scripting
1111
9279c692
JB
1112** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1113 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1114 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1115 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1116 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1117
adc36818 1118** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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1119 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1120 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1121 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1122
fa33c3cd 1123** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1124 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1125
1126** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1127
1128** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1129
967cf477
DE
1130** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1131
8a1ea21f
DE
1132** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1133 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1134 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1135
a7bdde9e
VP
1136* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1137there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1138tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1139regular breakpoints.
1140
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PA
1141* New targets
1142
1143ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1144
6aecb9c2
JB
1145* D language support.
1146 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1147 language.
1148
431e49aa
TJB
1149* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1150 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1151 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1152 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1153 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1154
1155* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1156 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1157 conditions of the form:
1158
1159 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1160
1161 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1162 interface mentioned above.
1163
bfbf3774 1164*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1165
4eef138c
TT
1166* C++ Improvements
1167
1168 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1169
1170 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1171 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1172 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1173 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1174 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1175
4eef138c
TT
1176 ** Bug Fixes
1177
1178 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1179 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1180 qualified name.
1181
1182 ** Cast Operators
1183
1184 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1185 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1186
2d1c1221
ME
1187* New targets
1188
1189Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1190Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1191
1192* New Simulators
1193
1194Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1195Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1196
6c95b8df
PA
1197* Multi-program debugging.
1198
1199 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1200 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1201 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1202 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1203 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1204 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1205 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1206 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1207
d5551862
SS
1208* New tracing features
1209
1210 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1211
1212 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1213
1214 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1215 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1216 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1217 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1218 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1219 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1220 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1221 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1222 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1223 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1224
d5551862 1225 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1226
1227 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1228 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1229 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1230 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1231 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1232 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1233 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1234 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1235 the regular trace command.
1236
d5551862
SS
1237 ** Disconnected tracing
1238
1239 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1240 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1241 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1242 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1243 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1244
00bf0b85
SS
1245 ** Trace files
1246
1247 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1248 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1249 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1250 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1251 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1252 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1253 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1254
1255 ** Circular trace buffer
1256
1257 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1258 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1259 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1260 not be available for all target agents.
1261
21a0512e
PP
1262* Changed commands
1263
1264disassemble
1265 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1266 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1267
0fe7935b
DJ
1268info variables
1269 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1270 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1271
fb2e7cb4
JB
1272source
1273 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1274 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1275 support.
1276
1277 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1278 "set script-extension" (see below).
1279
6c95b8df
PA
1280* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1281
399cd161
MS
1282record save [<FILENAME>]
1283 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1284 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1285
1286record restore <FILENAME>
1287 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1288 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1289
6c95b8df
PA
1290add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1291 Add a new inferior.
1292
1293clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1294 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1295 inferior has loaded.
1296
1297remove-inferior ID
1298 Remove an inferior.
1299
1300maint info program-spaces
1301 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1302
9a7071a8
JB
1303set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1304show remote interrupt-sequence
1305 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1306 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1307 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1308 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1309 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1310
1311set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1312show remote interrupt-on-connect
1313 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1314 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1315 Linux kernel.
1316
1317set remotebreak [on | off]
1318show remotebreak
1319Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1320
f61e138d
SS
1321tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1322 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1323
1324info tvariables
1325 List trace state variables and their values.
1326
1327delete tvariable $NAME ...
1328 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1329
6da95a67
SS
1330teval EXPR, ...
1331 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1332 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1333
7a697b8d
SS
1334ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1335 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1336
b0f02ee9
JK
1337* New expression syntax
1338
1339 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1340 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1341
6c95b8df
PA
1342* New options
1343
1344set follow-exec-mode new|same
1345show follow-exec-mode
1346 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1347 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1348 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1349
236f1d4d
SS
1350set default-collect EXPR, ...
1351show default-collect
1352 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1353 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1354 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1355
d5551862
SS
1356set disconnected-tracing
1357show disconnected-tracing
1358 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1359 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1360 upon disconnection.
1361
4daf5ac0
SS
1362set circular-trace-buffer
1363show circular-trace-buffer
1364 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1365 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1366 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1367 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1368
fb2e7cb4
JB
1369set script-extension off|soft|strict
1370show script-extension
1371 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1372 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1373 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1374 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1375 evaluation failed.
1376 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1377
2b71fc8e
JB
1378set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1379show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1380 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1381 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1382 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1383 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1384 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1385 is on.
1386
de2e5182
TT
1387* Python API Improvements
1388
1389 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1390 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1391 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1392
1393 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1394 `is_base_class' attribute.
1395
1396 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1397
1398 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1399 evaluate an expression.
1400
f61e138d
SS
1401* New remote packets
1402
1403QTDV
1404 Define a trace state variable.
1405
1406qTV
1407 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1408
d5551862
SS
1409QTDisconnected
1410 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1411
4daf5ac0
SS
1412QTBuffer:circular
1413 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1414
d5551862
SS
1415qTfP, qTsP
1416 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1417
2d483d34
MS
1418* Bug fixes
1419
1420Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1421
6e0e5977
JB
1422Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1423much more reliable. In particular:
1424 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1425 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1426 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1427 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1428 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1429 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1430 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1431 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1432 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1433 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1434 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1435 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1436 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1437 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1438 non-threaded programs.
1439
93c26624
JK
1440PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1441This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1442libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1443executable program.
1444
abc7453d 1445*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1446
4efc6507
DE
1447* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1448dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1449them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1450for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1451"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1452
782b2b07
SS
1453* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1454breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1455or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1456the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1457for tracepoint actions.
1458
53a71c06
CR
1459* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1460raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1461modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1462
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1463* Process record and replay
1464
1465 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1466 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1467 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1468 execute commands.
1469
64644d9b
MS
1470* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1471step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1472set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1473reverse execution.
1474
b9412953
DD
1475* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1476feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
14772.6.28 or later.
1478
6c7a06a3
TT
1479* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1480target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1481char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1482literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1483U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1484`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1485system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1486the installation instructions for more information.
1487
f1838a98
UW
1488* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1489remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1490with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1491the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1492
55333a84
DE
1493* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1494and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1495
7f6a6314
PM
1496* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1497now complete on file names.
1498
65d12d83
TT
1499* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1500completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1501For instance, consider:
1502
1503 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1504 # struct example variable;
1505 (gdb) p variable.
1506
1507If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1508completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1509
edb3359d
DJ
1510* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1511the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1512
2fae03e8
TT
1513* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1514operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1515macros.
1516
47a3467a 1517* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1518the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1519implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1520
1521* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1522registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1523can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1524and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1525
08388c79
DE
1526* New remote packets
1527
1528qSearch:memory:
1529 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1530
a6f3e723
SL
1531QStartNoAckMode
1532 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1533 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1534 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1535
d7713ae0
EZ
1536vKill
1537 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1538 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1539
07e059b5
VP
1540qXfer:osdata:read
1541 Obtains additional operating system information
1542
47a3467a
PA
1543qXfer:siginfo:read
1544qXfer:siginfo:write
1545 Read or write additional signal information.
1546
060871df
PA
1547* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1548
1549 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1550 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1551 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1552
c055b101 1553* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1554DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1555
1556* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1557and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1558`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1559
31fffb02
CS
1560* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1561with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1562
88d8a8e0
JB
1563* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1564
7f99b190
JB
1565* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1566
ccd213ac
DJ
1567* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1568which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1569
1fddbabb 1570* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1571list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1572
a0ef4274
DJ
1573* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1574conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1575have also been fixed.
1576
bfb8797a 1577* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1578From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1579are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1580
71c25dea
TT
1581* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1582example, given:
1583
1584 template<typename T> class C { };
1585 C<char const *> c;
1586
1587GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1588
1589 ptype C<char const *>
1590 ptype C<char const*>
1591 ptype C<const char *>
1592 ptype C<const char*>
1593
ccd213ac
DJ
1594* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1595
1596 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1597 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1598
7ae0e2a2
UW
1599 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1600 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1601 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1602
a6f3e723
SL
1603 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1604 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1605
da8bd9a3
DJ
1606 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1607 gdbserver.
1608
d70e31dd
DE
1609 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1610 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1611
1612 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1613 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1614 as appropriate.
1615
d57a3c85
TJB
1616* Python scripting
1617
1618 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1619 available is determined at configure time.
1620
d8906c6f
TJB
1621 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1622
aadc346a
JB
1623* Ada tasking support
1624
1625 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1626 been introduced:
1627
1628 info tasks
1629 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1630 info task N
1631 Print detailed information about task number N.
1632 task
1633 Print the task number of the current task.
1634 task N
1635 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1636
adb483fe
DJ
1637* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1638add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1639
2277426b
PA
1640* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1641
1642 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1643 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1644 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1645 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1646 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1647 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1648 below.
1649
08d16641
PA
1650* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1651"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1652information.
1653
e35359c5
UW
1654* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1655to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1656architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1657See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1658more information.
1659
85e747d2
UW
1660* Multi-architecture debugging.
1661
1662 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1663 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1664 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1665 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1666 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1667
1668* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1669use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1670Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1671powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1672--enable-targets configure option.
1673
11ade57a
PA
1674* Non-stop mode debugging.
1675
1676 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1677 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1678 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1679 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1680 section in the user manual for more information.
1681
1682 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1683 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1684 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1685 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1686 extensions on linux targets.
1687
d7713ae0 1688* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1689
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1690catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1691 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1692 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1693 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1694 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1695 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1696 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1697 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1698 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1699
08388c79
DE
1700find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1701 val1 [, val2, ...]
1702 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1703
d57a3c85
TJB
1704maint set python print-stack
1705maint show python print-stack
1706 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1707
1708python [CODE]
1709 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1710
d7713ae0
EZ
1711macro define
1712macro list
1713macro undef
1714 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1715 interactively.
1716
1717info os processes
1718 Show operating system information about processes.
1719
2277426b
PA
1720info inferiors
1721 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1722
1723inferior NUM
1724 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1725
1726detach inferior NUM
1727 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1728
1729kill inferior NUM
1730 Kill inferior number NUM.
1731
d7713ae0
EZ
1732* New options
1733
3285f3fe
UW
1734set spu stop-on-load
1735show spu stop-on-load
1736 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1737
ff1a52c6
UW
1738set spu auto-flush-cache
1739show spu auto-flush-cache
1740 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1741 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1742
d7713ae0
EZ
1743set sh calling-convention
1744show sh calling-convention
1745 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1746
e0a3ce09 1747set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1748show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1749 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1750
1751set disassemble-next-line
1752show disassemble-next-line
1753 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1754 the debuggee stops.
1755
1756set remote noack-packet
1757show remote noack-packet
1758 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1759 under "New remote packets."
1760
1761set remote query-attached-packet
1762show remote query-attached-packet
1763 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1764
1765set remote read-siginfo-object
1766show remote read-siginfo-object
1767 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1768 packet.
1769
1770set remote write-siginfo-object
1771show remote write-siginfo-object
1772 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1773 packet.
1774
40ab02ce
MS
1775set remote reverse-continue
1776show remote reverse-continue
1777 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1778
1779set remote reverse-step
1780show remote reverse-step
1781 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1782
d7713ae0
EZ
1783set displaced-stepping
1784show displaced-stepping
1785 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1786 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1787 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1788
1789set debug displaced
1790show debug displaced
1791 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1792
1793maint set internal-error
1794maint show internal-error
1795 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1796
1797maint set internal-warning
1798maint show internal-warning
1799 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1800
ccd213ac
DJ
1801set exec-wrapper
1802show exec-wrapper
1803unset exec-wrapper
1804 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1805
aad4b048
JB
1806set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1807show multiple-symbols
1808 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1809 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1810 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1811
74960c60
VP
1812set breakpoint always-inserted
1813show breakpoint always-inserted
1814 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1815 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1816 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1817
0428b8f5
DJ
1818set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1819show arm fallback-mode
1820set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1821show arm force-mode
1822 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1823 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1824 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1825 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1826
10568435
JK
1827set disable-randomization
1828show disable-randomization
1829 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1830 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1831 multiple debugging sessions.
1832
d7713ae0
EZ
1833set non-stop
1834show non-stop
1835 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1836 a breakpoint.
1837
b3eb342c 1838set target-async
d7713ae0 1839show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1840 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1841 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1842 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1843 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1844
6c7a06a3
TT
1845set target-wide-charset
1846show target-wide-charset
1847 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1848 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1849
84603566
SL
1850set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1851show tcp auto-retry
1852set tcp connect-timeout
1853show tcp connect-timeout
1854 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1855 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1856 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1857
17a37d48
PP
1858set libthread-db-search-path
1859show libthread-db-search-path
1860 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1861 libthread_db.
1862
d4db2f36
PA
1863set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1864show schedule-multiple
1865 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1866 the current process.
1867
4e5d721f
DE
1868set stack-cache
1869show stack-cache
1870 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1871 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1872 affecting correctness.
1873
910c5da8
JB
1874set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1875show interactive-mode
1876 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1877 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1878 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1879 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1880 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1881
2277426b
PA
1882* Removed commands
1883
1884info forks
1885 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1886 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1887 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1888 command.
1889
1890fork NUM
1891 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1892 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1893 alias for the `fork' command.
1894
1895process PID
1896 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1897 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1898 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1899
1900delete fork NUM
1901 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1902 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1903 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1904 fork' command.
1905
1906detach fork NUM
1907 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1908 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1909 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1910 fork' command.
1911
a80b95ba
TG
1912* New native configurations
1913
1914x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1915
b8bfd3ed
JB
1916x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1917
75a2d5e7
TT
1918* New targets
1919
c28c63d8 1920Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1921x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1922x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1923S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1924
6de3146c
PA
1925* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1926 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1927
d5cbbe6e
JB
1928* Removed commands
1929
1930catch load
1931catch unload
1932 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1933
75feb17d 1934*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1935
af5ca30d
NH
1936* New native configurations
1937
1938NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1939Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1940
1941* New targets
1942
1943NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1944Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1945
7a404eba
PA
1946* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1947
1948 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1949 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1950 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1951 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1952
430ebac9
PA
1953* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1954(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1955
fe6fbf8b 1956* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1957is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1958
1959* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1960including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1961and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1962
10665d76
JB
1963* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1964accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1965more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1966
7cc46491
DJ
1967* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1968
d71340b8
DJ
1969* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1970registers on PowerPC targets.
1971
523c4513
DJ
1972* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1973targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1974
a6b151f1
DJ
1975* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1976commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1977
2d717e4f
DJ
1978* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1979extended-remote mode.
1980
24a836bd 1981* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1982The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1983error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1984The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1985
d0c678e6
UW
1986* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1987building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1988target architectures.
1989
d64a946d
TJB
1990* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1991Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1992now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1993stored in two consecutive float registers.
1994
ee163bf5
VP
1995* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1996breakpoints now.
1997
b93b6ca7 1998* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1999Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2000include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2001 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2002 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2003 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2004 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2005 of an assignment
2006 - Improved command completion in Ada
2007 - Several bug fixes
2008
d001be7a
DJ
2009* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2010process.
2011
a6b151f1
DJ
2012* New commands
2013
6d53d0af
JB
2014set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2015show print frame-arguments
2016 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2017 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2018
a6b151f1
DJ
2019remote put
2020remote get
2021remote delete
2022 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2023
2024* New MI commands
2025
2026-target-file-put
2027-target-file-get
2028-target-file-delete
2029 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2030
2031* New remote packets
2032
2033vFile:open:
2034vFile:close:
2035vFile:pread:
2036vFile:pwrite:
2037vFile:unlink:
2038 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2039
2d717e4f
DJ
2040vAttach
2041 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2042 mode.
2043
2044vRun
2045 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2046
8d5f9c6f 2047*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2048
19d378fc
MS
2049* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2050bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2051Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2052
3a40aaa0
UW
2053* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2054symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2055-Bsymbolic linker option.
2056
a6ec25f2
BW
2057* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2058recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2059is not supported.
2060
6dd09645
JB
2061* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2062frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2063
c9bb8148
DJ
2064* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
206532-bit or 64-bit register values.
2066
0d5de010
DJ
2067* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2068
23181151
DJ
2069* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2070target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2071a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2072
ea37ba09
DJ
2073* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2074automatically displayed as character or string data.
2075
2076* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2077arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2078as strings.
e1f48ead 2079
123dc839
DJ
2080* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2081for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2082only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2083
05a4558a
DJ
2084* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2085iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2086
7c963485
PA
2087* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2088ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2089has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2090
b18be20d
DJ
2091* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2092
0ca420ce
UW
2093* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2094
31d99776
DJ
2095* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2096layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2097segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2098
a4642986
MR
2099* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2100immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2101
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2102* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2103"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2104packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2105where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2106Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2107
2108* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2109(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2110
2111* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2112according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2113
c9bb8148
DJ
2114* New commands
2115
23776285
MR
2116set remoteflow
2117show remoteflow
2118 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2119 when debugging using remote targets.
2120
c9bb8148
DJ
2121set mem inaccessible-by-default
2122show mem inaccessible-by-default
2123 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2124 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2125 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2126 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2127 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2128
2129set breakpoint auto-hw
2130show breakpoint auto-hw
2131 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2132 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2133 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2134 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2135 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2136 including "next" and "finish".
2137
0e420bd8
JB
2138catch exception
2139catch exception unhandled
2140 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2141
2142catch assert
2143 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2144
f822c95b
DJ
2145set sysroot
2146show sysroot
2147 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2148 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2149 an alias to "set sysroot".
2150
83cc5c53
UW
2151info spu
2152 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2153 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2154 architecture.
2155
bd372731
MK
2156* New native configurations
2157
2158OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2159
23181151
DJ
2160set tdesc filename
2161unset tdesc filename
2162show tdesc filename
2163 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2164 not query the target for its built-in description.
2165
c9bb8148
DJ
2166* New targets
2167
54fe9172 2168OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2169MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2170Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2171
6dd09645
JB
2172* New remote packets
2173
2174QPassSignals:
2175 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2176 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2177
23181151
DJ
2178qXfer:features:read:
2179 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2180 features.
6dd09645 2181
83cc5c53
UW
2182qXfer:spu:read:
2183qXfer:spu:write:
2184 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2185 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2186
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2187qXfer:libraries:read:
2188 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2189 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2190 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2191 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2192
483367ee
DJ
2193* Removed targets
2194
2195Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2196
d08950c4
UW
2197alpha*-*-osf1*
2198alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2199d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2200hppa*-*-hiux*
2201i[34567]86-ncr-*
2202i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2203i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2204i[34567]86-*-netware*
2205i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2206i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2207i[34567]86-*-sco*
2208i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2209i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2210i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2211i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2212i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2213i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2214i[34567]86-*-isc*
2215m68*-cisco*-*
2216m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2217mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2218rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2219sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2220
7ce59000
DJ
2221* Other removed features
2222
2223target abug
2224target cpu32bug
2225target est
2226target rom68k
2227
2228 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2229
ea35711c
DJ
2230target hms
2231target e7000
2232target sh3
2233target sh3e
2234
2235 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2236 H8/300.
2237
2238target ocd
2239
2240 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2241 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2242 interfaces.
2243
7ce59000
DJ
2244DWARF 1 support
2245
2246 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2247 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2248
54d61198
DJ
2249Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2250
2251 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2252 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2253 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2254 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2255
ea35711c
DJ
2256MIPS ".pdr" sections
2257
2258 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2259 in debugging information.
2260
2261Scheme support
2262
2263 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2264 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2265
1a69e1e4
DJ
2266set mips stack-arg-size
2267set mips saved-gpreg-size
2268
2269 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2270
6dd09645 2271*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2272
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2273* New targets
2274
2275Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2276Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2277
6aec2e11
DJ
2278* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2279(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2280running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2281
2282* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2283Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2284supported.
2285
17218d91
DJ
2286* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2287broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2288
9ebce043
DJ
2289* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2290stub provides the required support.
2291
7d3d3ece
DJ
2292* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2293longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2294
4f8253f3
JB
2295* New commands
2296
2297set substitute-path
2298unset substitute-path
2299show substitute-path
2300 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2301 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2302 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2303 between compilation and debugging.
2304
9fa66fd7
AS
2305set trace-commands
2306show trace-commands
2307 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2308 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2309 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2310
1f5befc1
DJ
2311* REMOVED features
2312
2313The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2314
2ec3381a
DJ
2315Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2316an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2317
3d00d119
DJ
2318The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2319
be2a5f71
DJ
2320* New remote packets
2321
2322qSupported:
2323 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2324 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2325 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2326 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2327 target.
2328
0876f84a
DJ
2329qXfer:auxv:read:
2330 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2331 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2332
9ebce043
DJ
2333qXfer:memory-map:read:
2334 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2335 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2336
2337vFlashErase:
2338vFlashWrite:
2339vFlashDone:
2340 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2341
0876f84a
DJ
2342* Removed remote packets
2343
2344qPart:auxv:read:
2345 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2346 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2347
e374b601 2348*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2349
96309189
MS
2350* New targets
2351
2352Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2353
2354Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2355
53e5f3cf
AS
2356* New commands
2357
2358init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2359 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2360
ac264b3b
MS
2361The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2362
2363checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2364
2365restart <n> Return the program state to a
2366 previously saved state.
2367
2368info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2369
2370delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2371
2372set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2373 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2374
2375info forks List forks of the user program that
2376 are available to be debugged.
2377
2378fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2379 forks of the user program that are
2380 available to be debugged.
2381
2382delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2383 that are available to be debugged (and
2384 kill the forked process).
2385
2386detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2387 that are available to be debugged (and
2388 allow the process to continue).
2389
3950dc3f
NS
2390* New architecture
2391
2392Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2393
0ea3f30e
DJ
2394* Improved Windows host support
2395
2396GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2397native console support, and remote communications using either
2398network sockets or serial ports.
2399
f79daebb
GM
2400* Improved Modula-2 language support
2401
2402GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2403basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2404pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2405printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2406written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2407GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2408
acab6ab2
MM
2409* REMOVED features
2410
2411The ARM rdi-share module.
2412
f4267320
DJ
2413The Netware NLM debug server.
2414
53e5f3cf 2415*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2416
e0ecbda1
MK
2417* New native configurations
2418
02a677ac 2419OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2420OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2421
d64a6579
KB
2422* New targets
2423
2424Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2425
b33a6190
AS
2426* New command line options
2427
2428--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2429--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2430 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2431--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2432 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2433 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2434 with the --command (-x) option.
2435
11dced61
AC
2436* Deprecated commands removed
2437
2438The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2439removed:
2440
2441 Command Replacement
2442 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2443 othernames set arm disassembler
2444 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2445 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2446 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2447 regs info registers
2448
6fe85783
MK
2449* New BSD user-level threads support
2450
2451It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2452library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2453configurations are:
2454
2455FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2456FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2457OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2458
2459Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2460are not yet supported.
2461
5260ca71
MS
2462* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2463(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2464
e84ecc99
AC
2465* REMOVED configurations and files
2466
2467VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2468Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2469National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2470
31e35378
JB
2471* New "set print array-indexes" command
2472
2473After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2474when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2475behavior.
2476
e85e5c83
MK
2477* VAX floating point support
2478
2479GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2480
d91e9901
AS
2481* User-defined command support
2482
2483In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2484to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2485section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2486
f2cb65ca
MC
2487*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2488
f47b1503
AS
2489* New command line option
2490
2491GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2492debugging.
2493
f2cb65ca
MC
2494* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2495
2496GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2497information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2498by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2499proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2500to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2501
d08c0230
AC
2502* Internationalization
2503
2504When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2505internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2506continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2507
117ea3cf
PH
2508* Ada
2509
2510Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2511implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2512into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2513
d08c0230
AC
2514* New native configurations
2515
2516GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2517
2518* Remote 'p' packet
2519
2520GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2521packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2522
2523* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2524
2525GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2526The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2527features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2528i386 application).
2529
2530GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2531compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2532continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2533configurations:
2534
2535hppa-*-hpux
2536ia64-*-aix
2537mips-*-irix*
2538*-*-lynx
2539mips-*-linux-gnu
2540sds protocol
2541xdr protocol
2542powerpc bdm protocol
2543
2544Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2545made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2546
2547* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2548
2549Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2550been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2551configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2552permanently REMOVED.
2553
2554h8300-*-*
2555mcore-*-*
2556mn10300-*-*
2557ns32k-*-*
2558sh64-*-*
2559v850-*-*
2560
ebb7c577
AC
2561*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2562
2563* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2564
2565When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2566heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2567been fixed.
2568
2569* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2570
2571When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2572fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2573IRIX long double values).
2574
2575* VAX and "next"
2576
2577A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2578command. This problem has been fixed.
2579
860660cb 2580*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2581
0dea2468
AC
2582* Fix for ``many threads''
2583
2584On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2585rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2586error message:
2587
2588 ptrace: No such process.
2589 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2590
2591This problem has been fixed.
2592
2c07db7a
AC
2593* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2594
2595Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2596GDB to dump core).
2597
c23968a2
JB
2598* New ``start'' command.
2599
2600This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2601
71009278
MK
2602* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2603
2604Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2605live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2606platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2607
2608FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2609FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2610NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2611NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2612NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2613OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2614OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2615OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2616OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2617
3c0b7db2
AC
2618* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2619
2620Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2621These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2622of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2623call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2624signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2625
73cc75f3
AC
2626Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2627features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2628include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2629
7243600a
BF
2630* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2631
6f606e1c
MK
2632* New native configurations
2633
97dc871c 2634GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2635OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2636OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2637OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2638OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2639NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2640OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2641
a1b461bf
AC
2642* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2643
2644GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2645The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2646including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2647migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2648compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2649work, was also included.
2650
2651GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2652module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2653
2654h8300-*-*
2655mcore-*-*
2656mn10300-*-*
2657ns32k-*-*
2658sh64-*-*
2659v850-*-*
2660xstormy16-*-*
2661
2662Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2663made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2664
3c7012f5
AC
2665* REMOVED configurations and files
2666
2667Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2668Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2669Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2670Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2671Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2672AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2673Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2674decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2675riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2676sonymips mips-sony-*
2677sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2678
e5fe55f7
AC
2679*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2680
2681* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2682
2683The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2684GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2685command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2686program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2687with GDB".
2688
2689* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2690
2691Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2692libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2693cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2694GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2695shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2696the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2697are created.
2698
2699Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2700
2701* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2702
2703The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2704non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2705compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2706
2707* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2708
2709Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2710wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2711
2712* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2713
2714The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2715permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2716systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2717
2718* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2719
2720Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2721has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2722
2723* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2724
2725GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2726its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2727panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2728
2729* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2730
2731When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2732by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2733not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2734
faae5abe 2735*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2736
9175c9a3
MC
2737* Removed --with-mmalloc
2738
2739Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2740conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2741
3cc87ec0
MK
2742* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2743
2744The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2745the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2746and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2747you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2748
f0424ef6
MK
2749* Revised SPARC target
2750
2751The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2752FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2753support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2754from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2755(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2756
59659be2
ILT
2757* New C++ demangler
2758
2759GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2760names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2761with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2762programs.
2763
9e08b29b
DJ
2764* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2765
2766GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2767arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2768encountered these.
2769
8dfe8985
DC
2770* C++ nested types and namespaces
2771
2772GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2773improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2774is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2775Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2776namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2777"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2778frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2779if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2780GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2781
cced5e27
MK
2782* New native configurations
2783
2784NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2785OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2786OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2787OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2788OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2789
b4b4b794
KI
2790* New debugging protocols
2791
2792M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2793
7989c619
AC
2794* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2795
2796The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2797and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2798tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2799
5994185b
AC
2800* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2801
2802Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2803been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2804configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2805permanently REMOVED.
2806
2807Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2808Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2809Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2810Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2811Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2812AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2813Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2814decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2815riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2816sonymips mips-sony-*
2817sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2818
0ddabb4c
AC
2819* REMOVED configurations and files
2820
2821SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2822SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2823Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2824Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2825H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2826HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2827HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2828HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2829PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2830386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2831Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2832 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2833 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2834SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2835SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2836Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2837Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2838
c7f1390e
DJ
2839*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2840
1fe43d45
AC
2841* Objective-C
2842
2843Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2844integrated into GDB.
2845
e6beb428
AC
2846* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2847
2848DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2849information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2850By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2851backtraces.
2852
2853The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2854have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2855DWARF 2 CFI support.
2856
2857* Hosted file I/O.
2858
2859GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2860file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2861remote protocol documentation for details.
2862
2863* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2864
2865All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2866architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2867to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2868ppc32 on ppc64).
2869
2870* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2871
2872GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2873per-thread variables.
2874
2875* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2876
2877GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2878GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2879
2880* Separate debug info.
2881
2882GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2883automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2884of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2885system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2886and optional debug files.
2887
2888* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2889
2890DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2891describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2892debugger.
2893
2894GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2895for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2896
2897* Java
2898
2899A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2900Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2901considered "useable".
2902
85f8f974
DJ
2903* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2904
2905The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2906commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2907kernel.
2908
0fac0b41
DJ
2909* GDB supports logging output to a file
2910
2911There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2912used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2913
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2914* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2915
2916The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2917disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2918command.
2919
e286caf2 2920* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2921
2922The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2923registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2924
d28f9cdf
DJ
2925* Profiling support
2926
2927A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2928be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2929session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2930"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2931data, for more informative profiling results.
2932
da0f9dcd
AC
2933* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2934
2935The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2936option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2937"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2938
2939Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2940removed.
2941
fb9b6b35
JJ
2942Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2943Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2944Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2945 in a subsequent -var-update.
2946
954a4db8
MK
2947* New native configurations.
2948
2949FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2950
6760f9e6
JB
2951* Multi-arched targets.
2952
b4263afa 2953HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2954Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2955
1b831c93
AC
2956* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2957
2958Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2959been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2960configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2961permanently REMOVED.
2962
8b0e5691 2963Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2964Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2965H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2966HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2967HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2968HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2969PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2970Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2971 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2972 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2973Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2974Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2975
5835abe7
NC
2976* REMOVED configurations and files
2977
2978V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2979Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2980IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2981i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2982i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2983i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2984HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2985 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2986 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2987Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2988Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2989Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2990OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2991I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2992
a094c6fb
AC
2993* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2994
2995The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2996the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2997context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2998address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2999The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3000
299ffc64 3001*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3002
46248966
AC
3003* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3004
3005When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3006`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3007in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3008library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3009shared libs like mad''.
3010
b9d14705 3011* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3012
b9d14705
DJ
3013Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3014the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3015arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3016powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3017
e0e9281e
JB
3018* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3019
3020GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3021and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3022they expand.
3023
dd73b9bb
AC
3024The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3025invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3026
3027The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3028macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3029
e0e9281e
JB
3030Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3031information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3032your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3033information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3034
2250ee0c
CV
3035* Multi-arched targets.
3036
6e3ba3b8
JT
3037DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3038DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3039NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3040National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3041Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3042Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3043
cd9bfe15 3044* New targets.
e33ce519 3045
456f8b9d
DB
3046Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3047
e33ce519 3048
da8ca43d
JT
3049* New native configurations
3050
3051Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3052SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3053MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3054UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3055
cd9bfe15
AC
3056* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3057
3058Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3059been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3060configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3061permanently REMOVED.
3062
92eb23c5 3063Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3064OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3065IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3066Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3067Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3068Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3069i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3070i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3071i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3072HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3073 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3074 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3075I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3076
db034ac5
AC
3077* OBSOLETE languages
3078
3079CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3080
cd9bfe15
AC
3081* REMOVED configurations and files
3082
3083AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3084A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3085AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3086AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3087AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3088
3089testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3090
20f01a46
DH
3091* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3092
3093This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3094commands. The default is 1024.
3095
a5941fbf
MK
3096* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3097
3098Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3099
89743e04
MS
3100* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3101
3102These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3103to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3104from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3105
9fb14e79
JB
3106* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3107
3108The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3109including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3110of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3111
2037aebb
AC
3112*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3113
3114* New targets.
3115
3116Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3117
3118* Bug fixes
3119
3120gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3121mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3122Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3123
3124gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3125dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3126Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3127
3128Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3129Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3130By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3131
3132i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3133avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3134By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3135
37057839 3136*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3137
1a703748
MS
3138* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3139
3140This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3141really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3142In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3143target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3144This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3145(notably embedded) targets.
3146
cefd4ef5
MS
3147* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3148
55241689
AC
3149This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3150process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3151GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3152hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3153
352ed7b4
MS
3154* New command line option
3155
3156GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3157
3158* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3159
3160There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3161command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3162a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3163be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3164open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3165issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3166a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3167it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3168GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3169is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3170
fe419ffc
RE
3171* Changes in ARM configurations.
3172
3173Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3174configuration is fully multi-arch.
3175
eb7cedd9
MK
3176* New native configurations
3177
fe419ffc 3178ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3179x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3180AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3181Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3182
c9f63e6b
CV
3183* New targets
3184
3185Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3186
9b4ff276
AC
3187* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3188
3189Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3190been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3191configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3192permanently REMOVED.
3193
3194AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3195A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3196AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3197AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3198AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3199
b4ceaee6 3200testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3201
e2caac18
AC
3202* REMOVED configurations and files
3203
3204TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3205WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3206PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3207PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3208PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3209Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3210Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3211 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3212SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3213Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3214Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3215ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3216Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3217
c2a727fa
TT
3218* Changes to command line processing
3219
3220The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3221for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3222
467d8519
TT
3223* Changes to key bindings
3224
3225There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3226
7072a954
AC
3227*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3228
3229Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3230
3231Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3232corrupted.
3233
3234Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3235
3236Numerous documentation fixes.
3237
3238Numerous testsuite fixes.
3239
34f47bc4 3240*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3241
3242* New native configurations
3243
3244Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3245x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3246MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3247MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3248ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3249s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3250
bf64bfd6
AC
3251* New targets
3252
def90278 3253Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3254CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3255UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3256
17e78a56 3257* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3258
3259x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3260Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3261Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3262 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3263TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3264WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3265Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3266PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3267PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3268PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3269SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3270Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3271ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3272Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3273
17e78a56
AC
3274stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3275kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3276
7fcca85b
AC
3277Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3278been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3279configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3280permanently REMOVED.
3281
a196c81c 3282* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3283
3284Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3285Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3286Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3287ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3288Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3289ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3290
6d6b80e5 3291* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3292
6d6b80e5 3293GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3294sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3295present.
3296
bf64bfd6
AC
3297* Other news:
3298
e23194cb
EZ
3299* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3300
3301* The MI enabled by default.
3302
3303The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3304revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3305engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3306using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3307which is now deprecated.
3308
3309* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3310
3311GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3312main features are supported:
3313
3314 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3315
3316 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3317 extension;
3318
3319 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3320
3321 - a Pascal expression parser.
3322
3323However, some important features are not yet supported.
3324
3325 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3326
3327 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3328
3329 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3330 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3331
3332 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3333
3334 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3335
3336* Changes in completion.
3337
3338Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3339to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3340users expect at the shell prompt.
3341
3342Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3343`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3344program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3345files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3346be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3347considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3348name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3349
3350`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3351
3352* New platform-independent commands:
3353
3354It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3355hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3356documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3357
3358* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3359
d7275149
MK
3360Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3361revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3362many threads as your system allows you to have.
3363
e23194cb
EZ
3364Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3365
d7275149
MK
3366Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3367multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3368
3369* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3370
3371Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3372
e23194cb
EZ
3373GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3374debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3375supported.)
3376
3377* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3378
3379Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3380breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3381implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3382put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3383and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3384registers.
3385
3386The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3387debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3388watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3389
3390* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3391
3392New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3393the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3394
3395New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3396display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3397IDT.
3398
3399New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3400from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3401New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3402a given linear address.
3403
3404GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3405program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3406which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3407
3408DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3409
6c56c069
EZ
3410It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3411
e23194cb
EZ
3412* Changes in documentation.
3413
3414All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3415Documentation License.
3416
3417Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3418manual.
3419
3420TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3421
3422Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3423manual.
3424
3425The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3426documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3427hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3428
5d6640b1
AC
3429* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3430
3431The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3432``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3433contents of this file.
3434
1a1d8446
AC
3435* gdba.el deleted
3436
3437GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3438
9debab2f 3439*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3440
c63ce875
EZ
3441* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3442
3443Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3444programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3445displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3446greater level of detail.
3447
3448* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3449
3450It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3451bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3452on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3453written.
3454
3455* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3456
3457The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3458necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3459machines ``out of the box''.
3460
3461The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3462possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3463signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3464would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3465interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3466
3467It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3468standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3469even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3470and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3471terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3472
3473The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3474enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3475also works.
3476
3477DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3478GDB.
3479
3480It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3481directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3482times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3483breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3484
ed9a39eb
JM
3485* New native configurations
3486
3487ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3488PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3489
7a292a7a
SS
3490* New targets
3491
96baa820 3492Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3493x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3494PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3495TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3496
085dd6e6
JM
3497* OBSOLETE configurations
3498
3499Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3500Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3501Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3502ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3503Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3504
9debab2f
AC
3505Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3506but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3507these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3508be permanently REMOVED.
3509
5330533d
SS
3510* Gould support removed
3511
3512Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3513
bc9e5bbf
AC
3514* New features for SVR4
3515
3516On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3517without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3518load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3519
3520* Many C++ enhancements
3521
3522C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3523in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3524
adf40b2e
JM
3525* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3526
3527A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3528sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3529with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3530``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3531
3532 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3533 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3534
43e526b9
JM
3535* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3536
3537A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3538expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3539instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3540
3541The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3542added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3543
96baa820
JM
3544* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3545
3546The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3547``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3548include ``set remote P-packet''.
3549
11cf8741
JM
3550* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3551
3552The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3553accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3554``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3555
7876dd43
DB
3556* ``apropos'' command added.
3557
3558The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3559documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3560try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3561
bc9e5bbf
AC
3562* New MI interface
3563
3564A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3565interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3566process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3567"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3568enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3569
3570 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3571
c906108c
SS
3572*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3573
3574* New native configurations
3575
3576HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3577HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3578M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3579
3580* New targets
3581
3582Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3583Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3584Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3585
3586* OBSOLETE configurations
3587
3588Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3589
3590Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3591but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3592these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3593be permanently REMOVED.
3594
3595* ANSI/ISO C
3596
3597As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3598buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3599containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3600use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3601available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3602configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3603information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3604already.
3605
3606* Readline 2.2
3607
3608GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3609
3610* set extension-language
3611
3612You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3613languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3614you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3615 set extension-language .c c++
3616The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3617and their associated languages.
3618
3619* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3620
3621When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3622you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3623PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3624
3625 set processor NAME
3626
3627sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3628following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3629
3630 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3631 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3632 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3633 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3634 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3635 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3636 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3637 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3638 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3639 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3640 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3641
3642At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3643special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3644registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3645only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3646
3647* HP-UX support
3648
3649Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3650more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3651library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3652support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3653for xdb and dbx commands.
3654
3655* Catchpoints
3656
3657HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3658generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3659to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3660
3661This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3662argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3663output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3664
3665* Debugging across forks
3666
3667On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3668in the inferior.
3669
3670* TUI
3671
3672HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3673it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3674configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3675
3676* GDB remote protocol additions
3677
3678A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3679Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3680fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3681allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3682
3683For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3684full 64-bit address. The command
3685
3686 set remoteaddresssize 32
3687
3688can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3689the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3690will be discarded.
3691
3692In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3693command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3694
3695 maint packet heythere
3696
3697sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3698disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3699time.
3700
3701The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3702target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3703downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3704
3705* Tracing can collect general expressions
3706
3707You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3708further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3709doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3710
3711* mask-address variable for Mips
3712
3713For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3714a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3715of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3716
3717* Higher serial baud rates
3718
3719GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3720230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3721to achieve all of these rates.)
3722
3723* i960 simulator
3724
3725The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3726builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3727
3728
3729*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3730
3731* New native configurations
3732
3733Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3734Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3735Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3736PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3737PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3738Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3739Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3740
3741* New targets
3742
3743Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3744Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3745Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3746Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3747MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3748MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3749MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3750Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3751Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3752Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3753NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3754
3755* New debugging protocols
3756
3757ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3758M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3759DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3760PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3761PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3762Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3763
3764* DWARF 2
3765
3766All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3767format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3768information.
3769
3770* Java frontend
3771
3772GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3773only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3774
3775* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3776
3777For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3778loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3779locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3780
3781* Live range splitting
3782
3783GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3784range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3785more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3786
3787* Hurd support
3788
3789GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3790updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3791
3792* ARM Thumb support
3793
3794GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3795instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3796instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3797accordingly.
3798
3799* MIPS16 support
3800
3801GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3802instruction set.
3803
3804* Overlay support
3805
3806GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3807linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3808will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3809control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3810additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3811in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3812
3813* info symbol
3814
3815The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3816the symbol at the specified address.
3817
3818* Trace support
3819
3820The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3821asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3822extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3823includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3824file tracepoint.c for more details.
3825
3826* MIPS simulator
3827
3828Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3829by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3830of most MIPS variants.
3831
3832* Sparc simulator
3833
3834Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3835by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3836Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3837
3838* set architecture
3839
3840For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3841basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3842architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3843the possible architectures.
3844
3845*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3846
3847* New native configurations
3848
3849Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3850M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3851PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3852PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3853PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3854RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3855
3856* New targets
3857
3858ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3859I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3860MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3861MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3862PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3863Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3864Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3865
3866* PowerPC simulator
3867
3868The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3869contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3870PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3871basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3872performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3873
3874* Solaris 2.5
3875
3876GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3877
3878* Windows 95/NT native
3879
3880GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3881To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3882which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3883Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3884ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3885
3886* dont-repeat command
3887
3888If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3889command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3890useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3891extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3892
3893* Send break instead of ^C
3894
3895The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3896rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3897GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3898
3899* Remote protocol timeout
3900
3901The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3902that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3903to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3904
3905* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3906
3907By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3908loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3909stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3910when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3911in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3912
3913Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3914/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3915automatically on hpux10.
3916
3917* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3918
3919Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3920
3921* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3922
3923When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3924may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3925the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3926every character. The default value is 1050.
3927
3928* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3929
3930If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3931a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3932replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3933details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3934remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3935to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3936
3937* Speedups for remote debugging
3938
3939GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3940the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3941and more efficient S-record downloading.
3942
3943* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3944
3945GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3946Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3947
3948*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3949
3950* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3951
3952The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3953can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3954
3955* Remote targets use caching
3956
3957Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3958remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3959it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3960debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3961off' turns the the data cache off.
3962
3963* Remote targets may have threads
3964
3965The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3966in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3967gdb/remote.c for details.
3968
3969* NetROM support
3970
3971If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3972support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3973acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3974write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3975support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3976another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3977sequence is something like
3978
3979 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3980 load <prog>
3981 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3982
3983* Macintosh host
3984
3985GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3986may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3987it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3988available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3989device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3990directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3991scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3992mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3993
3994* Autoconf
3995
3996GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3997but does simplify configuration and building.
3998
3999* hpux10
4000
4001GDB now supports hpux10.
4002
4003*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4004
4005* New native configurations
4006
4007x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4008x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4009NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4010Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4011
4012* New targets
4013
4014A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4015HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4016CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4017PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4018WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4019
4020* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4021
4022GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4023possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4024filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4025the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4026if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4027
4028* Arguments to user-defined commands
4029
4030User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4031Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4032trivial example:
4033define adder
4034 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4035
4036To execute the command use:
4037adder 1 2 3
4038
4039Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4040Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4041use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4042
4043* New `if' and `while' commands
4044
4045This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4046commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4047expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4048execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4049terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4050`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4051if the expression is zero.
4052
4053* Fortran source language mode
4054
4055GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4056Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4057variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4058with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4059Fortran compilers.
4060
4061* Better HPUX support
4062
4063Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4064running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4065processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4066for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4067that behavior do the following before running the program:
4068
4069 adb -w a.out
4070 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4071 control-d
4072
4073This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4074To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4075
4076 adb -w a.out
4077 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4078 control-d
4079
4080You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4081the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4082external linkage.
4083
4084GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4085HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4086
4087* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4088
4089You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4090commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4091current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4092"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4093associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4094configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4095
4096* New DOS host serial code
4097
4098This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4099no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4100a PC's serial port.
4101
4102*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4103
4104* New "complete" command
4105
4106This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4107were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4108
4109* Trailing space optional in prompt
4110
4111"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4112allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4113
4114* Breakpoint hit counts
4115
4116"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4117has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4118can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4119to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4120less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4121that breakpoint.
4122
4123* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4124
4125"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4126an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4127arrays actually contain only short strings.
4128
4129* Shared library breakpoints
4130
4131In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4132breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4133
4134* Hardware watchpoints
4135
4136There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4137targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4138
55241689 4139Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4140
4141* Annotations
4142
4143Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4144and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4145
4146* Improved Irix 5 support
4147
4148GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4149
4150* Improved HPPA support
4151
4152GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4153
4154* New native configurations
4155
4156Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4157HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4158Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4159RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4160
4161* New targets
4162
4163OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4164MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4165Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4166
4167* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4168
4169There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4170This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4171
4172* Fixes
4173
4174As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4175and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4176
4177*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4178
4179* Irix 5 is now supported
4180
4181* HPPA support
4182
4183GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4184to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4185GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4186of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4187can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4188
4189
4190*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4191
4192* User visible changes:
4193
4194* Remote Debugging
4195
4196The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4197target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4198debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4199integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4200debugging info for the mips target).
4201
4202* DEC Alpha native support
4203
4204GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4205debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4206work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4207Alpha-specific notes.
4208
4209* Preliminary thread implementation
4210
4211GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4212
4213* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4214
4215This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4216to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4217for details).
4218
4219* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4220
4221This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4222mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4223call methods, ...etc.
4224
4225*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4226
4227 * User visible changes:
4228
4229Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4230supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4231other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4232somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4233
4234Filename completion now works.
4235
4236When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4237arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4238addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4239
4240All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4241vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4242should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4243your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4244to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4245
4246 * DEC alpha support
4247
4248This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4249cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4250
4251
4252*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4253
4254 * Testsuite
4255
4256This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4257The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4258via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4259
4260 * C++ demangling
4261
4262'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4263emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4264Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4265disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4266use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4267
4268 * Simulators
4269
4270GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4271So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4272Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4273
4274 * New targets supported
4275
4276H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4277H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4278SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4279Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4280IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4281
4282Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4283version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4284GO32 memory extender.
4285
4286 * New remote protocols
4287
4288MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4289
4290 * New source languages supported
4291
4292This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4293used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4294into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4295
4296
4297*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4298
4299 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4300
4301GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4302version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4303University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4304compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4305format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4306(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4307
4308Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4309
4310 * Faster and better demangling
4311
4312We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4313demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4314character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4315only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4316This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4317increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4318symbol lookups.
4319
4320`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4321from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4322compiler does not actually implement.
4323
4324 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4325
4326In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4327inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4328recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4329very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4330The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4331circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4332fix.
4333
4334The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4335release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4336
4337 * Improved configure script
4338
4339The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4340you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4341host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4342done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4343
4344We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4345version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4346`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4347The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4348only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4349We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4350
4351 * Documentation improvements
4352
4353There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4354produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4355before submitting changes.
4356
4357The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4358M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4359`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4360you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4361a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4362
4363*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4364We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4365been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4366or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4367`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4368around this problem.
4369
4370 * New features
4371
4372GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4373the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4374`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4375the target program.
4376
4377The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4378how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4379
4380 * New native hosts supported
4381
4382HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4383386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4384
4385 * New targets supported
4386
4387AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4388
4389 * New file formats supported
4390
4391BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4392HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4393
4394 * Major bug fixes
4395
4396Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4397
4398We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4399printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4400
4401We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4402for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4403release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4404
4405You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4406will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4407
4408We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4409for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4410especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4411libraries.
4412
4413The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4414information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4415command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4416any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4417when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4418
4419 * Internal improvements
4420
4421GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4422debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4423
4424GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4425Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4426symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4427contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4428shared code that handles any of them.
4429
4430 * New command line options
4431
4432We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4433
4434 * Mmalloc licensing
4435
4436The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4437General Public License.
4438
4439*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4440
4441 * Host/native/target split
4442
4443GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4444hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4445target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4446local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4447ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4448
4449The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4450GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4451is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4452code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4453any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4454built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4455handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4456
4457GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4458It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4459plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4460
4461 * New hosts supported
4462
4463HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4464386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4465386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4466
4467 * New targets supported
4468
4469Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
447068030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4471
4472 * New native hosts supported
4473
4474386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4475 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4476386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4477
4478 * New file formats supported
4479
4480BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4481supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4482format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4483
4484 * New commands
4485
4486`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4487`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4488These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4489
4490`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4491
4492You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4493scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4494prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4495executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4496
4497 * C++ improvements
4498
4499We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4500info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4501symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4502
4503Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4504
4505 * Major bug fixes
4506
4507The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4508fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4509by the compiler.
4510
4511We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4512support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4513
4514John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4515slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4516that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4517purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4518the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4519mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4520
4521Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4522about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4523completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4524we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4525
4526 * AMD 29k support
4527
4528A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4529specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4530calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4531usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4532in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4533
4534We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4535Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4536of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4537resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4538
4539 * Remote interfaces
4540
4541We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4542with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4543message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4544This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4545needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4546breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4547each instruction being stepped through.
4548
4549The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4550registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4551
4552There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4553find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4554Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4555processor with a serial port.
4556
4557 * Configuration
4558
4559Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4560`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4561supported, and what files each one uses.
4562
4563 * Library changes
4564
4565There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4566disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4567Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4568disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4569
4570The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4571Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4572can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4573grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4574
4575 * Documentation
4576
4577The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4578reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4579as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4580encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4581system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4582bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4583
4584And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4585
4586
4587*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4588
4589 * Better support for C++ function names
4590
4591GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4592names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4593(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4594single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4595Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4596
4597GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4598the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4599You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4600lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4601for the list of formats.
4602
4603 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4604
4605Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4606C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4607directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4608can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4609usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4610about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4611this problem.)
4612
4613 * New 'maintenance' command
4614
4615All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4616the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4617can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4618
4619 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4620 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4621 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4622 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4623 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4624 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4625
4626The following commands are new:
4627
4628 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4629 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4630 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4631
4632 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4633
4634We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4635(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4636be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4637read after argv processing.
4638
4639 * New hosts supported
4640
4641Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4642
55241689 4643GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4644
4645We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4646is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4647for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4648masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4649fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4650It costs extra.
4651
4652 * New targets supported
4653
4654Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4655
4656 * More smarts about finding #include files
4657
4658GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4659all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4660greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4661especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4662the one that contains your sources.
4663
4664We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4665breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4666try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4667
4668 * Interesting infernals change
4669
4670GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4671section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4672target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4673stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4674
4675 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4676
4677There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4678 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4679 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4680
4681See the ChangeLog for details.
4682
4683*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4684
4685 * New machines supported (host and target)
4686
4687IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4688
4689SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4690
4691 * New malloc package
4692
4693GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4694Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4695capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4696This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4697pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4698more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4699
4700 * info proc
4701
4702The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4703'help info proc' for details.
4704
4705 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4706
4707The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4708Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4709possible.
4710
4711 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4712
4713Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4714support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4715conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4716environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4717that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4718in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4719
4720 * Cross byte order fixes
4721
4722Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4723targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4724
4725 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4726
4727If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4728system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4729`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4730program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4731called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4732Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4733and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4734the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4735option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4736starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4737
4738You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4739the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4740information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4741slower, but makes future operations faster.
4742
4743The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4744build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4745A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4746use is:
4747
4748 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4749
4750The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4751It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4752shared across multiple host platforms.
4753
4754 * longjmp() handling
4755
4756GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4757siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4758all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4759platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4760
4761 * Solaris 2.0
4762
4763Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4764this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4765reading symbols.
4766
4767 * Bug fixes
4768
4769As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4770People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4771crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4772
4773*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4774
4775 * New machines supported (host and target)
4776
4777SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4778 (except core files)
4779BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4780Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4781
4782 * New machines supported (target)
4783
4784AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4785
4786 * C++ support
4787
4788GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4789The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4790per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4791
4792GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4793`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4794extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4795good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4796will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4797released.
4798
4799 * New features for SVR4
4800
4801GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4802shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4803only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4804
4805The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4806on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4807it prints the address mappings of the process.
4808
4809If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4810bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4811
4812 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4813
4814Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4815now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4816skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4817make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4818same code linked statically.
4819
4820 * New Getopt
4821
4822GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4823version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4824continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4825Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4826added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4827future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4828
4829 * Bugs fixed
4830
4831The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4832Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4833See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4834
4835
4836*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4837
4838 * New machines supported (host and target)
4839
4840Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4841NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4842Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4843
4844 * Almost SCO Unix support
4845
4846We had hoped to support:
4847SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4848(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4849that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4850about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4851
4852 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4853
4854GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4855debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4856is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4857send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4858reqired (if any).
4859
4860 * New Readline
4861
4862GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4863is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4864required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4865
4866 * Bugs fixed
4867
4868The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4869Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4870See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4871
4872 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4873
4874GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4875supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4876symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4877
4878Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4879mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4880debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4881mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4882version 2.
4883
4884Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4885really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4886line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4887variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4888situation somewhat.
4889
4890When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4891However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4892methods.
4893
4894We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4895DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4896encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4897
4898
4899*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4900
4901 * Improved configuration
4902
4903Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4904Porting BFD is simpler.
4905
4906 * Stepping improved
4907
4908The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4909of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4910in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4911function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4912
4913 * Bug fixing
4914
4915Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4916
4917 * New host supported (not target)
4918
4919Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4920
4921
4922*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4923
4924 * Multiple source language support
4925
4926GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4927It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4928and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4929language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4930You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4931`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4932
4933 * GDB and Modula-2
4934
4935GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4936currently under development at the State University of New York at
4937Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4938continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4939
4940Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4941debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4942symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4943
4944There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4945in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4946
4947 * set write on/off
4948
4949GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4950a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4951the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4952by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4953effect immediately.
4954
4955 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4956
4957When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4958shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4959The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4960examining core files.
4961
4962 * set listsize
4963
4964You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4965The default is 10.
4966
4967 * New machines supported (host and target)
4968
4969SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4970Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4971Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4972
4973 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4974
4975IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4976
4977 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4978
4979AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4980AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4981Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4982
4983 * New remote interfaces
4984
4985AMD 29000 Adapt
4986AMD 29000 Minimon
4987
4988
4989*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4990
4991 * New Facilities
4992
4993Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4994
4995Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4996target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4997is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4998remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4999remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5000also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5001using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5002stub on the target system.
5003
5004New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5005
5006GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5007library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5008object file types such as a.out and coff.
5009
5010There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5011refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5012
5013
5014 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5015
5016All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5017by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5018
5019For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5020``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5021Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5022
5023What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5024print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5025will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5026all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5027
5028confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5029 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5030 it is already running. Default is ON.
5031
5032editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5033 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5034 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5035 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5036 Default is ON.
5037
5038history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5039 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5040 or the value of the environment variable
5041 GDBHISTFILE.
5042
5043history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5044 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5045 HISTSIZE.
5046
5047history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5048 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5049 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5050
5051history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5052 history expansion will be performed on
5053 command line input. The default is OFF.
5054
5055radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5056 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5057 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5058
5059height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5060 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5061 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5062 variable TERM.
5063
5064width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5065 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5066 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5067 variable TERM.
5068
5069Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5070``set width'' instead.
5071
5072print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5073 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5074 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5075 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5076
5077print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5078 is OFF.
5079
5080print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5081 "raw" form if off.
5082
5083print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5084 like instructions.
5085
5086print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5087
5088
5089 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5090
5091The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5092new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5093are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5094window.
5095
5096
5097 * Support for Shared Libraries
5098
5099GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5100Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5101before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5102happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5103At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5104from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5105shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5106It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5107
5108sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5109 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5110 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5111
5112info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5113
5114
5115 * Watchpoints
5116
5117A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5118expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5119tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5120quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5121problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5122more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5123
5124watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5125
5126info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5127
5128delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5129disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5130enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5131
5132
5133 * C++ multiple inheritance
5134
5135When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5136for C++ programs.
5137
5138 * C++ exception handling
5139
5140Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5141ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5142the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5143handler's context).
5144
5145catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5146 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5147 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5148
5149info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5150 current stack frame.
5151
5152
5153 * Minor command changes
5154
5155The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5156command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5157is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5158
5159The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5160at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5161frames without printing.
5162
5163 * New directory command
5164
5165'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5166The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5167about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5168with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5169find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5170
5171 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5172
5173For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5174for more details.
5175
5176GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5177two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5178Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5179where the program that you are debugging will run.
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