2012-11-09 Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 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* Python scripting
12
13 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
14
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15 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
16
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17* New Python-based convenience functions:
18
19 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
20 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
21 ** $_strlen(str)
22 ** $_regex(str, regex)
23
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24* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
25 given an argument.
26
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27* New configure options
28
29--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
30 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
31 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
32 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
33 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
34 options allow the user to override that default.
35
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36* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
37
38maint info bfds
39 List the BFDs known to GDB.
40
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41python-interactive [command]
42pi [command]
43 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
44 and print the result of expressions.
45
46py [command]
47 "py" is a new alias for "python".
48
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49* Removed commands
50
51 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
52 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
53 instead.
54
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55* MI changes
56
57 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
58 "=cmd-param-changed".
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59 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
60 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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61 ** The creation and deletion of trace state variables are now notified
62 using new async records "=tsv-created" and "=tsv-deleted".
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63 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
64 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
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65 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
66 "=memory-changed".
5b9afe8a 67
80c8d323 68*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 69
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70* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
71 for more x32 ABI info.
72
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73* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
74
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75* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
76
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77* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
78 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
79 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
80 "info os files" lists file descriptors
81 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
82 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
83 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
84 "info os msg" lists message queues
85 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
86
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87* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
88 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
89 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
90 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
91 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
92 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
93
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94* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
95 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
96 record/replay support.
97
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98* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
99
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100* Python scripting
101
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102 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
103 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
104
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105 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
106
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107 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
108 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
109
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110 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
111
112 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
113 the source at which the symbol was defined.
114
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115 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
116 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
117 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
118 symbol's value.
119
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120 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
121 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
122
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123 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
124 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
125 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
126
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127 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
128 object associated with a PC value.
129
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130 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
131 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
132
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133* Go language support.
134 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
135 language.
136
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137* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
138 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
139
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140* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
141 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
142
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143* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
144 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
145 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
146 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
147 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
148 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
149
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150* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
151 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
152 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
153 build/libcpp/expr.c.
154
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155* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
156 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
157
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158* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
159 since December 2007.
160
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161* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
162 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
163 command does. For instance:
164
165 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
166
167 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
168 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
169 created, using the "condition" command.
170
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171* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
172 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
173
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174* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
175
176* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
177 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
178 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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179 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
180 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
181 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
182 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
183 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 184
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185 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
186 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
187 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
188 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
189 the .gdb_index section.
190
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191* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
192
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193* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
194 target.
195
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196* MI changes
197
198 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
199
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200 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
201
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202* New commands
203
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204 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
205 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
206 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
207
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208 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
209 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
210
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211 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
212 several hits.
213
57651221 214 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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215 C++ and Java objects.
216
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217 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
218 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
219 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
220 configured with '--with-python'.
221
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222 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
223 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
224 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
225 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
226 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
227 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
228 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
229
230 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
231 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
232 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
233 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
234
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235 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
236 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
237 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
238 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
239
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240 ** "set print symbol"
241 "show print symbol"
242 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
243 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
244 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
245
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246* Deprecated commands
247
248 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
249 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
250
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251* New targets
252
253Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 254HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 255
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256* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
257 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
258 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
259 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
260 evaluates to true.
261
262* New options
263
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264set mips compression
265show mips compression
266 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
267 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
268 mips16
269 micromips
270 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
271
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272set breakpoint condition-evaluation
273show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 274 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
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275 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
276 available mode.
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277 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
278 target.
279
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280set auto-load off
281 Disable auto-loading globally.
282
283show auto-load
284 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
285
286set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
287show auto-load gdb-scripts
288 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
289
290set auto-load python-scripts on|off
291show auto-load python-scripts
292 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
293
294set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
295show auto-load local-gdbinit
296 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
297
298set auto-load libthread-db on|off
299show auto-load libthread-db
300 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
301
7349ff92 302set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 303show auto-load scripts-directory
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304 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
305 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
306 of the directories listed by this option.
307 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
308
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309set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
310show auto-load safe-path
311 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
312 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
313
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314set debug auto-load on|off
315show debug auto-load
316 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
317
d3ce09f5 318set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 319show dprintf-style
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320 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
321 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
322 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
323 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
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324
325set dprintf-function <expr>
326show dprintf-function
327set dprintf-channel <expr>
328show dprintf-channel
329 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
330 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
331
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332set disconnected-dprintf on|off
333show disconnected-dprintf
334 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
335 after GDB disconnects.
336
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337* New configure options
338
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339--with-auto-load-dir
340 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
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341 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
342 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
343 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
344 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 345
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346--with-auto-load-safe-path
347 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 348 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
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349
350--without-auto-load-safe-path
351 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
352 security feature.
353
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354* New remote packets
355
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356z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
357
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358 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
359 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
360 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
361 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
362
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363QProgramSignals:
364
365 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
366 program without GDB involvement.
367
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368* New command line options
369
370--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
371 before loading inferior.
372--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
373 execute it before loading inferior.
374
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375*** Changes in GDB 7.4
376
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377* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
378 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
379 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
380 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
381 inferior changes.
382
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383* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
384 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
385
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386* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
387 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
388 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
389 target hardware watchpoint.
390
391 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
392 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
393 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
394 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
395
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396* Python scripting
397
32d1c362 398 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 399 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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400 existing one.
401
3a7bf607 402 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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403 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
404 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
405 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
406 now "message", which just prints the error message without
407 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 408
baacfb07 409 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 410 Python API.
713389e0 411
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412 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
413 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 414 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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415 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
416 corresponding value.
417
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418 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
419 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
420 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
421 on GDB start-up.
422
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423 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
424 static_block will return the global and static blocks
425 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
426 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
427
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428 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
429
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430 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
431 "gdb.breakpoints".
432
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433 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
434 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
435 available in the CLI.
436
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437 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
438 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
439 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
440 "some_type.items()".
441
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442 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
443 new object file.
444
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445 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
446 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
447 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
448 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
449 any anonymous fields.
450
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451* MI changes
452
453 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
454 "solib-event".
455
456 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
457 "=breakpoint-modified".
458
459 ** New command -ada-task-info.
460
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461* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
462 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
463 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
464 lives.
465
466 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
467 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
468 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
469 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
470 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
471
472 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
473 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
474
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475* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
476 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
477 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
478 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
479 use this option to specify where to find it.
480
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481* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
482 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
483 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
484 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
485 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
486 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
487 section in the user manual for more details.
488
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489* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
490 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
491 become available after that.
492
71eba9c2 493* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 494
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495* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
496 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
497 gcc version 4.7.
498
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499* New commands
500
501!SHELL COMMAND
502 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
503 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
504
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505* Changed commands
506
507watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
508 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
509 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
510
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511info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
512 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
513 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
514
71eba9c2 515info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
516 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
517 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
518 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
519 name starts with a hyphen.
520
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521collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
522 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
523 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
524 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
525 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
526 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
527 number of bytes that will be collected.
528
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529tstart [NOTES]
530 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
531 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
532 setting the variable trace-notes.
533
534tstop [NOTES]
535 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
536 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
537 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
538 trace-stop-notes.
539
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540* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
541 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
542 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
543 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
544 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
545 is running.
546
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547* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
548 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
549 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
550
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551* New options
552
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553set debug dwarf2-read
554show debug dwarf2-read
555 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
556 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
557
558set debug symtab-create
559show debug symtab-create
560 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
561 creation. The default is off.
562
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563set extended-prompt
564show extended-prompt
565 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
566 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
567 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
568 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
569 prompt is displayed.
570
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571set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
572show print entry-values
573 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
574 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
575 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
576
577set debug entry-values
578show debug entry-values
579 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
580 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
581
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582set basenames-may-differ
583show basenames-may-differ
584 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
585 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
586 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
587 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
588 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
589 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
590 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
591 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
592
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SS
593set trace-user
594show trace-user
595set trace-notes
596show trace-notes
597 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
598 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
599 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
600 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
601
602set trace-stop-notes
603show trace-stop-notes
604 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
605 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
606 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
607 started by someone else.
608
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KY
609* New remote packets
610
611QTEnable
612
613 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
614
615QTDisable
616
617 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
618
f196051f
SS
619QTNotes
620
621 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
622
623qTP
624
625 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
626
405f8e94
SS
627qTMinFTPILen
628
629 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
630 be placed.
631
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PP
632* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
633 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
634
11315641
YQ
635* New targets
636
637Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
638
87326c78
DD
639* New Simulators
640
641Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
642
e8d56f18
JB
643*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
644
645* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
646
d6e00af6 647*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 648
60f98dde
MS
649* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
650 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
651 matches the given regular expression.
652
eee5b35e
DD
653* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
654
b716877b
AB
655* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
656 dumping the instruction opcodes.
657
aae1c79a
DE
658* New command line options
659
660-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
661 This is mostly for testing purposes.
662
a86caf66
DE
663* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
664 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
665
99e7ae30
DE
666* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
667 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
668 source path list instead of augmenting it.
669
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TT
670* GDB now understands thread names.
671
672 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
673 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
674
675 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
676 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
677
f4b8a18d
KW
678* OpenCL C
679 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
680 has been integrated into GDB.
681
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682* Python scripting
683
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PM
684 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
685 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
686 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
687
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PM
688 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
689 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
690 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
691 and allows for more dynamic content.
692
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693 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
694 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
695 have an is_valid method.
696
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PM
697 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
698 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
699 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
700
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DE
701 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
702
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PM
703 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
704 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
705 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
706 that function like so:
707
708 result = some_value (10,20)
709
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DE
710 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
711 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
712 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
713
7b51bc51
DE
714 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
715 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
716 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
717 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
718 New function: register_pretty_printer.
719
720 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
721 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
722
99e7ae30
DE
723 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
724
d8e22779
TT
725 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
726 selected thread.
727
4694da01
TT
728 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
729 holds the thread's name.
730
505500db
SW
731 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
732 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 733 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
734 The following events are currently supported:
735 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
736 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
737 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
738
def98928
TT
739* C++ Improvements:
740
741 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
742 instantiation. For example, if you have:
743
744 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
745
746 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
747 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
748 was added to GCC 4.5.
749
66cb8159
TT
750 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
751 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
752 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
753 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
754 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
755 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
756
4aac0db7
UW
757* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
758 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
759 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
760 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
761 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
762
283e6a52
TT
763* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
764 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
765 execution to a label.
766
767* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
768 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
769 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
770 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
771
b56df873 772* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 773 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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TT
774 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
775 of scope.
776
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PA
777* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
778
779 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
780 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
781 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
782 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
783 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
784 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
785
786 (gdb) info threads
787 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
788
789 While now you see this:
790
791 (gdb) info threads
792 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
793
794 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
795 dumps.
796
797 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
798 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
799 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
800 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
801
f1310107
TJB
802* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
803 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
804 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
805 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
806 section in the user manual for more details.
807
248c9dbc
JB
808* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
809
1aee7009
JB
810 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
811 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 812
eb826dc6
MF
813 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
814
44603653
JB
815* New native configurations
816
817ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
818
91021223
MF
819* New targets:
820
821Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
822
6e1bb179
JB
823* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
824 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
825 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
826 in the GDB user manual.
827
50c97f38
TT
828* Guile support was removed.
829
448a92bf
MF
830* New features in the GNU simulator
831
832 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
833
66ee2731
MF
834 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
835
76b8507d 836*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 837
ba25b921
PA
838* Shared library support for remote targets by default
839
840 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
841 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
842 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
843 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
844 was always disabled for such configurations.
845
4656f5c6
SW
846* C++ Improvements:
847
848 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
849
850 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
851 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
852 For example:
853 namespace A
854 {
855 class B { };
856 void foo (B) { }
857 }
858 ...
859 A::B b
860 foo(b)
861 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
862 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
863 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
864
865 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
866
867 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
868 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
869 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
870 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
871 entry.
872 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
873 mentioned flavors of operators.
874
254e6b9e
DE
875 ** static const class members
876
877 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
878 class definition has been fixed.
879
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PM
880* Windows Thread Information Block access.
881
882 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
883 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
884 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
885 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
886 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
887 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
888
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PA
889* Static tracepoints
890
891 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
892 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
893 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
894 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
895 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
896 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
897 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
898 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
899 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
900 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
901 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
902 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
903 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
904 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
905 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
906 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
907 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
908 the "New remote packets" section below.
909
ca11e899
SS
910* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
911
912 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
913 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
914 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
915 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
916
917* Observer mode
918
919 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
920 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
921 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
922 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
923 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
924 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
925 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
926
927* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
928 current thread.
929
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PM
930* New remote packets
931
932qGetTIBAddr
933
934 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
935
dde08ee1
PA
936qRelocInsn
937
938 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
939 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
940 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
941 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
942 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
943 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
944
0fb4aa4b
PA
945qTfSTM, qTsSTM
946
947 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
948
949qTSTMat
950
951 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
952 program.
953
954qXfer:statictrace:read
955
956 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
957 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
958 to gdb's qSupported query.
959
ca11e899
SS
960QAllow
961
962 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
963
964QTDPsrc
965
966 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
967 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
968
3f7b2faa
DE
969* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
970 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
971 a directory.
972
d337e9f0
PA
973* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
974
0fb4aa4b
PA
975 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
976 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
977 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
978 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
979
980 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
981 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
982 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
983 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
984 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
985 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
986 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
987
988 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
989 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 990
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PM
991 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
992
c8d5aac9
L
993* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
994 it understands register description.
995
7c953934
TT
996* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
997
8685c86f
L
998* X86 general purpose registers
999
1000 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1001 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1002 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1003 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1004 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1005
95a42b64 1006* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1007 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1008 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1009 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1010 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1011 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1012
8bd10a10
CM
1013* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1014 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1015 in the specified file.
1016
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PA
1017* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1018 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1019 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1020 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1021 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1022 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1023 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1024 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1025 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1026 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1027
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PA
1028* New commands
1029
f1421989
HZ
1030eval template, expressions...
1031 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1032 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1033
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PA
1034set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1035show target-file-system-kind
1036 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1037 names.
1038
6149aea9
PA
1039save breakpoints <filename>
1040 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1041 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1042 definitions, use the `source' command.
1043
1044`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1045is now deprecated.
1046
0fb4aa4b
PA
1047info static-tracepoint-markers
1048 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1049
1050strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1051 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1052 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1053
ca11e899
SS
1054set observer on|off
1055show observer
1056 Enable and disable observer mode.
1057
1058set may-write-registers on|off
1059set may-write-memory on|off
1060set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1061set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1062set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1063set may-interrupt on|off
1064 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1065 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1066 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1067 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1068 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1069 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1070 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1071
1072set record memory-query on|off
1073show record memory-query
1074 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1075 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1076
53a71c06
CR
1077* Changed commands
1078
1079disassemble
1080 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1081
f3e9a817
PM
1082* Python scripting
1083
9279c692
JB
1084** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1085 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1086 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1087 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1088 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1089
adc36818 1090** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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PM
1091 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1092 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1093 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1094
fa33c3cd 1095** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1096 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1097
1098** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1099
1100** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1101
967cf477
DE
1102** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1103
8a1ea21f
DE
1104** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1105 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1106 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1107
a7bdde9e
VP
1108* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1109there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1110tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1111regular breakpoints.
1112
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PA
1113* New targets
1114
1115ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1116
6aecb9c2
JB
1117* D language support.
1118 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1119 language.
1120
431e49aa
TJB
1121* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1122 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1123 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1124 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1125 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1126
1127* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1128 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1129 conditions of the form:
1130
1131 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1132
1133 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1134 interface mentioned above.
1135
bfbf3774 1136*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1137
4eef138c
TT
1138* C++ Improvements
1139
1140 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1141
1142 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1143 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1144 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1145 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1146 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1147
4eef138c
TT
1148 ** Bug Fixes
1149
1150 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1151 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1152 qualified name.
1153
1154 ** Cast Operators
1155
1156 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1157 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1158
2d1c1221
ME
1159* New targets
1160
1161Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1162Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1163
1164* New Simulators
1165
1166Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1167Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1168
6c95b8df
PA
1169* Multi-program debugging.
1170
1171 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1172 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1173 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1174 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1175 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1176 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1177 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1178 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1179
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SS
1180* New tracing features
1181
1182 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1183
1184 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1185
1186 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1187 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1188 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1189 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1190 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1191 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1192 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1193 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1194 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1195 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1196
d5551862 1197 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1198
1199 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1200 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1201 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1202 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1203 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1204 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1205 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1206 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1207 the regular trace command.
1208
d5551862
SS
1209 ** Disconnected tracing
1210
1211 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1212 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1213 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1214 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1215 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1216
00bf0b85
SS
1217 ** Trace files
1218
1219 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1220 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1221 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1222 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1223 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1224 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1225 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1226
1227 ** Circular trace buffer
1228
1229 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1230 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1231 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1232 not be available for all target agents.
1233
21a0512e
PP
1234* Changed commands
1235
1236disassemble
1237 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1238 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1239
0fe7935b
DJ
1240info variables
1241 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1242 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1243
fb2e7cb4
JB
1244source
1245 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1246 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1247 support.
1248
1249 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1250 "set script-extension" (see below).
1251
6c95b8df
PA
1252* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1253
399cd161
MS
1254record save [<FILENAME>]
1255 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1256 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1257
1258record restore <FILENAME>
1259 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1260 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1261
6c95b8df
PA
1262add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1263 Add a new inferior.
1264
1265clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1266 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1267 inferior has loaded.
1268
1269remove-inferior ID
1270 Remove an inferior.
1271
1272maint info program-spaces
1273 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1274
9a7071a8
JB
1275set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1276show remote interrupt-sequence
1277 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1278 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1279 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1280 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1281 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1282
1283set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1284show remote interrupt-on-connect
1285 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1286 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1287 Linux kernel.
1288
1289set remotebreak [on | off]
1290show remotebreak
1291Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1292
f61e138d
SS
1293tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1294 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1295
1296info tvariables
1297 List trace state variables and their values.
1298
1299delete tvariable $NAME ...
1300 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1301
6da95a67
SS
1302teval EXPR, ...
1303 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1304 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1305
7a697b8d
SS
1306ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1307 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1308
b0f02ee9
JK
1309* New expression syntax
1310
1311 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1312 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1313
6c95b8df
PA
1314* New options
1315
1316set follow-exec-mode new|same
1317show follow-exec-mode
1318 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1319 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1320 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1321
236f1d4d
SS
1322set default-collect EXPR, ...
1323show default-collect
1324 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1325 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1326 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1327
d5551862
SS
1328set disconnected-tracing
1329show disconnected-tracing
1330 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1331 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1332 upon disconnection.
1333
4daf5ac0
SS
1334set circular-trace-buffer
1335show circular-trace-buffer
1336 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1337 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1338 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1339 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1340
fb2e7cb4
JB
1341set script-extension off|soft|strict
1342show script-extension
1343 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1344 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1345 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1346 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1347 evaluation failed.
1348 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1349
2b71fc8e
JB
1350set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1351show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1352 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1353 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1354 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1355 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1356 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1357 is on.
1358
de2e5182
TT
1359* Python API Improvements
1360
1361 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1362 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1363 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1364
1365 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1366 `is_base_class' attribute.
1367
1368 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1369
1370 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1371 evaluate an expression.
1372
f61e138d
SS
1373* New remote packets
1374
1375QTDV
1376 Define a trace state variable.
1377
1378qTV
1379 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1380
d5551862
SS
1381QTDisconnected
1382 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1383
4daf5ac0
SS
1384QTBuffer:circular
1385 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1386
d5551862
SS
1387qTfP, qTsP
1388 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1389
2d483d34
MS
1390* Bug fixes
1391
1392Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1393
6e0e5977
JB
1394Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1395much more reliable. In particular:
1396 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1397 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1398 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1399 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1400 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1401 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1402 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1403 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1404 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1405 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1406 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1407 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1408 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1409 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1410 non-threaded programs.
1411
93c26624
JK
1412PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1413This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1414libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1415executable program.
1416
abc7453d 1417*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1418
4efc6507
DE
1419* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1420dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1421them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1422for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1423"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1424
782b2b07
SS
1425* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1426breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1427or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1428the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1429for tracepoint actions.
1430
53a71c06
CR
1431* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1432raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1433modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1434
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1435* Process record and replay
1436
1437 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1438 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1439 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1440 execute commands.
1441
64644d9b
MS
1442* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1443step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1444set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1445reverse execution.
1446
b9412953
DD
1447* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1448feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
14492.6.28 or later.
1450
6c7a06a3
TT
1451* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1452target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1453char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1454literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1455U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1456`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1457system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1458the installation instructions for more information.
1459
f1838a98
UW
1460* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1461remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1462with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1463the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1464
55333a84
DE
1465* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1466and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1467
7f6a6314
PM
1468* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1469now complete on file names.
1470
65d12d83
TT
1471* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1472completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1473For instance, consider:
1474
1475 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1476 # struct example variable;
1477 (gdb) p variable.
1478
1479If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1480completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1481
edb3359d
DJ
1482* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1483the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1484
2fae03e8
TT
1485* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1486operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1487macros.
1488
47a3467a 1489* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1490the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1491implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1492
1493* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1494registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1495can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1496and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1497
08388c79
DE
1498* New remote packets
1499
1500qSearch:memory:
1501 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1502
a6f3e723
SL
1503QStartNoAckMode
1504 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1505 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1506 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1507
d7713ae0
EZ
1508vKill
1509 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1510 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1511
07e059b5
VP
1512qXfer:osdata:read
1513 Obtains additional operating system information
1514
47a3467a
PA
1515qXfer:siginfo:read
1516qXfer:siginfo:write
1517 Read or write additional signal information.
1518
060871df
PA
1519* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1520
1521 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1522 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1523 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1524
c055b101 1525* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1526DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1527
1528* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1529and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1530`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1531
31fffb02
CS
1532* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1533with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1534
88d8a8e0
JB
1535* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1536
7f99b190
JB
1537* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1538
ccd213ac
DJ
1539* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1540which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1541
1fddbabb 1542* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1543list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1544
a0ef4274
DJ
1545* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1546conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1547have also been fixed.
1548
bfb8797a 1549* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1550From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1551are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1552
71c25dea
TT
1553* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1554example, given:
1555
1556 template<typename T> class C { };
1557 C<char const *> c;
1558
1559GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1560
1561 ptype C<char const *>
1562 ptype C<char const*>
1563 ptype C<const char *>
1564 ptype C<const char*>
1565
ccd213ac
DJ
1566* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1567
1568 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1569 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1570
7ae0e2a2
UW
1571 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1572 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1573 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1574
a6f3e723
SL
1575 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1576 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1577
da8bd9a3
DJ
1578 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1579 gdbserver.
1580
d70e31dd
DE
1581 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1582 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1583
1584 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1585 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1586 as appropriate.
1587
d57a3c85
TJB
1588* Python scripting
1589
1590 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1591 available is determined at configure time.
1592
d8906c6f
TJB
1593 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1594
aadc346a
JB
1595* Ada tasking support
1596
1597 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1598 been introduced:
1599
1600 info tasks
1601 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1602 info task N
1603 Print detailed information about task number N.
1604 task
1605 Print the task number of the current task.
1606 task N
1607 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1608
adb483fe
DJ
1609* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1610add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1611
2277426b
PA
1612* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1613
1614 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1615 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1616 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1617 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1618 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1619 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1620 below.
1621
08d16641
PA
1622* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1623"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1624information.
1625
e35359c5
UW
1626* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1627to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1628architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1629See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1630more information.
1631
85e747d2
UW
1632* Multi-architecture debugging.
1633
1634 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1635 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1636 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1637 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1638 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1639
1640* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1641use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1642Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1643powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1644--enable-targets configure option.
1645
11ade57a
PA
1646* Non-stop mode debugging.
1647
1648 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1649 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1650 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1651 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1652 section in the user manual for more information.
1653
1654 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1655 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1656 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1657 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1658 extensions on linux targets.
1659
d7713ae0 1660* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1661
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1662catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1663 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1664 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1665 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1666 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1667 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1668 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1669 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1670 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1671
08388c79
DE
1672find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1673 val1 [, val2, ...]
1674 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1675
d57a3c85
TJB
1676maint set python print-stack
1677maint show python print-stack
1678 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1679
1680python [CODE]
1681 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1682
d7713ae0
EZ
1683macro define
1684macro list
1685macro undef
1686 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1687 interactively.
1688
1689info os processes
1690 Show operating system information about processes.
1691
2277426b
PA
1692info inferiors
1693 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1694
1695inferior NUM
1696 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1697
1698detach inferior NUM
1699 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1700
1701kill inferior NUM
1702 Kill inferior number NUM.
1703
d7713ae0
EZ
1704* New options
1705
3285f3fe
UW
1706set spu stop-on-load
1707show spu stop-on-load
1708 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1709
ff1a52c6
UW
1710set spu auto-flush-cache
1711show spu auto-flush-cache
1712 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1713 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1714
d7713ae0
EZ
1715set sh calling-convention
1716show sh calling-convention
1717 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1718
e0a3ce09 1719set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1720show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1721 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1722
1723set disassemble-next-line
1724show disassemble-next-line
1725 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1726 the debuggee stops.
1727
1728set remote noack-packet
1729show remote noack-packet
1730 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1731 under "New remote packets."
1732
1733set remote query-attached-packet
1734show remote query-attached-packet
1735 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1736
1737set remote read-siginfo-object
1738show remote read-siginfo-object
1739 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1740 packet.
1741
1742set remote write-siginfo-object
1743show remote write-siginfo-object
1744 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1745 packet.
1746
40ab02ce
MS
1747set remote reverse-continue
1748show remote reverse-continue
1749 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1750
1751set remote reverse-step
1752show remote reverse-step
1753 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1754
d7713ae0
EZ
1755set displaced-stepping
1756show displaced-stepping
1757 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1758 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1759 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1760
1761set debug displaced
1762show debug displaced
1763 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1764
1765maint set internal-error
1766maint show internal-error
1767 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1768
1769maint set internal-warning
1770maint show internal-warning
1771 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1772
ccd213ac
DJ
1773set exec-wrapper
1774show exec-wrapper
1775unset exec-wrapper
1776 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1777
aad4b048
JB
1778set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1779show multiple-symbols
1780 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1781 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1782 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1783
74960c60
VP
1784set breakpoint always-inserted
1785show breakpoint always-inserted
1786 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1787 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1788 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1789
0428b8f5
DJ
1790set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1791show arm fallback-mode
1792set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1793show arm force-mode
1794 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1795 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1796 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1797 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1798
10568435
JK
1799set disable-randomization
1800show disable-randomization
1801 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1802 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1803 multiple debugging sessions.
1804
d7713ae0
EZ
1805set non-stop
1806show non-stop
1807 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1808 a breakpoint.
1809
b3eb342c 1810set target-async
d7713ae0 1811show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1812 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1813 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1814 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1815 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1816
6c7a06a3
TT
1817set target-wide-charset
1818show target-wide-charset
1819 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1820 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1821
84603566
SL
1822set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1823show tcp auto-retry
1824set tcp connect-timeout
1825show tcp connect-timeout
1826 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1827 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1828 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1829
17a37d48
PP
1830set libthread-db-search-path
1831show libthread-db-search-path
1832 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1833 libthread_db.
1834
d4db2f36
PA
1835set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1836show schedule-multiple
1837 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1838 the current process.
1839
4e5d721f
DE
1840set stack-cache
1841show stack-cache
1842 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1843 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1844 affecting correctness.
1845
910c5da8
JB
1846set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1847show interactive-mode
1848 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1849 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1850 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1851 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1852 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1853
2277426b
PA
1854* Removed commands
1855
1856info forks
1857 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1858 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1859 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1860 command.
1861
1862fork NUM
1863 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1864 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1865 alias for the `fork' command.
1866
1867process PID
1868 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1869 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1870 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1871
1872delete fork NUM
1873 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1874 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1875 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1876 fork' command.
1877
1878detach fork NUM
1879 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1880 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1881 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1882 fork' command.
1883
a80b95ba
TG
1884* New native configurations
1885
1886x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1887
b8bfd3ed
JB
1888x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1889
75a2d5e7
TT
1890* New targets
1891
c28c63d8 1892Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1893x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1894x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1895S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1896
6de3146c
PA
1897* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1898 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1899
d5cbbe6e
JB
1900* Removed commands
1901
1902catch load
1903catch unload
1904 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1905
75feb17d 1906*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1907
af5ca30d
NH
1908* New native configurations
1909
1910NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1911Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1912
1913* New targets
1914
1915NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1916Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1917
7a404eba
PA
1918* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1919
1920 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1921 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1922 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1923 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1924
430ebac9
PA
1925* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1926(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1927
fe6fbf8b 1928* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1929is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1930
1931* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1932including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1933and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1934
10665d76
JB
1935* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1936accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1937more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1938
7cc46491
DJ
1939* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1940
d71340b8
DJ
1941* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1942registers on PowerPC targets.
1943
523c4513
DJ
1944* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1945targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1946
a6b151f1
DJ
1947* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1948commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1949
2d717e4f
DJ
1950* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1951extended-remote mode.
1952
24a836bd 1953* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1954The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1955error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1956The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1957
d0c678e6
UW
1958* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1959building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1960target architectures.
1961
d64a946d
TJB
1962* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1963Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1964now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1965stored in two consecutive float registers.
1966
ee163bf5
VP
1967* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1968breakpoints now.
1969
b93b6ca7 1970* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1971Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1972include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1973 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1974 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1975 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1976 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1977 of an assignment
1978 - Improved command completion in Ada
1979 - Several bug fixes
1980
d001be7a
DJ
1981* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1982process.
1983
a6b151f1
DJ
1984* New commands
1985
6d53d0af
JB
1986set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1987show print frame-arguments
1988 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1989 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1990
a6b151f1
DJ
1991remote put
1992remote get
1993remote delete
1994 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1995
1996* New MI commands
1997
1998-target-file-put
1999-target-file-get
2000-target-file-delete
2001 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2002
2003* New remote packets
2004
2005vFile:open:
2006vFile:close:
2007vFile:pread:
2008vFile:pwrite:
2009vFile:unlink:
2010 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2011
2d717e4f
DJ
2012vAttach
2013 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2014 mode.
2015
2016vRun
2017 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2018
8d5f9c6f 2019*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2020
19d378fc
MS
2021* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2022bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2023Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2024
3a40aaa0
UW
2025* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2026symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2027-Bsymbolic linker option.
2028
a6ec25f2
BW
2029* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2030recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2031is not supported.
2032
6dd09645
JB
2033* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2034frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2035
c9bb8148
DJ
2036* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
203732-bit or 64-bit register values.
2038
0d5de010
DJ
2039* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2040
23181151
DJ
2041* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2042target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2043a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2044
ea37ba09
DJ
2045* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2046automatically displayed as character or string data.
2047
2048* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2049arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2050as strings.
e1f48ead 2051
123dc839
DJ
2052* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2053for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2054only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2055
05a4558a
DJ
2056* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2057iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2058
7c963485
PA
2059* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2060ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2061has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2062
b18be20d
DJ
2063* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2064
0ca420ce
UW
2065* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2066
31d99776
DJ
2067* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2068layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2069segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2070
a4642986
MR
2071* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2072immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2073
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2074* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2075"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2076packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2077where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2078Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2079
2080* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2081(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2082
2083* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2084according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2085
c9bb8148
DJ
2086* New commands
2087
23776285
MR
2088set remoteflow
2089show remoteflow
2090 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2091 when debugging using remote targets.
2092
c9bb8148
DJ
2093set mem inaccessible-by-default
2094show mem inaccessible-by-default
2095 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2096 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2097 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2098 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2099 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2100
2101set breakpoint auto-hw
2102show breakpoint auto-hw
2103 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2104 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2105 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2106 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2107 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2108 including "next" and "finish".
2109
0e420bd8
JB
2110catch exception
2111catch exception unhandled
2112 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2113
2114catch assert
2115 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2116
f822c95b
DJ
2117set sysroot
2118show sysroot
2119 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2120 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2121 an alias to "set sysroot".
2122
83cc5c53
UW
2123info spu
2124 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2125 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2126 architecture.
2127
bd372731
MK
2128* New native configurations
2129
2130OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2131
23181151
DJ
2132set tdesc filename
2133unset tdesc filename
2134show tdesc filename
2135 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2136 not query the target for its built-in description.
2137
c9bb8148
DJ
2138* New targets
2139
54fe9172 2140OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2141MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2142Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2143
6dd09645
JB
2144* New remote packets
2145
2146QPassSignals:
2147 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2148 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2149
23181151
DJ
2150qXfer:features:read:
2151 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2152 features.
6dd09645 2153
83cc5c53
UW
2154qXfer:spu:read:
2155qXfer:spu:write:
2156 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2157 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2158
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2159qXfer:libraries:read:
2160 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2161 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2162 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2163 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2164
483367ee
DJ
2165* Removed targets
2166
2167Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2168
d08950c4
UW
2169alpha*-*-osf1*
2170alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2171d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2172hppa*-*-hiux*
2173i[34567]86-ncr-*
2174i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2175i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2176i[34567]86-*-netware*
2177i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2178i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2179i[34567]86-*-sco*
2180i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2181i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2182i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2183i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2184i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2185i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2186i[34567]86-*-isc*
2187m68*-cisco*-*
2188m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2189mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2190rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2191sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2192
7ce59000
DJ
2193* Other removed features
2194
2195target abug
2196target cpu32bug
2197target est
2198target rom68k
2199
2200 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2201
ea35711c
DJ
2202target hms
2203target e7000
2204target sh3
2205target sh3e
2206
2207 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2208 H8/300.
2209
2210target ocd
2211
2212 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2213 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2214 interfaces.
2215
7ce59000
DJ
2216DWARF 1 support
2217
2218 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2219 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2220
54d61198
DJ
2221Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2222
2223 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2224 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2225 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2226 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2227
ea35711c
DJ
2228MIPS ".pdr" sections
2229
2230 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2231 in debugging information.
2232
2233Scheme support
2234
2235 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2236 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2237
1a69e1e4
DJ
2238set mips stack-arg-size
2239set mips saved-gpreg-size
2240
2241 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2242
6dd09645 2243*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2244
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2245* New targets
2246
2247Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2248Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2249
6aec2e11
DJ
2250* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2251(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2252running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2253
2254* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2255Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2256supported.
2257
17218d91
DJ
2258* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2259broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2260
9ebce043
DJ
2261* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2262stub provides the required support.
2263
7d3d3ece
DJ
2264* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2265longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2266
4f8253f3
JB
2267* New commands
2268
2269set substitute-path
2270unset substitute-path
2271show substitute-path
2272 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2273 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2274 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2275 between compilation and debugging.
2276
9fa66fd7
AS
2277set trace-commands
2278show trace-commands
2279 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2280 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2281 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2282
1f5befc1
DJ
2283* REMOVED features
2284
2285The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2286
2ec3381a
DJ
2287Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2288an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2289
3d00d119
DJ
2290The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2291
be2a5f71
DJ
2292* New remote packets
2293
2294qSupported:
2295 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2296 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2297 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2298 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2299 target.
2300
0876f84a
DJ
2301qXfer:auxv:read:
2302 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2303 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2304
9ebce043
DJ
2305qXfer:memory-map:read:
2306 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2307 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2308
2309vFlashErase:
2310vFlashWrite:
2311vFlashDone:
2312 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2313
0876f84a
DJ
2314* Removed remote packets
2315
2316qPart:auxv:read:
2317 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2318 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2319
e374b601 2320*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2321
96309189
MS
2322* New targets
2323
2324Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2325
2326Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2327
53e5f3cf
AS
2328* New commands
2329
2330init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2331 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2332
ac264b3b
MS
2333The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2334
2335checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2336
2337restart <n> Return the program state to a
2338 previously saved state.
2339
2340info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2341
2342delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2343
2344set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2345 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2346
2347info forks List forks of the user program that
2348 are available to be debugged.
2349
2350fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2351 forks of the user program that are
2352 available to be debugged.
2353
2354delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2355 that are available to be debugged (and
2356 kill the forked process).
2357
2358detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2359 that are available to be debugged (and
2360 allow the process to continue).
2361
3950dc3f
NS
2362* New architecture
2363
2364Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2365
0ea3f30e
DJ
2366* Improved Windows host support
2367
2368GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2369native console support, and remote communications using either
2370network sockets or serial ports.
2371
f79daebb
GM
2372* Improved Modula-2 language support
2373
2374GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2375basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2376pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2377printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2378written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2379GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2380
acab6ab2
MM
2381* REMOVED features
2382
2383The ARM rdi-share module.
2384
f4267320
DJ
2385The Netware NLM debug server.
2386
53e5f3cf 2387*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2388
e0ecbda1
MK
2389* New native configurations
2390
02a677ac 2391OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2392OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2393
d64a6579
KB
2394* New targets
2395
2396Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2397
b33a6190
AS
2398* New command line options
2399
2400--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2401--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2402 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2403--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2404 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2405 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2406 with the --command (-x) option.
2407
11dced61
AC
2408* Deprecated commands removed
2409
2410The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2411removed:
2412
2413 Command Replacement
2414 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2415 othernames set arm disassembler
2416 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2417 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2418 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2419 regs info registers
2420
6fe85783
MK
2421* New BSD user-level threads support
2422
2423It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2424library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2425configurations are:
2426
2427FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2428FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2429OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2430
2431Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2432are not yet supported.
2433
5260ca71
MS
2434* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2435(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2436
e84ecc99
AC
2437* REMOVED configurations and files
2438
2439VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2440Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2441National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2442
31e35378
JB
2443* New "set print array-indexes" command
2444
2445After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2446when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2447behavior.
2448
e85e5c83
MK
2449* VAX floating point support
2450
2451GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2452
d91e9901
AS
2453* User-defined command support
2454
2455In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2456to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2457section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2458
f2cb65ca
MC
2459*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2460
f47b1503
AS
2461* New command line option
2462
2463GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2464debugging.
2465
f2cb65ca
MC
2466* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2467
2468GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2469information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2470by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2471proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2472to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2473
d08c0230
AC
2474* Internationalization
2475
2476When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2477internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2478continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2479
117ea3cf
PH
2480* Ada
2481
2482Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2483implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2484into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2485
d08c0230
AC
2486* New native configurations
2487
2488GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2489
2490* Remote 'p' packet
2491
2492GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2493packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2494
2495* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2496
2497GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2498The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2499features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2500i386 application).
2501
2502GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2503compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2504continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2505configurations:
2506
2507hppa-*-hpux
2508ia64-*-aix
2509mips-*-irix*
2510*-*-lynx
2511mips-*-linux-gnu
2512sds protocol
2513xdr protocol
2514powerpc bdm protocol
2515
2516Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2517made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2518
2519* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2520
2521Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2522been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2523configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2524permanently REMOVED.
2525
2526h8300-*-*
2527mcore-*-*
2528mn10300-*-*
2529ns32k-*-*
2530sh64-*-*
2531v850-*-*
2532
ebb7c577
AC
2533*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2534
2535* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2536
2537When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2538heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2539been fixed.
2540
2541* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2542
2543When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2544fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2545IRIX long double values).
2546
2547* VAX and "next"
2548
2549A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2550command. This problem has been fixed.
2551
860660cb 2552*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2553
0dea2468
AC
2554* Fix for ``many threads''
2555
2556On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2557rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2558error message:
2559
2560 ptrace: No such process.
2561 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2562
2563This problem has been fixed.
2564
2c07db7a
AC
2565* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2566
2567Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2568GDB to dump core).
2569
c23968a2
JB
2570* New ``start'' command.
2571
2572This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2573
71009278
MK
2574* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2575
2576Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2577live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2578platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2579
2580FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2581FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2582NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2583NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2584NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2585OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2586OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2587OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2588OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2589
3c0b7db2
AC
2590* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2591
2592Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2593These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2594of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2595call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2596signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2597
73cc75f3
AC
2598Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2599features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2600include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2601
7243600a
BF
2602* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2603
6f606e1c
MK
2604* New native configurations
2605
97dc871c 2606GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2607OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2608OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2609OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2610OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2611NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2612OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2613
a1b461bf
AC
2614* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2615
2616GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2617The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2618including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2619migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2620compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2621work, was also included.
2622
2623GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2624module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2625
2626h8300-*-*
2627mcore-*-*
2628mn10300-*-*
2629ns32k-*-*
2630sh64-*-*
2631v850-*-*
2632xstormy16-*-*
2633
2634Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2635made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2636
3c7012f5
AC
2637* REMOVED configurations and files
2638
2639Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2640Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2641Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2642Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2643Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2644AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2645Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2646decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2647riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2648sonymips mips-sony-*
2649sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2650
e5fe55f7
AC
2651*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2652
2653* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2654
2655The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2656GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2657command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2658program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2659with GDB".
2660
2661* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2662
2663Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2664libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2665cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2666GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2667shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2668the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2669are created.
2670
2671Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2672
2673* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2674
2675The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2676non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2677compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2678
2679* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2680
2681Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2682wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2683
2684* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2685
2686The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2687permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2688systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2689
2690* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2691
2692Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2693has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2694
2695* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2696
2697GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2698its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2699panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2700
2701* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2702
2703When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2704by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2705not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2706
faae5abe 2707*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2708
9175c9a3
MC
2709* Removed --with-mmalloc
2710
2711Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2712conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2713
3cc87ec0
MK
2714* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2715
2716The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2717the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2718and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2719you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2720
f0424ef6
MK
2721* Revised SPARC target
2722
2723The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2724FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2725support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2726from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2727(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2728
59659be2
ILT
2729* New C++ demangler
2730
2731GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2732names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2733with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2734programs.
2735
9e08b29b
DJ
2736* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2737
2738GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2739arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2740encountered these.
2741
8dfe8985
DC
2742* C++ nested types and namespaces
2743
2744GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2745improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2746is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2747Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2748namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2749"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2750frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2751if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2752GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2753
cced5e27
MK
2754* New native configurations
2755
2756NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2757OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2758OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2759OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2760OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2761
b4b4b794
KI
2762* New debugging protocols
2763
2764M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2765
7989c619
AC
2766* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2767
2768The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2769and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2770tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2771
5994185b
AC
2772* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2773
2774Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2775been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2776configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2777permanently REMOVED.
2778
2779Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2780Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2781Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2782Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2783Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2784AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2785Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2786decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2787riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2788sonymips mips-sony-*
2789sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2790
0ddabb4c
AC
2791* REMOVED configurations and files
2792
2793SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2794SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2795Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2796Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2797H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2798HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2799HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2800HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2801PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2802386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2803Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2804 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2805 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2806SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2807SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2808Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2809Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2810
c7f1390e
DJ
2811*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2812
1fe43d45
AC
2813* Objective-C
2814
2815Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2816integrated into GDB.
2817
e6beb428
AC
2818* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2819
2820DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2821information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2822By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2823backtraces.
2824
2825The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2826have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2827DWARF 2 CFI support.
2828
2829* Hosted file I/O.
2830
2831GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2832file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2833remote protocol documentation for details.
2834
2835* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2836
2837All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2838architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2839to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2840ppc32 on ppc64).
2841
2842* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2843
2844GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2845per-thread variables.
2846
2847* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2848
2849GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2850GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2851
2852* Separate debug info.
2853
2854GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2855automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2856of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2857system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2858and optional debug files.
2859
2860* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2861
2862DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2863describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2864debugger.
2865
2866GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2867for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2868
2869* Java
2870
2871A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2872Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2873considered "useable".
2874
85f8f974
DJ
2875* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2876
2877The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2878commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2879kernel.
2880
0fac0b41
DJ
2881* GDB supports logging output to a file
2882
2883There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2884used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2885
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2886* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2887
2888The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2889disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2890command.
2891
e286caf2 2892* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2893
2894The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2895registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2896
d28f9cdf
DJ
2897* Profiling support
2898
2899A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2900be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2901session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2902"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2903data, for more informative profiling results.
2904
da0f9dcd
AC
2905* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2906
2907The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2908option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2909"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2910
2911Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2912removed.
2913
fb9b6b35
JJ
2914Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2915Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2916Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2917 in a subsequent -var-update.
2918
954a4db8
MK
2919* New native configurations.
2920
2921FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2922
6760f9e6
JB
2923* Multi-arched targets.
2924
b4263afa 2925HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2926Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2927
1b831c93
AC
2928* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2929
2930Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2931been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2932configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2933permanently REMOVED.
2934
8b0e5691 2935Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2936Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2937H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2938HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2939HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2940HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2941PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2942Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2943 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2944 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2945Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2946Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2947
5835abe7
NC
2948* REMOVED configurations and files
2949
2950V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2951Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2952IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2953i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2954i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2955i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2956HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2957 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2958 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2959Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2960Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2961Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2962OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2963I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2964
a094c6fb
AC
2965* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2966
2967The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2968the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2969context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2970address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2971The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2972
299ffc64 2973*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2974
46248966
AC
2975* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2976
2977When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2978`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2979in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2980library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2981shared libs like mad''.
2982
b9d14705 2983* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2984
b9d14705
DJ
2985Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2986the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2987arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2988powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2989
e0e9281e
JB
2990* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2991
2992GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2993and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2994they expand.
2995
dd73b9bb
AC
2996The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2997invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2998
2999The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3000macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3001
e0e9281e
JB
3002Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3003information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3004your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3005information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3006
2250ee0c
CV
3007* Multi-arched targets.
3008
6e3ba3b8
JT
3009DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3010DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3011NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3012National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3013Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3014Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3015
cd9bfe15 3016* New targets.
e33ce519 3017
456f8b9d
DB
3018Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3019
e33ce519 3020
da8ca43d
JT
3021* New native configurations
3022
3023Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3024SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3025MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3026UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3027
cd9bfe15
AC
3028* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3029
3030Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3031been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3032configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3033permanently REMOVED.
3034
92eb23c5 3035Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3036OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3037IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3038Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3039Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3040Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3041i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3042i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3043i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3044HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3045 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3046 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3047I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3048
db034ac5
AC
3049* OBSOLETE languages
3050
3051CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3052
cd9bfe15
AC
3053* REMOVED configurations and files
3054
3055AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3056A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3057AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3058AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3059AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3060
3061testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3062
20f01a46
DH
3063* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3064
3065This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3066commands. The default is 1024.
3067
a5941fbf
MK
3068* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3069
3070Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3071
89743e04
MS
3072* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3073
3074These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3075to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3076from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3077
9fb14e79
JB
3078* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3079
3080The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3081including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3082of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3083
2037aebb
AC
3084*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3085
3086* New targets.
3087
3088Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3089
3090* Bug fixes
3091
3092gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3093mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3094Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3095
3096gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3097dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3098Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3099
3100Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3101Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3102By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3103
3104i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3105avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3106By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3107
37057839 3108*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3109
1a703748
MS
3110* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3111
3112This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3113really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3114In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3115target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3116This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3117(notably embedded) targets.
3118
cefd4ef5
MS
3119* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3120
55241689
AC
3121This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3122process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3123GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3124hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3125
352ed7b4
MS
3126* New command line option
3127
3128GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3129
3130* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3131
3132There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3133command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3134a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3135be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3136open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3137issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3138a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3139it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3140GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3141is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3142
fe419ffc
RE
3143* Changes in ARM configurations.
3144
3145Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3146configuration is fully multi-arch.
3147
eb7cedd9
MK
3148* New native configurations
3149
fe419ffc 3150ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3151x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3152AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3153Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3154
c9f63e6b
CV
3155* New targets
3156
3157Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3158
9b4ff276
AC
3159* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3160
3161Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3162been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3163configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3164permanently REMOVED.
3165
3166AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3167A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3168AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3169AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3170AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3171
b4ceaee6 3172testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3173
e2caac18
AC
3174* REMOVED configurations and files
3175
3176TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3177WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3178PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3179PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3180PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3181Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3182Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3183 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3184SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3185Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3186Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3187ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3188Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3189
c2a727fa
TT
3190* Changes to command line processing
3191
3192The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3193for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3194
467d8519
TT
3195* Changes to key bindings
3196
3197There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3198
7072a954
AC
3199*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3200
3201Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3202
3203Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3204corrupted.
3205
3206Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3207
3208Numerous documentation fixes.
3209
3210Numerous testsuite fixes.
3211
34f47bc4 3212*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3213
3214* New native configurations
3215
3216Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3217x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3218MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3219MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3220ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3221s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3222
bf64bfd6
AC
3223* New targets
3224
def90278 3225Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3226CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3227UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3228
17e78a56 3229* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3230
3231x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3232Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3233Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3234 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3235TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3236WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3237Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3238PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3239PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3240PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3241SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3242Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3243ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3244Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3245
17e78a56
AC
3246stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3247kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3248
7fcca85b
AC
3249Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3250been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3251configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3252permanently REMOVED.
3253
a196c81c 3254* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3255
3256Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3257Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3258Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3259ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3260Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3261ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3262
6d6b80e5 3263* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3264
6d6b80e5 3265GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3266sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3267present.
3268
bf64bfd6
AC
3269* Other news:
3270
e23194cb
EZ
3271* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3272
3273* The MI enabled by default.
3274
3275The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3276revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3277engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3278using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3279which is now deprecated.
3280
3281* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3282
3283GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3284main features are supported:
3285
3286 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3287
3288 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3289 extension;
3290
3291 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3292
3293 - a Pascal expression parser.
3294
3295However, some important features are not yet supported.
3296
3297 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3298
3299 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3300
3301 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3302 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3303
3304 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3305
3306 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3307
3308* Changes in completion.
3309
3310Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3311to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3312users expect at the shell prompt.
3313
3314Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3315`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3316program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3317files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3318be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3319considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3320name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3321
3322`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3323
3324* New platform-independent commands:
3325
3326It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3327hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3328documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3329
3330* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3331
d7275149
MK
3332Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3333revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3334many threads as your system allows you to have.
3335
e23194cb
EZ
3336Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3337
d7275149
MK
3338Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3339multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3340
3341* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3342
3343Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3344
e23194cb
EZ
3345GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3346debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3347supported.)
3348
3349* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3350
3351Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3352breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3353implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3354put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3355and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3356registers.
3357
3358The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3359debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3360watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3361
3362* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3363
3364New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3365the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3366
3367New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3368display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3369IDT.
3370
3371New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3372from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3373New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3374a given linear address.
3375
3376GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3377program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3378which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3379
3380DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3381
6c56c069
EZ
3382It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3383
e23194cb
EZ
3384* Changes in documentation.
3385
3386All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3387Documentation License.
3388
3389Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3390manual.
3391
3392TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3393
3394Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3395manual.
3396
3397The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3398documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3399hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3400
5d6640b1
AC
3401* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3402
3403The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3404``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3405contents of this file.
3406
1a1d8446
AC
3407* gdba.el deleted
3408
3409GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3410
9debab2f 3411*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3412
c63ce875
EZ
3413* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3414
3415Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3416programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3417displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3418greater level of detail.
3419
3420* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3421
3422It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3423bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3424on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3425written.
3426
3427* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3428
3429The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3430necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3431machines ``out of the box''.
3432
3433The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3434possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3435signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3436would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3437interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3438
3439It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3440standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3441even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3442and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3443terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3444
3445The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3446enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3447also works.
3448
3449DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3450GDB.
3451
3452It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3453directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3454times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3455breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3456
ed9a39eb
JM
3457* New native configurations
3458
3459ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3460PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3461
7a292a7a
SS
3462* New targets
3463
96baa820 3464Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3465x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3466PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3467TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3468
085dd6e6
JM
3469* OBSOLETE configurations
3470
3471Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3472Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3473Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3474ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3475Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3476
9debab2f
AC
3477Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3478but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3479these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3480be permanently REMOVED.
3481
5330533d
SS
3482* Gould support removed
3483
3484Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3485
bc9e5bbf
AC
3486* New features for SVR4
3487
3488On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3489without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3490load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3491
3492* Many C++ enhancements
3493
3494C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3495in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3496
adf40b2e
JM
3497* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3498
3499A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3500sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3501with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3502``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3503
3504 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3505 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3506
43e526b9
JM
3507* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3508
3509A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3510expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3511instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3512
3513The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3514added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3515
96baa820
JM
3516* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3517
3518The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3519``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3520include ``set remote P-packet''.
3521
11cf8741
JM
3522* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3523
3524The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3525accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3526``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3527
7876dd43
DB
3528* ``apropos'' command added.
3529
3530The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3531documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3532try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3533
bc9e5bbf
AC
3534* New MI interface
3535
3536A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3537interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3538process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3539"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3540enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3541
3542 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3543
c906108c
SS
3544*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3545
3546* New native configurations
3547
3548HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3549HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3550M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3551
3552* New targets
3553
3554Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3555Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3556Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3557
3558* OBSOLETE configurations
3559
3560Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3561
3562Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3563but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3564these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3565be permanently REMOVED.
3566
3567* ANSI/ISO C
3568
3569As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3570buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3571containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3572use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3573available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3574configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3575information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3576already.
3577
3578* Readline 2.2
3579
3580GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3581
3582* set extension-language
3583
3584You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3585languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3586you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3587 set extension-language .c c++
3588The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3589and their associated languages.
3590
3591* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3592
3593When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3594you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3595PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3596
3597 set processor NAME
3598
3599sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3600following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3601
3602 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3603 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3604 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3605 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3606 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3607 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3608 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3609 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3610 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3611 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3612 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3613
3614At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3615special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3616registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3617only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3618
3619* HP-UX support
3620
3621Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3622more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3623library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3624support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3625for xdb and dbx commands.
3626
3627* Catchpoints
3628
3629HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3630generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3631to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3632
3633This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3634argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3635output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3636
3637* Debugging across forks
3638
3639On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3640in the inferior.
3641
3642* TUI
3643
3644HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3645it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3646configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3647
3648* GDB remote protocol additions
3649
3650A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3651Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3652fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3653allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3654
3655For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3656full 64-bit address. The command
3657
3658 set remoteaddresssize 32
3659
3660can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3661the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3662will be discarded.
3663
3664In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3665command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3666
3667 maint packet heythere
3668
3669sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3670disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3671time.
3672
3673The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3674target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3675downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3676
3677* Tracing can collect general expressions
3678
3679You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3680further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3681doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3682
3683* mask-address variable for Mips
3684
3685For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3686a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3687of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3688
3689* Higher serial baud rates
3690
3691GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3692230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3693to achieve all of these rates.)
3694
3695* i960 simulator
3696
3697The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3698builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3699
3700
3701*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3702
3703* New native configurations
3704
3705Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3706Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3707Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3708PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3709PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3710Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3711Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3712
3713* New targets
3714
3715Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3716Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3717Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3718Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3719MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3720MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3721MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3722Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3723Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3724Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3725NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3726
3727* New debugging protocols
3728
3729ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3730M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3731DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3732PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3733PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3734Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3735
3736* DWARF 2
3737
3738All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3739format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3740information.
3741
3742* Java frontend
3743
3744GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3745only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3746
3747* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3748
3749For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3750loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3751locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3752
3753* Live range splitting
3754
3755GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3756range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3757more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3758
3759* Hurd support
3760
3761GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3762updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3763
3764* ARM Thumb support
3765
3766GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3767instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3768instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3769accordingly.
3770
3771* MIPS16 support
3772
3773GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3774instruction set.
3775
3776* Overlay support
3777
3778GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3779linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3780will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3781control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3782additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3783in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3784
3785* info symbol
3786
3787The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3788the symbol at the specified address.
3789
3790* Trace support
3791
3792The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3793asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3794extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3795includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3796file tracepoint.c for more details.
3797
3798* MIPS simulator
3799
3800Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3801by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3802of most MIPS variants.
3803
3804* Sparc simulator
3805
3806Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3807by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3808Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3809
3810* set architecture
3811
3812For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3813basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3814architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3815the possible architectures.
3816
3817*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3818
3819* New native configurations
3820
3821Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3822M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3823PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3824PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3825PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3826RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3827
3828* New targets
3829
3830ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3831I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3832MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3833MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3834PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3835Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3836Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3837
3838* PowerPC simulator
3839
3840The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3841contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3842PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3843basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3844performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3845
3846* Solaris 2.5
3847
3848GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3849
3850* Windows 95/NT native
3851
3852GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3853To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3854which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3855Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3856ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3857
3858* dont-repeat command
3859
3860If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3861command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3862useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3863extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3864
3865* Send break instead of ^C
3866
3867The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3868rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3869GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3870
3871* Remote protocol timeout
3872
3873The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3874that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3875to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3876
3877* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3878
3879By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3880loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3881stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3882when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3883in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3884
3885Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3886/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3887automatically on hpux10.
3888
3889* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3890
3891Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3892
3893* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3894
3895When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3896may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3897the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3898every character. The default value is 1050.
3899
3900* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3901
3902If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3903a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3904replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3905details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3906remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3907to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3908
3909* Speedups for remote debugging
3910
3911GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3912the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3913and more efficient S-record downloading.
3914
3915* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3916
3917GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3918Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3919
3920*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3921
3922* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3923
3924The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3925can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3926
3927* Remote targets use caching
3928
3929Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3930remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3931it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3932debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3933off' turns the the data cache off.
3934
3935* Remote targets may have threads
3936
3937The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3938in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3939gdb/remote.c for details.
3940
3941* NetROM support
3942
3943If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3944support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3945acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3946write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3947support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3948another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3949sequence is something like
3950
3951 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3952 load <prog>
3953 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3954
3955* Macintosh host
3956
3957GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3958may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3959it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3960available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3961device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3962directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3963scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3964mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3965
3966* Autoconf
3967
3968GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3969but does simplify configuration and building.
3970
3971* hpux10
3972
3973GDB now supports hpux10.
3974
3975*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3976
3977* New native configurations
3978
3979x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3980x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3981NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3982Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3983
3984* New targets
3985
3986A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3987HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3988CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3989PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3990WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3991
3992* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3993
3994GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3995possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3996filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3997the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3998if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3999
4000* Arguments to user-defined commands
4001
4002User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4003Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4004trivial example:
4005define adder
4006 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4007
4008To execute the command use:
4009adder 1 2 3
4010
4011Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4012Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4013use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4014
4015* New `if' and `while' commands
4016
4017This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4018commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4019expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4020execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4021terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4022`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4023if the expression is zero.
4024
4025* Fortran source language mode
4026
4027GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4028Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4029variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4030with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4031Fortran compilers.
4032
4033* Better HPUX support
4034
4035Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4036running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4037processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4038for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4039that behavior do the following before running the program:
4040
4041 adb -w a.out
4042 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4043 control-d
4044
4045This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4046To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4047
4048 adb -w a.out
4049 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4050 control-d
4051
4052You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4053the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4054external linkage.
4055
4056GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4057HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4058
4059* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4060
4061You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4062commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4063current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4064"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4065associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4066configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4067
4068* New DOS host serial code
4069
4070This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4071no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4072a PC's serial port.
4073
4074*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4075
4076* New "complete" command
4077
4078This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4079were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4080
4081* Trailing space optional in prompt
4082
4083"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4084allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4085
4086* Breakpoint hit counts
4087
4088"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4089has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4090can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4091to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4092less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4093that breakpoint.
4094
4095* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4096
4097"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4098an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4099arrays actually contain only short strings.
4100
4101* Shared library breakpoints
4102
4103In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4104breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4105
4106* Hardware watchpoints
4107
4108There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4109targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4110
55241689 4111Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4112
4113* Annotations
4114
4115Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4116and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4117
4118* Improved Irix 5 support
4119
4120GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4121
4122* Improved HPPA support
4123
4124GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4125
4126* New native configurations
4127
4128Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4129HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4130Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4131RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4132
4133* New targets
4134
4135OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4136MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4137Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4138
4139* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4140
4141There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4142This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4143
4144* Fixes
4145
4146As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4147and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4148
4149*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4150
4151* Irix 5 is now supported
4152
4153* HPPA support
4154
4155GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4156to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4157GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4158of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4159can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4160
4161
4162*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4163
4164* User visible changes:
4165
4166* Remote Debugging
4167
4168The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4169target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4170debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4171integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4172debugging info for the mips target).
4173
4174* DEC Alpha native support
4175
4176GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4177debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4178work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4179Alpha-specific notes.
4180
4181* Preliminary thread implementation
4182
4183GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4184
4185* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4186
4187This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4188to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4189for details).
4190
4191* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4192
4193This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4194mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4195call methods, ...etc.
4196
4197*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4198
4199 * User visible changes:
4200
4201Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4202supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4203other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4204somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4205
4206Filename completion now works.
4207
4208When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4209arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4210addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4211
4212All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4213vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4214should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4215your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4216to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4217
4218 * DEC alpha support
4219
4220This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4221cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4222
4223
4224*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4225
4226 * Testsuite
4227
4228This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4229The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4230via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4231
4232 * C++ demangling
4233
4234'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4235emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4236Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4237disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4238use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4239
4240 * Simulators
4241
4242GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4243So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4244Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4245
4246 * New targets supported
4247
4248H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4249H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4250SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4251Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4252IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4253
4254Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4255version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4256GO32 memory extender.
4257
4258 * New remote protocols
4259
4260MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4261
4262 * New source languages supported
4263
4264This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4265used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4266into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4267
4268
4269*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4270
4271 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4272
4273GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4274version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4275University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4276compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4277format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4278(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4279
4280Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4281
4282 * Faster and better demangling
4283
4284We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4285demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4286character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4287only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4288This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4289increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4290symbol lookups.
4291
4292`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4293from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4294compiler does not actually implement.
4295
4296 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4297
4298In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4299inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4300recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4301very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4302The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4303circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4304fix.
4305
4306The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4307release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4308
4309 * Improved configure script
4310
4311The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4312you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4313host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4314done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4315
4316We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4317version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4318`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4319The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4320only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4321We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4322
4323 * Documentation improvements
4324
4325There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4326produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4327before submitting changes.
4328
4329The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4330M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4331`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4332you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4333a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4334
4335*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4336We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4337been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4338or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4339`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4340around this problem.
4341
4342 * New features
4343
4344GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4345the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4346`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4347the target program.
4348
4349The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4350how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4351
4352 * New native hosts supported
4353
4354HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4355386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4356
4357 * New targets supported
4358
4359AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4360
4361 * New file formats supported
4362
4363BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4364HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4365
4366 * Major bug fixes
4367
4368Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4369
4370We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4371printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4372
4373We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4374for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4375release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4376
4377You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4378will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4379
4380We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4381for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4382especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4383libraries.
4384
4385The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4386information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4387command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4388any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4389when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4390
4391 * Internal improvements
4392
4393GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4394debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4395
4396GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4397Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4398symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4399contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4400shared code that handles any of them.
4401
4402 * New command line options
4403
4404We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4405
4406 * Mmalloc licensing
4407
4408The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4409General Public License.
4410
4411*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4412
4413 * Host/native/target split
4414
4415GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4416hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4417target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4418local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4419ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4420
4421The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4422GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4423is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4424code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4425any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4426built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4427handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4428
4429GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4430It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4431plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4432
4433 * New hosts supported
4434
4435HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4436386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4437386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4438
4439 * New targets supported
4440
4441Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
444268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4443
4444 * New native hosts supported
4445
4446386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4447 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4448386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4449
4450 * New file formats supported
4451
4452BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4453supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4454format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4455
4456 * New commands
4457
4458`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4459`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4460These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4461
4462`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4463
4464You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4465scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4466prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4467executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4468
4469 * C++ improvements
4470
4471We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4472info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4473symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4474
4475Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4476
4477 * Major bug fixes
4478
4479The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4480fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4481by the compiler.
4482
4483We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4484support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4485
4486John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4487slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4488that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4489purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4490the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4491mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4492
4493Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4494about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4495completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4496we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4497
4498 * AMD 29k support
4499
4500A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4501specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4502calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4503usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4504in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4505
4506We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4507Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4508of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4509resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4510
4511 * Remote interfaces
4512
4513We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4514with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4515message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4516This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4517needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4518breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4519each instruction being stepped through.
4520
4521The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4522registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4523
4524There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4525find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4526Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4527processor with a serial port.
4528
4529 * Configuration
4530
4531Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4532`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4533supported, and what files each one uses.
4534
4535 * Library changes
4536
4537There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4538disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4539Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4540disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4541
4542The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4543Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4544can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4545grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4546
4547 * Documentation
4548
4549The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4550reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4551as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4552encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4553system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4554bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4555
4556And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4557
4558
4559*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4560
4561 * Better support for C++ function names
4562
4563GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4564names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4565(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4566single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4567Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4568
4569GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4570the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4571You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4572lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4573for the list of formats.
4574
4575 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4576
4577Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4578C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4579directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4580can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4581usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4582about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4583this problem.)
4584
4585 * New 'maintenance' command
4586
4587All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4588the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4589can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4590
4591 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4592 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4593 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4594 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4595 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4596 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4597
4598The following commands are new:
4599
4600 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4601 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4602 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4603
4604 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4605
4606We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4607(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4608be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4609read after argv processing.
4610
4611 * New hosts supported
4612
4613Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4614
55241689 4615GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4616
4617We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4618is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4619for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4620masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4621fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4622It costs extra.
4623
4624 * New targets supported
4625
4626Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4627
4628 * More smarts about finding #include files
4629
4630GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4631all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4632greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4633especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4634the one that contains your sources.
4635
4636We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4637breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4638try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4639
4640 * Interesting infernals change
4641
4642GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4643section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4644target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4645stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4646
4647 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4648
4649There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4650 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4651 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4652
4653See the ChangeLog for details.
4654
4655*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4656
4657 * New machines supported (host and target)
4658
4659IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4660
4661SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4662
4663 * New malloc package
4664
4665GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4666Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4667capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4668This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4669pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4670more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4671
4672 * info proc
4673
4674The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4675'help info proc' for details.
4676
4677 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4678
4679The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4680Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4681possible.
4682
4683 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4684
4685Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4686support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4687conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4688environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4689that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4690in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4691
4692 * Cross byte order fixes
4693
4694Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4695targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4696
4697 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4698
4699If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4700system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4701`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4702program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4703called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4704Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4705and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4706the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4707option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4708starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4709
4710You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4711the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4712information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4713slower, but makes future operations faster.
4714
4715The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4716build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4717A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4718use is:
4719
4720 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4721
4722The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4723It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4724shared across multiple host platforms.
4725
4726 * longjmp() handling
4727
4728GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4729siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4730all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4731platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4732
4733 * Solaris 2.0
4734
4735Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4736this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4737reading symbols.
4738
4739 * Bug fixes
4740
4741As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4742People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4743crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4744
4745*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4746
4747 * New machines supported (host and target)
4748
4749SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4750 (except core files)
4751BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4752Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4753
4754 * New machines supported (target)
4755
4756AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4757
4758 * C++ support
4759
4760GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4761The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4762per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4763
4764GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4765`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4766extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4767good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4768will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4769released.
4770
4771 * New features for SVR4
4772
4773GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4774shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4775only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4776
4777The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4778on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4779it prints the address mappings of the process.
4780
4781If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4782bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4783
4784 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4785
4786Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4787now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4788skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4789make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4790same code linked statically.
4791
4792 * New Getopt
4793
4794GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4795version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4796continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4797Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4798added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4799future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4800
4801 * Bugs fixed
4802
4803The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4804Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4805See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4806
4807
4808*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4809
4810 * New machines supported (host and target)
4811
4812Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4813NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4814Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4815
4816 * Almost SCO Unix support
4817
4818We had hoped to support:
4819SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4820(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4821that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4822about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4823
4824 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4825
4826GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4827debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4828is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4829send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4830reqired (if any).
4831
4832 * New Readline
4833
4834GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4835is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4836required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4837
4838 * Bugs fixed
4839
4840The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4841Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4842See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4843
4844 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4845
4846GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4847supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4848symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4849
4850Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4851mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4852debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4853mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4854version 2.
4855
4856Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4857really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4858line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4859variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4860situation somewhat.
4861
4862When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4863However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4864methods.
4865
4866We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4867DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4868encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4869
4870
4871*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4872
4873 * Improved configuration
4874
4875Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4876Porting BFD is simpler.
4877
4878 * Stepping improved
4879
4880The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4881of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4882in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4883function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4884
4885 * Bug fixing
4886
4887Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4888
4889 * New host supported (not target)
4890
4891Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4892
4893
4894*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4895
4896 * Multiple source language support
4897
4898GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4899It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4900and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4901language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4902You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4903`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4904
4905 * GDB and Modula-2
4906
4907GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4908currently under development at the State University of New York at
4909Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4910continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4911
4912Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4913debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4914symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4915
4916There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4917in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4918
4919 * set write on/off
4920
4921GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4922a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4923the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4924by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4925effect immediately.
4926
4927 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4928
4929When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4930shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4931The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4932examining core files.
4933
4934 * set listsize
4935
4936You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4937The default is 10.
4938
4939 * New machines supported (host and target)
4940
4941SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4942Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4943Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4944
4945 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4946
4947IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4948
4949 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4950
4951AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4952AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4953Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4954
4955 * New remote interfaces
4956
4957AMD 29000 Adapt
4958AMD 29000 Minimon
4959
4960
4961*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4962
4963 * New Facilities
4964
4965Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4966
4967Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4968target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4969is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4970remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4971remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4972also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4973using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4974stub on the target system.
4975
4976New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4977
4978GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4979library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4980object file types such as a.out and coff.
4981
4982There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4983refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4984
4985
4986 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4987
4988All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4989by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4990
4991For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4992``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4993Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4994
4995What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4996print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4997will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4998all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4999
5000confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5001 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5002 it is already running. Default is ON.
5003
5004editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5005 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5006 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5007 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5008 Default is ON.
5009
5010history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5011 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5012 or the value of the environment variable
5013 GDBHISTFILE.
5014
5015history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5016 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5017 HISTSIZE.
5018
5019history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5020 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5021 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5022
5023history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5024 history expansion will be performed on
5025 command line input. The default is OFF.
5026
5027radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5028 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5029 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5030
5031height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5032 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5033 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5034 variable TERM.
5035
5036width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5037 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5038 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5039 variable TERM.
5040
5041Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5042``set width'' instead.
5043
5044print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5045 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5046 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5047 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5048
5049print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5050 is OFF.
5051
5052print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5053 "raw" form if off.
5054
5055print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5056 like instructions.
5057
5058print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5059
5060
5061 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5062
5063The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5064new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5065are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5066window.
5067
5068
5069 * Support for Shared Libraries
5070
5071GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5072Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5073before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5074happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5075At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5076from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5077shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5078It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5079
5080sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5081 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5082 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5083
5084info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5085
5086
5087 * Watchpoints
5088
5089A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5090expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5091tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5092quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5093problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5094more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5095
5096watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5097
5098info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5099
5100delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5101disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5102enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5103
5104
5105 * C++ multiple inheritance
5106
5107When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5108for C++ programs.
5109
5110 * C++ exception handling
5111
5112Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5113ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5114the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5115handler's context).
5116
5117catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5118 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5119 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5120
5121info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5122 current stack frame.
5123
5124
5125 * Minor command changes
5126
5127The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5128command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5129is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5130
5131The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5132at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5133frames without printing.
5134
5135 * New directory command
5136
5137'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5138The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5139about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5140with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5141find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5142
5143 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5144
5145For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5146for more details.
5147
5148GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5149two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5150Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5151where the program that you are debugging will run.
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