* NEWS: Mention watch -location.
[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 7.2
5
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6* Python scripting
7
8 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
9 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
10 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
11 that function like so:
12
13 result = some_value (10,20)
14
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15* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
16 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
17 execution to a label.
18
19* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
20 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
21 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
22 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
23
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24* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
25 When used, this causes gdb to watch the memory referred to by the
26 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
27 of scope.
28
76b8507d 29*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 30
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31* Shared library support for remote targets by default
32
33 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
34 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
35 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
36 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
37 was always disabled for such configurations.
38
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39* C++ Improvements:
40
41 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
42
43 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
44 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
45 For example:
46 namespace A
47 {
48 class B { };
49 void foo (B) { }
50 }
51 ...
52 A::B b
53 foo(b)
54 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
55 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
56 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
57
58 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
59
60 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
61 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
62 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
63 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
64 entry.
65 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
66 mentioned flavors of operators.
67
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68 ** static const class members
69
70 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
71 class definition has been fixed.
72
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73* Windows Thread Information Block access.
74
75 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
76 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
77 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
78 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
79 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
80 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
81
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82* Static tracepoints
83
84 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
85 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
86 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
87 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
88 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
89 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
90 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
91 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
92 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
93 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
94 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
95 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
96 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
97 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
98 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
99 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
100 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
101 the "New remote packets" section below.
102
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103* New remote packets
104
105qGetTIBAddr
106
107 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
108
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109qRelocInsn
110
111 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
112 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
113 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
114 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
115 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
116 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
117
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118qTfSTM, qTsSTM
119
120 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
121
122qTSTMat
123
124 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
125 program.
126
127qXfer:statictrace:read
128
129 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
130 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
131 to gdb's qSupported query.
132
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133* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
134 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
135 a directory.
136
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137* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
138
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139 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
140 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
141 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
142 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
143
144 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
145 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
146 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
147 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
148 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
149 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
150 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
151
152 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
153 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 154
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155 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
156
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157* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
158 it understands register description.
159
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160* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
161
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162* X86 general purpose registers
163
164 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
165 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
166 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
167 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
168 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
169
95a42b64 170* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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171 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
172 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
173 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
174 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
175 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 176
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177* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
178 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
179 in the specified file.
180
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181* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
182 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
183 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
184 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
185 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
186 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
187 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
188 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
189 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
190 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
191
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192* New commands
193
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194eval template, expressions...
195 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
196 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
197
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198set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
199show target-file-system-kind
200 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
201 names.
202
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203save breakpoints <filename>
204 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
205 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
206 definitions, use the `source' command.
207
208`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
209is now deprecated.
210
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211info static-tracepoint-markers
212 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
213
214strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
215 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
216 function, line, address, or marker ID.
217
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218* Changed commands
219
220disassemble
221 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
222
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223* Python scripting
224
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225** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
226 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
227 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
228 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
229 GDB using Python' in the manual.
230
adc36818 231** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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232 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
233 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
234 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 235
fa33c3cd 236** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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237 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
238
239** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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240
241** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 242
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243** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
244
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245** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
246 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
247 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
248
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249* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
250there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
251tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
252regular breakpoints.
253
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254* New targets
255
256ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
257
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258* D language support.
259 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
260 language.
261
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262* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
263 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
264 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
265 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
266 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
267
268* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
269 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
270 conditions of the form:
271
272 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
273
274 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
275 interface mentioned above.
276
bfbf3774 277*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 278
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279* C++ Improvements
280
281 ** Namespace Support
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282
283 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
284 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
285 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
286 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
287 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
288
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289 ** Bug Fixes
290
291 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
292 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
293 qualified name.
294
295 ** Cast Operators
296
297 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
298 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
299
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300* New targets
301
302Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 303Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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304
305* New Simulators
306
307Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 308Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 309
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310* Multi-program debugging.
311
312 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
313 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
314 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
315 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
316 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
317 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
318 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
319 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
320
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321* New tracing features
322
323 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
324
325 ** Trace state variables
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326
327 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
328 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
329 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
330 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
331 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
332 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
333 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
334 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
335 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
336 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 337
d5551862 338 ** Fast tracepoints
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339
340 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
341 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
342 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
343 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
344 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
345 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
346 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
347 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
348 the regular trace command.
349
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350 ** Disconnected tracing
351
352 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
353 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
354 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
355 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
356 connection is lost unexpectedly.
357
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358 ** Trace files
359
360 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
361 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
362 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
363 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
364 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
365 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
366 <name>".
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367
368 ** Circular trace buffer
369
370 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
371 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
372 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
373 not be available for all target agents.
374
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375* Changed commands
376
377disassemble
378 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
379 the arguments to be comma-separated.
380
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381info variables
382 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
383 which only declare a variable are not shown.
384
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385source
386 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
387 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
388 support.
389
390 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
391 "set script-extension" (see below).
392
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393* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
394
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395record save [<FILENAME>]
396 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
397 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
398
399record restore <FILENAME>
400 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
401 earlier time, for replay debugging.
402
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403add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
404 Add a new inferior.
405
406clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
407 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
408 inferior has loaded.
409
410remove-inferior ID
411 Remove an inferior.
412
413maint info program-spaces
414 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
415
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416set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
417show remote interrupt-sequence
418 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
419 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
420 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
421 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
422 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
423
424set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
425show remote interrupt-on-connect
426 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
427 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
428 Linux kernel.
429
430set remotebreak [on | off]
431show remotebreak
432Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
433
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434tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
435 Create or modify a trace state variable.
436
437info tvariables
438 List trace state variables and their values.
439
440delete tvariable $NAME ...
441 Delete one or more trace state variables.
442
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443teval EXPR, ...
444 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
445 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
446
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447ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
448 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
449
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450* New expression syntax
451
452 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
453 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
454
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455* New options
456
457set follow-exec-mode new|same
458show follow-exec-mode
459 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
460 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
461 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
462
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463set default-collect EXPR, ...
464show default-collect
465 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
466 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
467 such as registers or a critical global variable.
468
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469set disconnected-tracing
470show disconnected-tracing
471 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
472 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
473 upon disconnection.
474
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475set circular-trace-buffer
476show circular-trace-buffer
477 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
478 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
479 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
480 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
481
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482set script-extension off|soft|strict
483show script-extension
484 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
485 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
486 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
487 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
488 evaluation failed.
489 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
490
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491set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
492show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
493 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
494 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
495 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
496 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
497 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
498 is on.
499
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500* Python API Improvements
501
502 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
503 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
504 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
505
506 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
507 `is_base_class' attribute.
508
509 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
510
511 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
512 evaluate an expression.
513
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514* New remote packets
515
516QTDV
517 Define a trace state variable.
518
519qTV
520 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
521
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522QTDisconnected
523 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
524
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525QTBuffer:circular
526 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
527
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528qTfP, qTsP
529 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
530
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531* Bug fixes
532
533Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
534
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535Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
536much more reliable. In particular:
537 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
538 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
539 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
540 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
541 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
542 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
543 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
544 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
545 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
546 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
547 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
548 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
549 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
550 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
551 non-threaded programs.
552
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553PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
554This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
555libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
556executable program.
557
abc7453d 558*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 559
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560* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
561dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
562them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
563for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
564"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
565
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566* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
567breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
568or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
569the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
570for tracepoint actions.
571
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572* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
573raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
574modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 575
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576* Process record and replay
577
578 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
579 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
580 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
581 execute commands.
582
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583* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
584step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
585set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
586reverse execution.
587
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588* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
589feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
5902.6.28 or later.
591
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592* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
593target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
594char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
595literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
596U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
597`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
598system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
599the installation instructions for more information.
600
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601* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
602remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
603with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
604the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
605
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606* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
607and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
608
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609* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
610now complete on file names.
611
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612* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
613completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
614For instance, consider:
615
616 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
617 # struct example variable;
618 (gdb) p variable.
619
620If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
621completions will be "f1" and "f2".
622
edb3359d
DJ
623* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
624the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
625
2fae03e8
TT
626* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
627operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
628macros.
629
47a3467a 630* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
631the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
632implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
633
634* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
635registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
636can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
637and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 638
08388c79
DE
639* New remote packets
640
641qSearch:memory:
642 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
643
a6f3e723
SL
644QStartNoAckMode
645 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
646 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
647 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
648
d7713ae0
EZ
649vKill
650 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
651 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
652
07e059b5
VP
653qXfer:osdata:read
654 Obtains additional operating system information
655
47a3467a
PA
656qXfer:siginfo:read
657qXfer:siginfo:write
658 Read or write additional signal information.
659
060871df
PA
660* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
661
662 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
663 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
664 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
665
c055b101 666* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 667DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
668
669* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
670and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
671`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 672
31fffb02
CS
673* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
674with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
675
88d8a8e0
JB
676* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
677
7f99b190
JB
678* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
679
ccd213ac
DJ
680* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
681which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
682
1fddbabb 683* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 684list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 685
a0ef4274
DJ
686* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
687conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
688have also been fixed.
689
bfb8797a 690* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
691From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
692are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 693
71c25dea
TT
694* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
695example, given:
696
697 template<typename T> class C { };
698 C<char const *> c;
699
700GDB will now correctly handle all of:
701
702 ptype C<char const *>
703 ptype C<char const*>
704 ptype C<const char *>
705 ptype C<const char*>
706
ccd213ac
DJ
707* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
708
709 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
710 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
711
7ae0e2a2
UW
712 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
713 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
714 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
715
a6f3e723
SL
716 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
717 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
718
da8bd9a3
DJ
719 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
720 gdbserver.
721
d70e31dd
DE
722 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
723 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
724
725 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
726 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
727 as appropriate.
728
d57a3c85
TJB
729* Python scripting
730
731 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
732 available is determined at configure time.
733
d8906c6f
TJB
734 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
735
aadc346a
JB
736* Ada tasking support
737
738 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
739 been introduced:
740
741 info tasks
742 Print the list of Ada tasks.
743 info task N
744 Print detailed information about task number N.
745 task
746 Print the task number of the current task.
747 task N
748 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
749
adb483fe
DJ
750* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
751add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
752
2277426b
PA
753* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
754
755 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
756 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
757 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
758 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
759 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
760 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
761 below.
762
08d16641
PA
763* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
764"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
765information.
766
e35359c5
UW
767* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
768to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
769architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
770See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
771more information.
772
85e747d2
UW
773* Multi-architecture debugging.
774
775 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
776 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
777 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
778 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
779 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
780
781* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
782use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
783Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
784powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
785--enable-targets configure option.
786
11ade57a
PA
787* Non-stop mode debugging.
788
789 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
790 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
791 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
792 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
793 section in the user manual for more information.
794
795 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
796 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
797 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
798 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
799 extensions on linux targets.
800
d7713ae0 801* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 802
a96d9b2e
SDJ
803catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
804 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
805 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
806 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
807 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
808 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
809 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
810 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
811 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
812
08388c79
DE
813find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
814 val1 [, val2, ...]
815 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
816
d57a3c85
TJB
817maint set python print-stack
818maint show python print-stack
819 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
820
821python [CODE]
822 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
823
d7713ae0
EZ
824macro define
825macro list
826macro undef
827 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
828 interactively.
829
830info os processes
831 Show operating system information about processes.
832
2277426b
PA
833info inferiors
834 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
835
836inferior NUM
837 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
838
839detach inferior NUM
840 Detach from inferior number NUM.
841
842kill inferior NUM
843 Kill inferior number NUM.
844
d7713ae0
EZ
845* New options
846
3285f3fe
UW
847set spu stop-on-load
848show spu stop-on-load
849 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
850
ff1a52c6
UW
851set spu auto-flush-cache
852show spu auto-flush-cache
853 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
854 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
855
d7713ae0
EZ
856set sh calling-convention
857show sh calling-convention
858 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
859
e0a3ce09 860set debug timestamp
75feb17d 861show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
862 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
863
864set disassemble-next-line
865show disassemble-next-line
866 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
867 the debuggee stops.
868
869set remote noack-packet
870show remote noack-packet
871 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
872 under "New remote packets."
873
874set remote query-attached-packet
875show remote query-attached-packet
876 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
877
878set remote read-siginfo-object
879show remote read-siginfo-object
880 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
881 packet.
882
883set remote write-siginfo-object
884show remote write-siginfo-object
885 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
886 packet.
887
40ab02ce
MS
888set remote reverse-continue
889show remote reverse-continue
890 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
891
892set remote reverse-step
893show remote reverse-step
894 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
895
d7713ae0
EZ
896set displaced-stepping
897show displaced-stepping
898 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
899 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
900 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
901
902set debug displaced
903show debug displaced
904 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
905
906maint set internal-error
907maint show internal-error
908 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
909
910maint set internal-warning
911maint show internal-warning
912 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 913
ccd213ac
DJ
914set exec-wrapper
915show exec-wrapper
916unset exec-wrapper
917 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 918
aad4b048
JB
919set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
920show multiple-symbols
921 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
922 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
923 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
924
74960c60
VP
925set breakpoint always-inserted
926show breakpoint always-inserted
927 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
928 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
929 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
930
0428b8f5
DJ
931set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
932show arm fallback-mode
933set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
934show arm force-mode
935 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
936 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
937 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
938 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
939
10568435
JK
940set disable-randomization
941show disable-randomization
942 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
943 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
944 multiple debugging sessions.
945
d7713ae0
EZ
946set non-stop
947show non-stop
948 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
949 a breakpoint.
950
b3eb342c 951set target-async
d7713ae0 952show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
953 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
954 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
955 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
956 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
957
6c7a06a3
TT
958set target-wide-charset
959show target-wide-charset
960 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
961 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
962
84603566
SL
963set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
964show tcp auto-retry
965set tcp connect-timeout
966show tcp connect-timeout
967 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
968 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
969 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
970
17a37d48
PP
971set libthread-db-search-path
972show libthread-db-search-path
973 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
974 libthread_db.
975
d4db2f36
PA
976set schedule-multiple (on|off)
977show schedule-multiple
978 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
979 the current process.
980
4e5d721f
DE
981set stack-cache
982show stack-cache
983 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
984 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
985 affecting correctness.
986
910c5da8
JB
987set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
988show interactive-mode
989 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
990 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
991 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
992 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
993 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
994
2277426b
PA
995* Removed commands
996
997info forks
998 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
999 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1000 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1001 command.
1002
1003fork NUM
1004 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1005 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1006 alias for the `fork' command.
1007
1008process PID
1009 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1010 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1011 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1012
1013delete fork NUM
1014 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1015 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1016 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1017 fork' command.
1018
1019detach fork NUM
1020 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1021 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1022 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1023 fork' command.
1024
a80b95ba
TG
1025* New native configurations
1026
1027x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1028
b8bfd3ed
JB
1029x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1030
75a2d5e7
TT
1031* New targets
1032
c28c63d8 1033Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1034x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1035x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1036S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1037
6de3146c
PA
1038* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1039 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1040
d5cbbe6e
JB
1041* Removed commands
1042
1043catch load
1044catch unload
1045 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1046
75feb17d 1047*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1048
af5ca30d
NH
1049* New native configurations
1050
1051NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1052Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1053
1054* New targets
1055
1056NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1057Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1058
7a404eba
PA
1059* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1060
1061 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1062 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1063 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1064 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1065
430ebac9
PA
1066* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1067(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1068
fe6fbf8b 1069* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1070is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1071
1072* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1073including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1074and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1075
10665d76
JB
1076* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1077accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1078more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1079
7cc46491
DJ
1080* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1081
d71340b8
DJ
1082* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1083registers on PowerPC targets.
1084
523c4513
DJ
1085* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1086targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1087
a6b151f1
DJ
1088* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1089commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1090
2d717e4f
DJ
1091* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1092extended-remote mode.
1093
24a836bd 1094* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1095The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1096error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1097The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1098
d0c678e6
UW
1099* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1100building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1101target architectures.
1102
d64a946d
TJB
1103* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1104Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1105now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1106stored in two consecutive float registers.
1107
ee163bf5
VP
1108* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1109breakpoints now.
1110
b93b6ca7 1111* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1112Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1113include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1114 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1115 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1116 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1117 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1118 of an assignment
1119 - Improved command completion in Ada
1120 - Several bug fixes
1121
d001be7a
DJ
1122* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1123process.
1124
a6b151f1
DJ
1125* New commands
1126
6d53d0af
JB
1127set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1128show print frame-arguments
1129 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1130 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1131
a6b151f1
DJ
1132remote put
1133remote get
1134remote delete
1135 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1136
1137* New MI commands
1138
1139-target-file-put
1140-target-file-get
1141-target-file-delete
1142 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1143
1144* New remote packets
1145
1146vFile:open:
1147vFile:close:
1148vFile:pread:
1149vFile:pwrite:
1150vFile:unlink:
1151 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1152
2d717e4f
DJ
1153vAttach
1154 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1155 mode.
1156
1157vRun
1158 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1159
8d5f9c6f 1160*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1161
19d378fc
MS
1162* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1163bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1164Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1165
3a40aaa0
UW
1166* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1167symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1168-Bsymbolic linker option.
1169
a6ec25f2
BW
1170* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1171recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1172is not supported.
1173
6dd09645
JB
1174* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1175frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1176
c9bb8148
DJ
1177* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
117832-bit or 64-bit register values.
1179
0d5de010
DJ
1180* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1181
23181151
DJ
1182* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1183target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1184a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1185
ea37ba09
DJ
1186* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1187automatically displayed as character or string data.
1188
1189* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1190arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1191as strings.
e1f48ead 1192
123dc839
DJ
1193* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1194for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1195only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1196
05a4558a
DJ
1197* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1198iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1199
7c963485
PA
1200* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1201ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1202has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1203
b18be20d
DJ
1204* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1205
0ca420ce
UW
1206* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1207
31d99776
DJ
1208* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1209layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1210segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1211
a4642986
MR
1212* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1213immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1214
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1215* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1216"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1217packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1218where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1219Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1220
1221* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1222(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1223
1224* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1225according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1226
c9bb8148
DJ
1227* New commands
1228
23776285
MR
1229set remoteflow
1230show remoteflow
1231 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1232 when debugging using remote targets.
1233
c9bb8148
DJ
1234set mem inaccessible-by-default
1235show mem inaccessible-by-default
1236 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1237 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1238 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1239 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1240 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1241
1242set breakpoint auto-hw
1243show breakpoint auto-hw
1244 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1245 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1246 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1247 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1248 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1249 including "next" and "finish".
1250
0e420bd8
JB
1251catch exception
1252catch exception unhandled
1253 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1254
1255catch assert
1256 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1257
f822c95b
DJ
1258set sysroot
1259show sysroot
1260 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1261 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1262 an alias to "set sysroot".
1263
83cc5c53
UW
1264info spu
1265 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1266 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1267 architecture.
1268
bd372731
MK
1269* New native configurations
1270
1271OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1272
23181151
DJ
1273set tdesc filename
1274unset tdesc filename
1275show tdesc filename
1276 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1277 not query the target for its built-in description.
1278
c9bb8148
DJ
1279* New targets
1280
54fe9172 1281OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1282MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1283Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1284
6dd09645
JB
1285* New remote packets
1286
1287QPassSignals:
1288 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1289 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1290
23181151
DJ
1291qXfer:features:read:
1292 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1293 features.
6dd09645 1294
83cc5c53
UW
1295qXfer:spu:read:
1296qXfer:spu:write:
1297 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1298 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1299
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1300qXfer:libraries:read:
1301 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1302 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1303 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1304 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1305
483367ee
DJ
1306* Removed targets
1307
1308Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1309
d08950c4
UW
1310alpha*-*-osf1*
1311alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1312d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1313hppa*-*-hiux*
1314i[34567]86-ncr-*
1315i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1316i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1317i[34567]86-*-netware*
1318i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1319i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1320i[34567]86-*-sco*
1321i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1322i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1323i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1324i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1325i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1326i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1327i[34567]86-*-isc*
1328m68*-cisco*-*
1329m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1330mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1331rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1332sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1333
7ce59000
DJ
1334* Other removed features
1335
1336target abug
1337target cpu32bug
1338target est
1339target rom68k
1340
1341 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1342
ea35711c
DJ
1343target hms
1344target e7000
1345target sh3
1346target sh3e
1347
1348 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1349 H8/300.
1350
1351target ocd
1352
1353 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1354 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1355 interfaces.
1356
7ce59000
DJ
1357DWARF 1 support
1358
1359 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1360 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1361
54d61198
DJ
1362Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1363
1364 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1365 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1366 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1367 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1368
ea35711c
DJ
1369MIPS ".pdr" sections
1370
1371 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1372 in debugging information.
1373
1374Scheme support
1375
1376 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1377 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1378
1a69e1e4
DJ
1379set mips stack-arg-size
1380set mips saved-gpreg-size
1381
1382 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1383
6dd09645 1384*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1385
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1386* New targets
1387
1388Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1389Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1390
6aec2e11
DJ
1391* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1392(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1393running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1394
1395* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1396Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1397supported.
1398
17218d91
DJ
1399* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1400broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1401
9ebce043
DJ
1402* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1403stub provides the required support.
1404
7d3d3ece
DJ
1405* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1406longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1407
4f8253f3
JB
1408* New commands
1409
1410set substitute-path
1411unset substitute-path
1412show substitute-path
1413 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1414 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1415 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1416 between compilation and debugging.
1417
9fa66fd7
AS
1418set trace-commands
1419show trace-commands
1420 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1421 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1422 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1423
1f5befc1
DJ
1424* REMOVED features
1425
1426The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1427
2ec3381a
DJ
1428Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1429an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1430
3d00d119
DJ
1431The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1432
be2a5f71
DJ
1433* New remote packets
1434
1435qSupported:
1436 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1437 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1438 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1439 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1440 target.
1441
0876f84a
DJ
1442qXfer:auxv:read:
1443 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1444 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1445
9ebce043
DJ
1446qXfer:memory-map:read:
1447 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1448 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1449
1450vFlashErase:
1451vFlashWrite:
1452vFlashDone:
1453 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1454
0876f84a
DJ
1455* Removed remote packets
1456
1457qPart:auxv:read:
1458 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1459 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1460
e374b601 1461*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1462
96309189
MS
1463* New targets
1464
1465Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1466
1467Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1468
53e5f3cf
AS
1469* New commands
1470
1471init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1472 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1473
ac264b3b
MS
1474The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1475
1476checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1477
1478restart <n> Return the program state to a
1479 previously saved state.
1480
1481info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1482
1483delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1484
1485set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1486 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1487
1488info forks List forks of the user program that
1489 are available to be debugged.
1490
1491fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1492 forks of the user program that are
1493 available to be debugged.
1494
1495delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1496 that are available to be debugged (and
1497 kill the forked process).
1498
1499detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1500 that are available to be debugged (and
1501 allow the process to continue).
1502
3950dc3f
NS
1503* New architecture
1504
1505Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1506
0ea3f30e
DJ
1507* Improved Windows host support
1508
1509GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1510native console support, and remote communications using either
1511network sockets or serial ports.
1512
f79daebb
GM
1513* Improved Modula-2 language support
1514
1515GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1516basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1517pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1518printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1519written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1520GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1521
acab6ab2
MM
1522* REMOVED features
1523
1524The ARM rdi-share module.
1525
f4267320
DJ
1526The Netware NLM debug server.
1527
53e5f3cf 1528*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1529
e0ecbda1
MK
1530* New native configurations
1531
02a677ac 1532OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1533OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1534
d64a6579
KB
1535* New targets
1536
1537Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1538
b33a6190
AS
1539* New command line options
1540
1541--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1542--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1543 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1544--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1545 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1546 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1547 with the --command (-x) option.
1548
11dced61
AC
1549* Deprecated commands removed
1550
1551The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1552removed:
1553
1554 Command Replacement
1555 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1556 othernames set arm disassembler
1557 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1558 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1559 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1560 regs info registers
1561
6fe85783
MK
1562* New BSD user-level threads support
1563
1564It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1565library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1566configurations are:
1567
1568FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1569FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1570OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1571
1572Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1573are not yet supported.
1574
5260ca71
MS
1575* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1576(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1577
e84ecc99
AC
1578* REMOVED configurations and files
1579
1580VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1581Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1582National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1583
31e35378
JB
1584* New "set print array-indexes" command
1585
1586After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1587when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1588behavior.
1589
e85e5c83
MK
1590* VAX floating point support
1591
1592GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1593
d91e9901
AS
1594* User-defined command support
1595
1596In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1597to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1598section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1599
f2cb65ca
MC
1600*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1601
f47b1503
AS
1602* New command line option
1603
1604GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1605debugging.
1606
f2cb65ca
MC
1607* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1608
1609GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1610information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1611by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1612proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1613to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1614
d08c0230
AC
1615* Internationalization
1616
1617When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1618internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1619continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1620
117ea3cf
PH
1621* Ada
1622
1623Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1624implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1625into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1626
d08c0230
AC
1627* New native configurations
1628
1629GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1630
1631* Remote 'p' packet
1632
1633GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1634packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1635
1636* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1637
1638GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1639The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1640features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1641i386 application).
1642
1643GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1644compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1645continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1646configurations:
1647
1648hppa-*-hpux
1649ia64-*-aix
1650mips-*-irix*
1651*-*-lynx
1652mips-*-linux-gnu
1653sds protocol
1654xdr protocol
1655powerpc bdm protocol
1656
1657Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1658made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1659
1660* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1661
1662Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1663been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1664configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1665permanently REMOVED.
1666
1667h8300-*-*
1668mcore-*-*
1669mn10300-*-*
1670ns32k-*-*
1671sh64-*-*
1672v850-*-*
1673
ebb7c577
AC
1674*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1675
1676* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1677
1678When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1679heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1680been fixed.
1681
1682* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1683
1684When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1685fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1686IRIX long double values).
1687
1688* VAX and "next"
1689
1690A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1691command. This problem has been fixed.
1692
860660cb 1693*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1694
0dea2468
AC
1695* Fix for ``many threads''
1696
1697On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1698rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1699error message:
1700
1701 ptrace: No such process.
1702 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1703
1704This problem has been fixed.
1705
2c07db7a
AC
1706* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1707
1708Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1709GDB to dump core).
1710
c23968a2
JB
1711* New ``start'' command.
1712
1713This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1714
71009278
MK
1715* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1716
1717Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1718live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1719platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1720
1721FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1722FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1723NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1724NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1725NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1726OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1727OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1728OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1729OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1730
3c0b7db2
AC
1731* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1732
1733Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1734These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1735of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1736call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1737signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1738
73cc75f3
AC
1739Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1740features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1741include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1742
7243600a
BF
1743* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1744
6f606e1c
MK
1745* New native configurations
1746
97dc871c 1747GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1748OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1749OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1750OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1751OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1752NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1753OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1754
a1b461bf
AC
1755* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1756
1757GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1758The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1759including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1760migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1761compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1762work, was also included.
1763
1764GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1765module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1766
1767h8300-*-*
1768mcore-*-*
1769mn10300-*-*
1770ns32k-*-*
1771sh64-*-*
1772v850-*-*
1773xstormy16-*-*
1774
1775Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1776made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1777
3c7012f5
AC
1778* REMOVED configurations and files
1779
1780Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1781Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1782Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1783Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1784Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1785AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1786Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1787decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1788riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1789sonymips mips-sony-*
1790sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1791
e5fe55f7
AC
1792*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1793
1794* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1795
1796The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1797GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1798command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1799program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1800with GDB".
1801
1802* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1803
1804Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1805libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1806cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1807GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1808shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1809the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1810are created.
1811
1812Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1813
1814* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1815
1816The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1817non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1818compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1819
1820* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1821
1822Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1823wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1824
1825* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1826
1827The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1828permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1829systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1830
1831* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1832
1833Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1834has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1835
1836* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1837
1838GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1839its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1840panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1841
1842* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1843
1844When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1845by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1846not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1847
faae5abe 1848*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1849
9175c9a3
MC
1850* Removed --with-mmalloc
1851
1852Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1853conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1854
3cc87ec0
MK
1855* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1856
1857The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1858the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1859and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1860you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1861
f0424ef6
MK
1862* Revised SPARC target
1863
1864The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1865FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1866support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1867from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1868(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1869
59659be2
ILT
1870* New C++ demangler
1871
1872GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1873names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1874with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1875programs.
1876
9e08b29b
DJ
1877* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1878
1879GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1880arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1881encountered these.
1882
8dfe8985
DC
1883* C++ nested types and namespaces
1884
1885GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1886improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1887is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1888Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1889namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1890"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1891frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1892if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1893GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1894
cced5e27
MK
1895* New native configurations
1896
1897NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1898OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1899OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1900OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1901OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1902
b4b4b794
KI
1903* New debugging protocols
1904
1905M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1906
7989c619
AC
1907* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1908
1909The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1910and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1911tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1912
5994185b
AC
1913* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1914
1915Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1916been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1917configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1918permanently REMOVED.
1919
1920Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1921Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1922Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1923Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1924Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1925AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1926Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1927decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1928riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1929sonymips mips-sony-*
1930sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1931
0ddabb4c
AC
1932* REMOVED configurations and files
1933
1934SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1935SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1936Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1937Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1938H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1939HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1940HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1941HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1942PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1943386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1944Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1945 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1946 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1947SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1948SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1949Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1950Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1951
c7f1390e
DJ
1952*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1953
1fe43d45
AC
1954* Objective-C
1955
1956Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1957integrated into GDB.
1958
e6beb428
AC
1959* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1960
1961DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1962information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1963By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1964backtraces.
1965
1966The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1967have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1968DWARF 2 CFI support.
1969
1970* Hosted file I/O.
1971
1972GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1973file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1974remote protocol documentation for details.
1975
1976* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1977
1978All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1979architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1980to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1981ppc32 on ppc64).
1982
1983* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1984
1985GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1986per-thread variables.
1987
1988* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1989
1990GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1991GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1992
1993* Separate debug info.
1994
1995GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1996automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1997of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1998system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1999and optional debug files.
2000
2001* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2002
2003DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2004describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2005debugger.
2006
2007GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2008for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2009
2010* Java
2011
2012A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2013Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2014considered "useable".
2015
85f8f974
DJ
2016* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2017
2018The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2019commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2020kernel.
2021
0fac0b41
DJ
2022* GDB supports logging output to a file
2023
2024There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2025used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2026
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2027* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2028
2029The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2030disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2031command.
2032
e286caf2 2033* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2034
2035The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2036registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2037
d28f9cdf
DJ
2038* Profiling support
2039
2040A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2041be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2042session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2043"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2044data, for more informative profiling results.
2045
da0f9dcd
AC
2046* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2047
2048The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2049option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2050"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2051
2052Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2053removed.
2054
fb9b6b35
JJ
2055Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2056Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2057Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2058 in a subsequent -var-update.
2059
954a4db8
MK
2060* New native configurations.
2061
2062FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2063
6760f9e6
JB
2064* Multi-arched targets.
2065
b4263afa 2066HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2067Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2068
1b831c93
AC
2069* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2070
2071Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2072been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2073configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2074permanently REMOVED.
2075
8b0e5691 2076Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2077Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2078H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2079HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2080HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2081HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2082PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2083Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2084 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2085 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2086Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2087Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2088
5835abe7
NC
2089* REMOVED configurations and files
2090
2091V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2092Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2093IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2094i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2095i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2096i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2097HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2098 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2099 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2100Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2101Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2102Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2103OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2104I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2105
a094c6fb
AC
2106* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2107
2108The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2109the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2110context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2111address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2112The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2113
299ffc64 2114*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2115
46248966
AC
2116* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2117
2118When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2119`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2120in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2121library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2122shared libs like mad''.
2123
b9d14705 2124* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2125
b9d14705
DJ
2126Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2127the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2128arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2129powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2130
e0e9281e
JB
2131* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2132
2133GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2134and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2135they expand.
2136
dd73b9bb
AC
2137The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2138invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2139
2140The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2141macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2142
e0e9281e
JB
2143Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2144information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2145your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2146information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2147
2250ee0c
CV
2148* Multi-arched targets.
2149
6e3ba3b8
JT
2150DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2151DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2152NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2153National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2154Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2155Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2156
cd9bfe15 2157* New targets.
e33ce519 2158
456f8b9d
DB
2159Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2160
e33ce519 2161
da8ca43d
JT
2162* New native configurations
2163
2164Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2165SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2166MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2167UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2168
cd9bfe15
AC
2169* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2170
2171Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2172been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2173configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2174permanently REMOVED.
2175
92eb23c5 2176Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2177OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2178IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2179Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2180Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2181Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2182i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2183i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2184i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2185HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2186 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2187 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2188I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2189
db034ac5
AC
2190* OBSOLETE languages
2191
2192CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2193
cd9bfe15
AC
2194* REMOVED configurations and files
2195
2196AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2197A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2198AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2199AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2200AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2201
2202testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2203
20f01a46
DH
2204* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2205
2206This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2207commands. The default is 1024.
2208
a5941fbf
MK
2209* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2210
2211Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2212
89743e04
MS
2213* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2214
2215These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2216to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2217from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2218
9fb14e79
JB
2219* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2220
2221The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2222including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2223of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2224
2037aebb
AC
2225*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2226
2227* New targets.
2228
2229Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2230
2231* Bug fixes
2232
2233gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2234mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2235Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2236
2237gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2238dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2239Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2240
2241Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2242Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2243By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2244
2245i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2246avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2247By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2248
37057839 2249*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2250
1a703748
MS
2251* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2252
2253This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2254really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2255In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2256target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2257This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2258(notably embedded) targets.
2259
cefd4ef5
MS
2260* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2261
55241689
AC
2262This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2263process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2264GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2265hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2266
352ed7b4
MS
2267* New command line option
2268
2269GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2270
2271* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2272
2273There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2274command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2275a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2276be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2277open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2278issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2279a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2280it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2281GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2282is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2283
fe419ffc
RE
2284* Changes in ARM configurations.
2285
2286Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2287configuration is fully multi-arch.
2288
eb7cedd9
MK
2289* New native configurations
2290
fe419ffc 2291ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2292x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2293AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2294Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2295
c9f63e6b
CV
2296* New targets
2297
2298Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2299
9b4ff276
AC
2300* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2301
2302Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2303been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2304configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2305permanently REMOVED.
2306
2307AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2308A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2309AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2310AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2311AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2312
b4ceaee6 2313testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2314
e2caac18
AC
2315* REMOVED configurations and files
2316
2317TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2318WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2319PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2320PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2321PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2322Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2323Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2324 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2325SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2326Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2327Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2328ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2329Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2330
c2a727fa
TT
2331* Changes to command line processing
2332
2333The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2334for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2335
467d8519
TT
2336* Changes to key bindings
2337
2338There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2339
7072a954
AC
2340*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2341
2342Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2343
2344Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2345corrupted.
2346
2347Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2348
2349Numerous documentation fixes.
2350
2351Numerous testsuite fixes.
2352
34f47bc4 2353*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2354
2355* New native configurations
2356
2357Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2358x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2359MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2360MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2361ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2362s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2363
bf64bfd6
AC
2364* New targets
2365
def90278 2366Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2367CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2368UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2369
17e78a56 2370* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2371
2372x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2373Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2374Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2375 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2376TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2377WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2378Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2379PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2380PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2381PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2382SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2383Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2384ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2385Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2386
17e78a56
AC
2387stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2388kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2389
7fcca85b
AC
2390Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2391been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2392configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2393permanently REMOVED.
2394
a196c81c 2395* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2396
2397Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2398Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2399Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2400ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2401Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2402ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2403
6d6b80e5 2404* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2405
6d6b80e5 2406GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2407sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2408present.
2409
bf64bfd6
AC
2410* Other news:
2411
e23194cb
EZ
2412* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2413
2414* The MI enabled by default.
2415
2416The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2417revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2418engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2419using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2420which is now deprecated.
2421
2422* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2423
2424GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2425main features are supported:
2426
2427 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2428
2429 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2430 extension;
2431
2432 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2433
2434 - a Pascal expression parser.
2435
2436However, some important features are not yet supported.
2437
2438 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2439
2440 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2441
2442 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2443 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2444
2445 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2446
2447 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2448
2449* Changes in completion.
2450
2451Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2452to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2453users expect at the shell prompt.
2454
2455Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2456`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2457program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2458files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2459be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2460considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2461name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2462
2463`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2464
2465* New platform-independent commands:
2466
2467It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2468hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2469documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2470
2471* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2472
d7275149
MK
2473Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2474revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2475many threads as your system allows you to have.
2476
e23194cb
EZ
2477Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2478
d7275149
MK
2479Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2480multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2481
2482* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2483
2484Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2485
e23194cb
EZ
2486GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2487debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2488supported.)
2489
2490* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2491
2492Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2493breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2494implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2495put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2496and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2497registers.
2498
2499The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2500debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2501watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2502
2503* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2504
2505New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2506the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2507
2508New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2509display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2510IDT.
2511
2512New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2513from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2514New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2515a given linear address.
2516
2517GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2518program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2519which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2520
2521DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2522
6c56c069
EZ
2523It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2524
e23194cb
EZ
2525* Changes in documentation.
2526
2527All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2528Documentation License.
2529
2530Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2531manual.
2532
2533TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2534
2535Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2536manual.
2537
2538The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2539documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2540hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2541
5d6640b1
AC
2542* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2543
2544The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2545``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2546contents of this file.
2547
1a1d8446
AC
2548* gdba.el deleted
2549
2550GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2551
9debab2f 2552*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2553
c63ce875
EZ
2554* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2555
2556Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2557programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2558displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2559greater level of detail.
2560
2561* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2562
2563It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2564bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2565on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2566written.
2567
2568* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2569
2570The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2571necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2572machines ``out of the box''.
2573
2574The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2575possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2576signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2577would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2578interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2579
2580It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2581standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2582even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2583and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2584terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2585
2586The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2587enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2588also works.
2589
2590DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2591GDB.
2592
2593It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2594directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2595times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2596breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2597
ed9a39eb
JM
2598* New native configurations
2599
2600ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2601PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2602
7a292a7a
SS
2603* New targets
2604
96baa820 2605Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2606x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2607PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2608TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2609
085dd6e6
JM
2610* OBSOLETE configurations
2611
2612Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2613Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2614Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2615ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2616Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2617
9debab2f
AC
2618Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2619but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2620these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2621be permanently REMOVED.
2622
5330533d
SS
2623* Gould support removed
2624
2625Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2626
bc9e5bbf
AC
2627* New features for SVR4
2628
2629On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2630without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2631load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2632
2633* Many C++ enhancements
2634
2635C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2636in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2637
adf40b2e
JM
2638* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2639
2640A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2641sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2642with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2643``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2644
2645 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2646 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2647
43e526b9
JM
2648* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2649
2650A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2651expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2652instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2653
2654The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2655added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2656
96baa820
JM
2657* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2658
2659The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2660``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2661include ``set remote P-packet''.
2662
11cf8741
JM
2663* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2664
2665The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2666accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2667``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2668
7876dd43
DB
2669* ``apropos'' command added.
2670
2671The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2672documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2673try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2674
bc9e5bbf
AC
2675* New MI interface
2676
2677A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2678interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2679process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2680"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2681enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2682
2683 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2684
c906108c
SS
2685*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2686
2687* New native configurations
2688
2689HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2690HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2691M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2692
2693* New targets
2694
2695Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2696Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2697Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2698
2699* OBSOLETE configurations
2700
2701Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2702
2703Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2704but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2705these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2706be permanently REMOVED.
2707
2708* ANSI/ISO C
2709
2710As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2711buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2712containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2713use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2714available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2715configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2716information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2717already.
2718
2719* Readline 2.2
2720
2721GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2722
2723* set extension-language
2724
2725You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2726languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2727you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2728 set extension-language .c c++
2729The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2730and their associated languages.
2731
2732* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2733
2734When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2735you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2736PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2737
2738 set processor NAME
2739
2740sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2741following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2742
2743 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2744 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2745 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2746 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2747 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2748 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2749 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2750 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2751 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2752 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2753 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2754
2755At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2756special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2757registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2758only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2759
2760* HP-UX support
2761
2762Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2763more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2764library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2765support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2766for xdb and dbx commands.
2767
2768* Catchpoints
2769
2770HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2771generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2772to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2773
2774This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2775argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2776output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2777
2778* Debugging across forks
2779
2780On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2781in the inferior.
2782
2783* TUI
2784
2785HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2786it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2787configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2788
2789* GDB remote protocol additions
2790
2791A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2792Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2793fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2794allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2795
2796For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2797full 64-bit address. The command
2798
2799 set remoteaddresssize 32
2800
2801can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2802the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2803will be discarded.
2804
2805In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2806command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2807
2808 maint packet heythere
2809
2810sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2811disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2812time.
2813
2814The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2815target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2816downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2817
2818* Tracing can collect general expressions
2819
2820You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2821further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2822doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2823
2824* mask-address variable for Mips
2825
2826For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2827a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2828of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2829
2830* Higher serial baud rates
2831
2832GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2833230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2834to achieve all of these rates.)
2835
2836* i960 simulator
2837
2838The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2839builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2840
2841
2842*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2843
2844* New native configurations
2845
2846Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2847Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2848Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2849PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2850PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2851Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2852Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2853
2854* New targets
2855
2856Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2857Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2858Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2859Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2860MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2861MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2862MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2863Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2864Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2865Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2866NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2867
2868* New debugging protocols
2869
2870ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2871M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2872DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2873PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2874PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2875Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2876
2877* DWARF 2
2878
2879All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2880format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2881information.
2882
2883* Java frontend
2884
2885GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2886only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2887
2888* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2889
2890For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2891loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2892locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2893
2894* Live range splitting
2895
2896GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2897range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2898more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2899
2900* Hurd support
2901
2902GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2903updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2904
2905* ARM Thumb support
2906
2907GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2908instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2909instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2910accordingly.
2911
2912* MIPS16 support
2913
2914GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2915instruction set.
2916
2917* Overlay support
2918
2919GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2920linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2921will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2922control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2923additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2924in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2925
2926* info symbol
2927
2928The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2929the symbol at the specified address.
2930
2931* Trace support
2932
2933The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2934asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2935extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2936includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2937file tracepoint.c for more details.
2938
2939* MIPS simulator
2940
2941Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2942by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2943of most MIPS variants.
2944
2945* Sparc simulator
2946
2947Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2948by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2949Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2950
2951* set architecture
2952
2953For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2954basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2955architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2956the possible architectures.
2957
2958*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2959
2960* New native configurations
2961
2962Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2963M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2964PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2965PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2966PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2967RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2968
2969* New targets
2970
2971ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2972I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2973MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2974MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2975PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2976Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2977Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2978
2979* PowerPC simulator
2980
2981The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2982contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2983PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2984basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2985performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2986
2987* Solaris 2.5
2988
2989GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2990
2991* Windows 95/NT native
2992
2993GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2994To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2995which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2996Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2997ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2998
2999* dont-repeat command
3000
3001If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3002command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3003useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3004extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3005
3006* Send break instead of ^C
3007
3008The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3009rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3010GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3011
3012* Remote protocol timeout
3013
3014The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3015that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3016to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3017
3018* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3019
3020By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3021loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3022stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3023when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3024in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3025
3026Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3027/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3028automatically on hpux10.
3029
3030* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3031
3032Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3033
3034* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3035
3036When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3037may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3038the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3039every character. The default value is 1050.
3040
3041* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3042
3043If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3044a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3045replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3046details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3047remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3048to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3049
3050* Speedups for remote debugging
3051
3052GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3053the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3054and more efficient S-record downloading.
3055
3056* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3057
3058GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3059Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3060
3061*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3062
3063* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3064
3065The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3066can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3067
3068* Remote targets use caching
3069
3070Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3071remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3072it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3073debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3074off' turns the the data cache off.
3075
3076* Remote targets may have threads
3077
3078The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3079in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3080gdb/remote.c for details.
3081
3082* NetROM support
3083
3084If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3085support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3086acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3087write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3088support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3089another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3090sequence is something like
3091
3092 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3093 load <prog>
3094 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3095
3096* Macintosh host
3097
3098GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3099may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3100it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3101available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3102device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3103directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3104scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3105mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3106
3107* Autoconf
3108
3109GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3110but does simplify configuration and building.
3111
3112* hpux10
3113
3114GDB now supports hpux10.
3115
3116*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3117
3118* New native configurations
3119
3120x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3121x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3122NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3123Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3124
3125* New targets
3126
3127A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3128HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3129CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3130PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3131WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3132
3133* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3134
3135GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3136possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3137filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3138the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3139if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3140
3141* Arguments to user-defined commands
3142
3143User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3144Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3145trivial example:
3146define adder
3147 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3148
3149To execute the command use:
3150adder 1 2 3
3151
3152Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3153Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3154use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3155
3156* New `if' and `while' commands
3157
3158This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3159commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3160expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3161execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3162terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3163`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3164if the expression is zero.
3165
3166* Fortran source language mode
3167
3168GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3169Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3170variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3171with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3172Fortran compilers.
3173
3174* Better HPUX support
3175
3176Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3177running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3178processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3179for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3180that behavior do the following before running the program:
3181
3182 adb -w a.out
3183 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3184 control-d
3185
3186This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3187To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3188
3189 adb -w a.out
3190 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3191 control-d
3192
3193You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3194the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3195external linkage.
3196
3197GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3198HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3199
3200* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3201
3202You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3203commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3204current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3205"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3206associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3207configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3208
3209* New DOS host serial code
3210
3211This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3212no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3213a PC's serial port.
3214
3215*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3216
3217* New "complete" command
3218
3219This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3220were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3221
3222* Trailing space optional in prompt
3223
3224"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3225allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3226
3227* Breakpoint hit counts
3228
3229"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3230has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3231can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3232to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3233less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3234that breakpoint.
3235
3236* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3237
3238"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3239an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3240arrays actually contain only short strings.
3241
3242* Shared library breakpoints
3243
3244In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3245breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3246
3247* Hardware watchpoints
3248
3249There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3250targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3251
55241689 3252Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3253
3254* Annotations
3255
3256Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3257and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3258
3259* Improved Irix 5 support
3260
3261GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3262
3263* Improved HPPA support
3264
3265GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3266
3267* New native configurations
3268
3269Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3270HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3271Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3272RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3273
3274* New targets
3275
3276OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3277MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3278Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3279
3280* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3281
3282There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3283This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3284
3285* Fixes
3286
3287As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3288and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3289
3290*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3291
3292* Irix 5 is now supported
3293
3294* HPPA support
3295
3296GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3297to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3298GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3299of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3300can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3301
3302
3303*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3304
3305* User visible changes:
3306
3307* Remote Debugging
3308
3309The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3310target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3311debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3312integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3313debugging info for the mips target).
3314
3315* DEC Alpha native support
3316
3317GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3318debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3319work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3320Alpha-specific notes.
3321
3322* Preliminary thread implementation
3323
3324GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3325
3326* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3327
3328This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3329to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3330for details).
3331
3332* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3333
3334This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3335mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3336call methods, ...etc.
3337
3338*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3339
3340 * User visible changes:
3341
3342Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3343supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3344other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3345somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3346
3347Filename completion now works.
3348
3349When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3350arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3351addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3352
3353All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3354vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3355should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3356your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3357to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3358
3359 * DEC alpha support
3360
3361This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3362cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3363
3364
3365*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3366
3367 * Testsuite
3368
3369This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3370The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3371via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3372
3373 * C++ demangling
3374
3375'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3376emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3377Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3378disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3379use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3380
3381 * Simulators
3382
3383GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3384So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3385Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3386
3387 * New targets supported
3388
3389H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3390H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3391SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3392Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3393IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3394
3395Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3396version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3397GO32 memory extender.
3398
3399 * New remote protocols
3400
3401MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3402
3403 * New source languages supported
3404
3405This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3406used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3407into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3408
3409
3410*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3411
3412 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3413
3414GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3415version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3416University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3417compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3418format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3419(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3420
3421Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3422
3423 * Faster and better demangling
3424
3425We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3426demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3427character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3428only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3429This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3430increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3431symbol lookups.
3432
3433`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3434from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3435compiler does not actually implement.
3436
3437 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3438
3439In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3440inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3441recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3442very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3443The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3444circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3445fix.
3446
3447The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3448release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3449
3450 * Improved configure script
3451
3452The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3453you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3454host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3455done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3456
3457We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3458version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3459`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3460The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3461only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3462We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3463
3464 * Documentation improvements
3465
3466There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3467produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3468before submitting changes.
3469
3470The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3471M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3472`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3473you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3474a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3475
3476*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3477We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3478been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3479or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3480`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3481around this problem.
3482
3483 * New features
3484
3485GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3486the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3487`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3488the target program.
3489
3490The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3491how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3492
3493 * New native hosts supported
3494
3495HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3496386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3497
3498 * New targets supported
3499
3500AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3501
3502 * New file formats supported
3503
3504BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3505HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3506
3507 * Major bug fixes
3508
3509Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3510
3511We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3512printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3513
3514We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3515for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3516release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3517
3518You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3519will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3520
3521We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3522for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3523especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3524libraries.
3525
3526The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3527information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3528command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3529any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3530when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3531
3532 * Internal improvements
3533
3534GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3535debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3536
3537GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3538Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3539symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3540contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3541shared code that handles any of them.
3542
3543 * New command line options
3544
3545We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3546
3547 * Mmalloc licensing
3548
3549The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3550General Public License.
3551
3552*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3553
3554 * Host/native/target split
3555
3556GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3557hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3558target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3559local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3560ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3561
3562The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3563GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3564is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3565code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3566any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3567built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3568handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3569
3570GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3571It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3572plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3573
3574 * New hosts supported
3575
3576HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3577386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3578386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3579
3580 * New targets supported
3581
3582Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
358368030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3584
3585 * New native hosts supported
3586
3587386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3588 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3589386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3590
3591 * New file formats supported
3592
3593BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3594supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3595format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3596
3597 * New commands
3598
3599`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3600`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3601These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3602
3603`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3604
3605You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3606scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3607prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3608executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3609
3610 * C++ improvements
3611
3612We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3613info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3614symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3615
3616Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3617
3618 * Major bug fixes
3619
3620The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3621fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3622by the compiler.
3623
3624We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3625support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3626
3627John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3628slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3629that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3630purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3631the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3632mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3633
3634Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3635about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3636completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3637we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3638
3639 * AMD 29k support
3640
3641A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3642specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3643calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3644usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3645in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3646
3647We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3648Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3649of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3650resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3651
3652 * Remote interfaces
3653
3654We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3655with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3656message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3657This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3658needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3659breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3660each instruction being stepped through.
3661
3662The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3663registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3664
3665There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3666find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3667Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3668processor with a serial port.
3669
3670 * Configuration
3671
3672Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3673`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3674supported, and what files each one uses.
3675
3676 * Library changes
3677
3678There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3679disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3680Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3681disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3682
3683The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3684Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3685can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3686grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3687
3688 * Documentation
3689
3690The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3691reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3692as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3693encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3694system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3695bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3696
3697And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3698
3699
3700*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3701
3702 * Better support for C++ function names
3703
3704GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3705names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3706(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3707single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3708Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3709
3710GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3711the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3712You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3713lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3714for the list of formats.
3715
3716 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3717
3718Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3719C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3720directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3721can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3722usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3723about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3724this problem.)
3725
3726 * New 'maintenance' command
3727
3728All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3729the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3730can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3731
3732 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3733 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3734 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3735 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3736 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3737 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3738
3739The following commands are new:
3740
3741 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3742 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3743 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3744
3745 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3746
3747We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3748(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3749be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3750read after argv processing.
3751
3752 * New hosts supported
3753
3754Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3755
55241689 3756GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3757
3758We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3759is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3760for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3761masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3762fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3763It costs extra.
3764
3765 * New targets supported
3766
3767Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3768
3769 * More smarts about finding #include files
3770
3771GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3772all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3773greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3774especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3775the one that contains your sources.
3776
3777We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3778breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3779try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3780
3781 * Interesting infernals change
3782
3783GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3784section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3785target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3786stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3787
3788 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3789
3790There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3791 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3792 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3793
3794See the ChangeLog for details.
3795
3796*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3797
3798 * New machines supported (host and target)
3799
3800IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3801
3802SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3803
3804 * New malloc package
3805
3806GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3807Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3808capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3809This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3810pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3811more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3812
3813 * info proc
3814
3815The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3816'help info proc' for details.
3817
3818 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3819
3820The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3821Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3822possible.
3823
3824 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3825
3826Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3827support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3828conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3829environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3830that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3831in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3832
3833 * Cross byte order fixes
3834
3835Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3836targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3837
3838 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3839
3840If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3841system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3842`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3843program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3844called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3845Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3846and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3847the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3848option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3849starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3850
3851You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3852the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3853information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3854slower, but makes future operations faster.
3855
3856The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3857build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3858A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3859use is:
3860
3861 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3862
3863The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3864It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3865shared across multiple host platforms.
3866
3867 * longjmp() handling
3868
3869GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3870siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3871all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3872platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3873
3874 * Solaris 2.0
3875
3876Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3877this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3878reading symbols.
3879
3880 * Bug fixes
3881
3882As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3883People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3884crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3885
3886*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3887
3888 * New machines supported (host and target)
3889
3890SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3891 (except core files)
3892BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3893Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3894
3895 * New machines supported (target)
3896
3897AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3898
3899 * C++ support
3900
3901GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3902The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3903per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3904
3905GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3906`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3907extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3908good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3909will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3910released.
3911
3912 * New features for SVR4
3913
3914GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3915shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3916only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3917
3918The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3919on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3920it prints the address mappings of the process.
3921
3922If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3923bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3924
3925 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3926
3927Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3928now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3929skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3930make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3931same code linked statically.
3932
3933 * New Getopt
3934
3935GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3936version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3937continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3938Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3939added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3940future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3941
3942 * Bugs fixed
3943
3944The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3945Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3946See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3947
3948
3949*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3950
3951 * New machines supported (host and target)
3952
3953Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3954NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3955Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3956
3957 * Almost SCO Unix support
3958
3959We had hoped to support:
3960SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3961(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3962that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3963about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3964
3965 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3966
3967GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3968debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3969is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3970send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3971reqired (if any).
3972
3973 * New Readline
3974
3975GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3976is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3977required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3978
3979 * Bugs fixed
3980
3981The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3982Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3983See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3984
3985 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3986
3987GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3988supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3989symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3990
3991Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3992mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3993debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3994mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3995version 2.
3996
3997Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3998really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3999line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4000variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4001situation somewhat.
4002
4003When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4004However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4005methods.
4006
4007We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4008DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4009encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4010
4011
4012*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4013
4014 * Improved configuration
4015
4016Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4017Porting BFD is simpler.
4018
4019 * Stepping improved
4020
4021The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4022of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4023in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4024function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4025
4026 * Bug fixing
4027
4028Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4029
4030 * New host supported (not target)
4031
4032Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4033
4034
4035*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4036
4037 * Multiple source language support
4038
4039GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4040It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4041and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4042language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4043You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4044`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4045
4046 * GDB and Modula-2
4047
4048GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4049currently under development at the State University of New York at
4050Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4051continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4052
4053Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4054debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4055symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4056
4057There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4058in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4059
4060 * set write on/off
4061
4062GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4063a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4064the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4065by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4066effect immediately.
4067
4068 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4069
4070When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4071shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4072The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4073examining core files.
4074
4075 * set listsize
4076
4077You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4078The default is 10.
4079
4080 * New machines supported (host and target)
4081
4082SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4083Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4084Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4085
4086 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4087
4088IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4089
4090 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4091
4092AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4093AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4094Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4095
4096 * New remote interfaces
4097
4098AMD 29000 Adapt
4099AMD 29000 Minimon
4100
4101
4102*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4103
4104 * New Facilities
4105
4106Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4107
4108Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4109target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4110is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4111remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4112remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4113also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4114using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4115stub on the target system.
4116
4117New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4118
4119GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4120library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4121object file types such as a.out and coff.
4122
4123There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4124refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4125
4126
4127 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4128
4129All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4130by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4131
4132For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4133``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4134Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4135
4136What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4137print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4138will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4139all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4140
4141confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4142 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4143 it is already running. Default is ON.
4144
4145editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4146 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4147 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4148 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4149 Default is ON.
4150
4151history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4152 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4153 or the value of the environment variable
4154 GDBHISTFILE.
4155
4156history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4157 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4158 HISTSIZE.
4159
4160history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4161 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4162 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4163
4164history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4165 history expansion will be performed on
4166 command line input. The default is OFF.
4167
4168radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4169 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4170 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4171
4172height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4173 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4174 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4175 variable TERM.
4176
4177width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4178 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4179 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4180 variable TERM.
4181
4182Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4183``set width'' instead.
4184
4185print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4186 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4187 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4188 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4189
4190print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4191 is OFF.
4192
4193print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4194 "raw" form if off.
4195
4196print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4197 like instructions.
4198
4199print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4200
4201
4202 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4203
4204The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4205new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4206are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4207window.
4208
4209
4210 * Support for Shared Libraries
4211
4212GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4213Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4214before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4215happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4216At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4217from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4218shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4219It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4220
4221sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4222 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4223 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4224
4225info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4226
4227
4228 * Watchpoints
4229
4230A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4231expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4232tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4233quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4234problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4235more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4236
4237watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4238
4239info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4240
4241delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4242disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4243enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4244
4245
4246 * C++ multiple inheritance
4247
4248When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4249for C++ programs.
4250
4251 * C++ exception handling
4252
4253Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4254ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4255the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4256handler's context).
4257
4258catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4259 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4260 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4261
4262info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4263 current stack frame.
4264
4265
4266 * Minor command changes
4267
4268The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4269command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4270is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4271
4272The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4273at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4274frames without printing.
4275
4276 * New directory command
4277
4278'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4279The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4280about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4281with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4282find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4283
4284 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4285
4286For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4287for more details.
4288
4289GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4290two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4291Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4292where the program that you are debugging will run.
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