gdb
[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 7.1
5
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6* Windows Thread Information Block access.
7
8 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
9 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
10 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
11 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
12 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
13 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
14
15* New remote packets
16
17qGetTIBAddr
18
19 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
20
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21qRelocInsn
22
23 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
24 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
25 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
26 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
27 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
28 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
29
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30* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
31 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
32 a directory.
33
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34* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
35
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36 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints).
37 The feature is currently supported by the i386-linux and
38 amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support in gdbserver"
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39 section in the manual for more information. GDBserver JIT
40 compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent expression bytecode
41 into native code whenever possible for low overhead dynamic
42 tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints, an expression
43 that examines program state is evaluated when the tracepoint is
44 reached, in order to determine whether to capture trace data. If
45 the condition is simple and false, processing the tracepoint
46 finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
d337e9f0 47
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48 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
49
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50* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
51 it understands register description.
52
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53* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
54
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55* X86 general purpose registers
56
57 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
58 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
59 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
60 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
61 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
62
95a42b64 63* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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64 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
65 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
66 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
67 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
68 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 69
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70* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
71 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
72 in the specified file.
73
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74* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
75 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
76 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
77 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
78 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
79 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
80 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
81 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
82 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
83 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
84
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85* New commands
86
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87eval template, expressions...
88 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
89 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
90
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91set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
92show target-file-system-kind
93 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
94 names.
95
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96save breakpoints <filename>
97 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
98 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
99 definitions, use the `source' command.
100
101`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
102is now deprecated.
103
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104* Python scripting
105
adc36818 106** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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107 tables, program spaces, and frame's code blocks. Additionally, GDB
108 Parameters can now be created from the API, and manipulated via
109 set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 110
fa33c3cd 111** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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112 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
113
114** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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115
116** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 117
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118** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
119
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120** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
121 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
122 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
123
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124* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
125there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
126tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
127regular breakpoints.
128
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129* New targets
130
131ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
132
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133* D language support.
134 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
135 language.
136
bfbf3774 137*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 138
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139* C++ Improvements
140
141 ** Namespace Support
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142
143 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
144 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
145 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
146 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
147 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
148
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149 ** Bug Fixes
150
151 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
152 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
153 qualified name.
154
155 ** Cast Operators
156
157 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
158 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
159
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160* New targets
161
162Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 163Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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164
165* New Simulators
166
167Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 168Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 169
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170* Multi-program debugging.
171
172 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
173 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
174 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
175 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
176 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
177 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
178 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
179 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
180
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181* New tracing features
182
183 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
184
185 ** Trace state variables
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186
187 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
188 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
189 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
190 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
191 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
192 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
193 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
194 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
195 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
196 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 197
d5551862 198 ** Fast tracepoints
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199
200 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
201 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
202 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
203 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
204 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
205 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
206 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
207 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
208 the regular trace command.
209
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210 ** Disconnected tracing
211
212 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
213 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
214 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
215 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
216 connection is lost unexpectedly.
217
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218 ** Trace files
219
220 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
221 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
222 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
223 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
224 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
225 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
226 <name>".
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227
228 ** Circular trace buffer
229
230 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
231 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
232 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
233 not be available for all target agents.
234
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235* Changed commands
236
237disassemble
238 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
239 the arguments to be comma-separated.
240
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241info variables
242 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
243 which only declare a variable are not shown.
244
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245source
246 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
247 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
248 support.
249
250 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
251 "set script-extension" (see below).
252
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253* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
254
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255record save [<FILENAME>]
256 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
257 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
258
259record restore <FILENAME>
260 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
261 earlier time, for replay debugging.
262
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263add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
264 Add a new inferior.
265
266clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
267 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
268 inferior has loaded.
269
270remove-inferior ID
271 Remove an inferior.
272
273maint info program-spaces
274 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
275
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276set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
277show remote interrupt-sequence
278 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
279 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
280 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
281 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
282 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
283
284set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
285show remote interrupt-on-connect
286 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
287 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
288 Linux kernel.
289
290set remotebreak [on | off]
291show remotebreak
292Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
293
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294tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
295 Create or modify a trace state variable.
296
297info tvariables
298 List trace state variables and their values.
299
300delete tvariable $NAME ...
301 Delete one or more trace state variables.
302
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303teval EXPR, ...
304 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
305 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
306
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307ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
308 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
309
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310* New expression syntax
311
312 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
313 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
314
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315* New options
316
317set follow-exec-mode new|same
318show follow-exec-mode
319 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
320 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
321 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
322
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323set default-collect EXPR, ...
324show default-collect
325 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
326 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
327 such as registers or a critical global variable.
328
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329set disconnected-tracing
330show disconnected-tracing
331 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
332 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
333 upon disconnection.
334
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335set circular-trace-buffer
336show circular-trace-buffer
337 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
338 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
339 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
340 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
341
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342set script-extension off|soft|strict
343show script-extension
344 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
345 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
346 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
347 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
348 evaluation failed.
349 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
350
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351set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
352show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
353 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
354 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
355 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
356 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
357 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
358 is on.
359
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360* Python API Improvements
361
362 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
363 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
364 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
365
366 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
367 `is_base_class' attribute.
368
369 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
370
371 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
372 evaluate an expression.
373
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374* New remote packets
375
376QTDV
377 Define a trace state variable.
378
379qTV
380 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
381
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382QTDisconnected
383 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
384
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385QTBuffer:circular
386 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
387
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388qTfP, qTsP
389 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
390
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391* Bug fixes
392
393Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
394
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395Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
396much more reliable. In particular:
397 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
398 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
399 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
400 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
401 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
402 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
403 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
404 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
405 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
406 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
407 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
408 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
409 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
410 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
411 non-threaded programs.
412
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413PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
414This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
415libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
416executable program.
417
abc7453d 418*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 419
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420* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
421dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
422them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
423for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
424"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
425
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426* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
427breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
428or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
429the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
430for tracepoint actions.
431
e6158f16 432* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
7280022e 433in hex as well as in symbolic form.
e6158f16 434
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435* Process record and replay
436
437 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
438 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
439 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
440 execute commands.
441
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442* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
443step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
444set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
445reverse execution.
446
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447* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
448feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4492.6.28 or later.
450
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451* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
452target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
453char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
454literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
455U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
456`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
457system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
458the installation instructions for more information.
459
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460* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
461remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
462with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
463the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
464
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465* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
466and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
467
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468* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
469now complete on file names.
470
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471* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
472completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
473For instance, consider:
474
475 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
476 # struct example variable;
477 (gdb) p variable.
478
479If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
480completions will be "f1" and "f2".
481
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482* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
483the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
484
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485* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
486operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
487macros.
488
47a3467a 489* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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490the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
491implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
492
493* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
494registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
495can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
496and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 497
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498* New remote packets
499
500qSearch:memory:
501 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
502
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503QStartNoAckMode
504 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
505 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
506 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
507
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508vKill
509 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
510 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
511
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512qXfer:osdata:read
513 Obtains additional operating system information
514
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515qXfer:siginfo:read
516qXfer:siginfo:write
517 Read or write additional signal information.
518
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519* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
520
521 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
522 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
523 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
524
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525* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
526source+assembly.
527
c055b101 528* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 529DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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530
531* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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532and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
533`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 534
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535* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
536with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
537
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538* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
539
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540* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
541
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542* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
543which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
544
1fddbabb 545* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 546list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 547
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548* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
549conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
550have also been fixed.
551
bfb8797a 552* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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553From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
554are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 555
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556* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
557example, given:
558
559 template<typename T> class C { };
560 C<char const *> c;
561
562GDB will now correctly handle all of:
563
564 ptype C<char const *>
565 ptype C<char const*>
566 ptype C<const char *>
567 ptype C<const char*>
568
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569* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
570
571 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
572 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
573
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574 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
575 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
576 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
577
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578 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
579 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
580
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581 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
582 gdbserver.
583
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584 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
585 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
586
587 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
588 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
589 as appropriate.
590
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591* Python scripting
592
593 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
594 available is determined at configure time.
595
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596 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
597
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598* Ada tasking support
599
600 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
601 been introduced:
602
603 info tasks
604 Print the list of Ada tasks.
605 info task N
606 Print detailed information about task number N.
607 task
608 Print the task number of the current task.
609 task N
610 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
611
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612* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
613add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
614
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615* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
616
617 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
618 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
619 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
620 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
621 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
622 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
623 below.
624
08d16641
PA
625* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
626"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
627information.
628
e35359c5
UW
629* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
630to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
631architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
632See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
633more information.
634
85e747d2
UW
635* Multi-architecture debugging.
636
637 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
638 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
639 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
640 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
641 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
642
643* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
644use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
645Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
646powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
647--enable-targets configure option.
648
11ade57a
PA
649* Non-stop mode debugging.
650
651 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
652 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
653 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
654 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
655 section in the user manual for more information.
656
657 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
658 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
659 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
660 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
661 extensions on linux targets.
662
d7713ae0 663* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 664
a96d9b2e
SDJ
665catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
666 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
667 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
668 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
669 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
670 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
671 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
672 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
673 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
674
08388c79
DE
675find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
676 val1 [, val2, ...]
677 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
678
d57a3c85
TJB
679maint set python print-stack
680maint show python print-stack
681 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
682
683python [CODE]
684 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
685
d7713ae0
EZ
686macro define
687macro list
688macro undef
689 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
690 interactively.
691
692info os processes
693 Show operating system information about processes.
694
2277426b
PA
695info inferiors
696 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
697
698inferior NUM
699 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
700
701detach inferior NUM
702 Detach from inferior number NUM.
703
704kill inferior NUM
705 Kill inferior number NUM.
706
d7713ae0
EZ
707* New options
708
3285f3fe
UW
709set spu stop-on-load
710show spu stop-on-load
711 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
712
ff1a52c6
UW
713set spu auto-flush-cache
714show spu auto-flush-cache
715 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
716 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
717
d7713ae0
EZ
718set sh calling-convention
719show sh calling-convention
720 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
721
e0a3ce09 722set debug timestamp
75feb17d 723show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
724 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
725
726set disassemble-next-line
727show disassemble-next-line
728 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
729 the debuggee stops.
730
731set remote noack-packet
732show remote noack-packet
733 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
734 under "New remote packets."
735
736set remote query-attached-packet
737show remote query-attached-packet
738 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
739
740set remote read-siginfo-object
741show remote read-siginfo-object
742 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
743 packet.
744
745set remote write-siginfo-object
746show remote write-siginfo-object
747 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
748 packet.
749
40ab02ce
MS
750set remote reverse-continue
751show remote reverse-continue
752 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
753
754set remote reverse-step
755show remote reverse-step
756 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
757
d7713ae0
EZ
758set displaced-stepping
759show displaced-stepping
760 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
761 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
762 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
763
764set debug displaced
765show debug displaced
766 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
767
768maint set internal-error
769maint show internal-error
770 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
771
772maint set internal-warning
773maint show internal-warning
774 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 775
ccd213ac
DJ
776set exec-wrapper
777show exec-wrapper
778unset exec-wrapper
779 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 780
aad4b048
JB
781set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
782show multiple-symbols
783 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
784 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
785 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
786
74960c60
VP
787set breakpoint always-inserted
788show breakpoint always-inserted
789 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
790 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
791 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
792
0428b8f5
DJ
793set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
794show arm fallback-mode
795set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
796show arm force-mode
797 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
798 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
799 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
800 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
801
10568435
JK
802set disable-randomization
803show disable-randomization
804 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
805 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
806 multiple debugging sessions.
807
d7713ae0
EZ
808set non-stop
809show non-stop
810 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
811 a breakpoint.
812
b3eb342c 813set target-async
d7713ae0 814show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
815 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
816 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
817 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
818 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
819
6c7a06a3
TT
820set target-wide-charset
821show target-wide-charset
822 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
823 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
824
84603566
SL
825set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
826show tcp auto-retry
827set tcp connect-timeout
828show tcp connect-timeout
829 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
830 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
831 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
832
17a37d48
PP
833set libthread-db-search-path
834show libthread-db-search-path
835 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
836 libthread_db.
837
d4db2f36
PA
838set schedule-multiple (on|off)
839show schedule-multiple
840 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
841 the current process.
842
4e5d721f
DE
843set stack-cache
844show stack-cache
845 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
846 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
847 affecting correctness.
848
910c5da8
JB
849set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
850show interactive-mode
851 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
852 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
853 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
854 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
855 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
856
2277426b
PA
857* Removed commands
858
859info forks
860 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
861 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
862 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
863 command.
864
865fork NUM
866 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
867 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
868 alias for the `fork' command.
869
870process PID
871 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
872 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
873 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
874
875delete fork NUM
876 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
877 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
878 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
879 fork' command.
880
881detach fork NUM
882 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
883 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
884 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
885 fork' command.
886
a80b95ba
TG
887* New native configurations
888
889x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
890
b8bfd3ed
JB
891x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
892
75a2d5e7
TT
893* New targets
894
c28c63d8 895Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 896x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 897x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 898S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 899
6de3146c
PA
900* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
901 (mingw32ce) debugging.
902
d5cbbe6e
JB
903* Removed commands
904
905catch load
906catch unload
907 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
908
75feb17d 909*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 910
af5ca30d
NH
911* New native configurations
912
913NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 914Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
915
916* New targets
917
918NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 919Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 920
7a404eba
PA
921* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
922
923 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
924 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
925 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
926 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
927
430ebac9
PA
928* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
929(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
930
fe6fbf8b 931* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 932is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
933
934* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
935including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
936and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 937
10665d76
JB
938* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
939accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
940more than one contiguous range of addresses.
941
7cc46491
DJ
942* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
943
d71340b8
DJ
944* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
945registers on PowerPC targets.
946
523c4513
DJ
947* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
948targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
949
a6b151f1
DJ
950* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
951commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
952
2d717e4f
DJ
953* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
954extended-remote mode.
955
24a836bd 956* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
957The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
958error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
959The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 960
d0c678e6
UW
961* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
962building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
963target architectures.
964
d64a946d
TJB
965* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
966Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
967now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
968stored in two consecutive float registers.
969
ee163bf5
VP
970* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
971breakpoints now.
972
b93b6ca7 973* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
974Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
975include:
b93b6ca7
JB
976 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
977 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
978 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
979 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
980 of an assignment
981 - Improved command completion in Ada
982 - Several bug fixes
983
d001be7a
DJ
984* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
985process.
986
a6b151f1
DJ
987* New commands
988
6d53d0af
JB
989set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
990show print frame-arguments
991 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
992 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
993
a6b151f1
DJ
994remote put
995remote get
996remote delete
997 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
998
999* New MI commands
1000
1001-target-file-put
1002-target-file-get
1003-target-file-delete
1004 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1005
1006* New remote packets
1007
1008vFile:open:
1009vFile:close:
1010vFile:pread:
1011vFile:pwrite:
1012vFile:unlink:
1013 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1014
2d717e4f
DJ
1015vAttach
1016 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1017 mode.
1018
1019vRun
1020 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1021
8d5f9c6f 1022*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1023
19d378fc
MS
1024* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1025bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1026Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1027
3a40aaa0
UW
1028* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1029symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1030-Bsymbolic linker option.
1031
a6ec25f2
BW
1032* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1033recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1034is not supported.
1035
6dd09645
JB
1036* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1037frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1038
c9bb8148
DJ
1039* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
104032-bit or 64-bit register values.
1041
0d5de010
DJ
1042* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1043
23181151
DJ
1044* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1045target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1046a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1047
ea37ba09
DJ
1048* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1049automatically displayed as character or string data.
1050
1051* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1052arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1053as strings.
e1f48ead 1054
123dc839
DJ
1055* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1056for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1057only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1058
05a4558a
DJ
1059* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1060iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1061
7c963485
PA
1062* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1063ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1064has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1065
b18be20d
DJ
1066* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1067
0ca420ce
UW
1068* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1069
31d99776
DJ
1070* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1071layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1072segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1073
a4642986
MR
1074* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1075immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1076
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1077* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1078"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1079packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1080where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1081Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1082
1083* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1084(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1085
1086* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1087according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1088
c9bb8148
DJ
1089* New commands
1090
23776285
MR
1091set remoteflow
1092show remoteflow
1093 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1094 when debugging using remote targets.
1095
c9bb8148
DJ
1096set mem inaccessible-by-default
1097show mem inaccessible-by-default
1098 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1099 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1100 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1101 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1102 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1103
1104set breakpoint auto-hw
1105show breakpoint auto-hw
1106 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1107 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1108 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1109 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1110 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1111 including "next" and "finish".
1112
0e420bd8
JB
1113catch exception
1114catch exception unhandled
1115 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1116
1117catch assert
1118 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1119
f822c95b
DJ
1120set sysroot
1121show sysroot
1122 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1123 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1124 an alias to "set sysroot".
1125
83cc5c53
UW
1126info spu
1127 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1128 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1129 architecture.
1130
bd372731
MK
1131* New native configurations
1132
1133OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1134
23181151
DJ
1135set tdesc filename
1136unset tdesc filename
1137show tdesc filename
1138 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1139 not query the target for its built-in description.
1140
c9bb8148
DJ
1141* New targets
1142
54fe9172 1143OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1144MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1145Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1146
6dd09645
JB
1147* New remote packets
1148
1149QPassSignals:
1150 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1151 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1152
23181151
DJ
1153qXfer:features:read:
1154 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1155 features.
6dd09645 1156
83cc5c53
UW
1157qXfer:spu:read:
1158qXfer:spu:write:
1159 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1160 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1161
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1162qXfer:libraries:read:
1163 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1164 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1165 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1166 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1167
483367ee
DJ
1168* Removed targets
1169
1170Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1171
d08950c4
UW
1172alpha*-*-osf1*
1173alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1174d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1175hppa*-*-hiux*
1176i[34567]86-ncr-*
1177i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1178i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1179i[34567]86-*-netware*
1180i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1181i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1182i[34567]86-*-sco*
1183i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1184i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1185i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1186i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1187i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1188i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1189i[34567]86-*-isc*
1190m68*-cisco*-*
1191m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1192mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1193rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1194sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1195
7ce59000
DJ
1196* Other removed features
1197
1198target abug
1199target cpu32bug
1200target est
1201target rom68k
1202
1203 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1204
ea35711c
DJ
1205target hms
1206target e7000
1207target sh3
1208target sh3e
1209
1210 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1211 H8/300.
1212
1213target ocd
1214
1215 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1216 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1217 interfaces.
1218
7ce59000
DJ
1219DWARF 1 support
1220
1221 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1222 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1223
54d61198
DJ
1224Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1225
1226 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1227 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1228 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1229 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1230
ea35711c
DJ
1231MIPS ".pdr" sections
1232
1233 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1234 in debugging information.
1235
1236Scheme support
1237
1238 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1239 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1240
1a69e1e4
DJ
1241set mips stack-arg-size
1242set mips saved-gpreg-size
1243
1244 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1245
6dd09645 1246*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1247
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1248* New targets
1249
1250Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1251Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1252
6aec2e11
DJ
1253* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1254(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1255running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1256
1257* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1258Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1259supported.
1260
17218d91
DJ
1261* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1262broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1263
9ebce043
DJ
1264* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1265stub provides the required support.
1266
7d3d3ece
DJ
1267* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1268longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1269
4f8253f3
JB
1270* New commands
1271
1272set substitute-path
1273unset substitute-path
1274show substitute-path
1275 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1276 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1277 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1278 between compilation and debugging.
1279
9fa66fd7
AS
1280set trace-commands
1281show trace-commands
1282 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1283 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1284 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1285
1f5befc1
DJ
1286* REMOVED features
1287
1288The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1289
2ec3381a
DJ
1290Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1291an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1292
3d00d119
DJ
1293The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1294
be2a5f71
DJ
1295* New remote packets
1296
1297qSupported:
1298 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1299 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1300 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1301 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1302 target.
1303
0876f84a
DJ
1304qXfer:auxv:read:
1305 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1306 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1307
9ebce043
DJ
1308qXfer:memory-map:read:
1309 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1310 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1311
1312vFlashErase:
1313vFlashWrite:
1314vFlashDone:
1315 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1316
0876f84a
DJ
1317* Removed remote packets
1318
1319qPart:auxv:read:
1320 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1321 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1322
e374b601 1323*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1324
96309189
MS
1325* New targets
1326
1327Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1328
1329Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1330
53e5f3cf
AS
1331* New commands
1332
1333init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1334 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1335
ac264b3b
MS
1336The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1337
1338checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1339
1340restart <n> Return the program state to a
1341 previously saved state.
1342
1343info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1344
1345delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1346
1347set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1348 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1349
1350info forks List forks of the user program that
1351 are available to be debugged.
1352
1353fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1354 forks of the user program that are
1355 available to be debugged.
1356
1357delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1358 that are available to be debugged (and
1359 kill the forked process).
1360
1361detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1362 that are available to be debugged (and
1363 allow the process to continue).
1364
3950dc3f
NS
1365* New architecture
1366
1367Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1368
0ea3f30e
DJ
1369* Improved Windows host support
1370
1371GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1372native console support, and remote communications using either
1373network sockets or serial ports.
1374
f79daebb
GM
1375* Improved Modula-2 language support
1376
1377GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1378basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1379pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1380printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1381written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1382GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1383
acab6ab2
MM
1384* REMOVED features
1385
1386The ARM rdi-share module.
1387
f4267320
DJ
1388The Netware NLM debug server.
1389
53e5f3cf 1390*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1391
e0ecbda1
MK
1392* New native configurations
1393
02a677ac 1394OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1395OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1396
d64a6579
KB
1397* New targets
1398
1399Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1400
b33a6190
AS
1401* New command line options
1402
1403--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1404--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1405 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1406--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1407 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1408 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1409 with the --command (-x) option.
1410
11dced61
AC
1411* Deprecated commands removed
1412
1413The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1414removed:
1415
1416 Command Replacement
1417 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1418 othernames set arm disassembler
1419 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1420 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1421 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1422 regs info registers
1423
6fe85783
MK
1424* New BSD user-level threads support
1425
1426It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1427library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1428configurations are:
1429
1430FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1431FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1432OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1433
1434Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1435are not yet supported.
1436
5260ca71
MS
1437* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1438(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1439
e84ecc99
AC
1440* REMOVED configurations and files
1441
1442VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1443Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1444National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1445
31e35378
JB
1446* New "set print array-indexes" command
1447
1448After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1449when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1450behavior.
1451
e85e5c83
MK
1452* VAX floating point support
1453
1454GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1455
d91e9901
AS
1456* User-defined command support
1457
1458In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1459to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1460section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1461
f2cb65ca
MC
1462*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1463
f47b1503
AS
1464* New command line option
1465
1466GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1467debugging.
1468
f2cb65ca
MC
1469* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1470
1471GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1472information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1473by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1474proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1475to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1476
d08c0230
AC
1477* Internationalization
1478
1479When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1480internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1481continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1482
117ea3cf
PH
1483* Ada
1484
1485Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1486implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1487into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1488
d08c0230
AC
1489* New native configurations
1490
1491GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1492
1493* Remote 'p' packet
1494
1495GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1496packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1497
1498* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1499
1500GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1501The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1502features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1503i386 application).
1504
1505GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1506compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1507continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1508configurations:
1509
1510hppa-*-hpux
1511ia64-*-aix
1512mips-*-irix*
1513*-*-lynx
1514mips-*-linux-gnu
1515sds protocol
1516xdr protocol
1517powerpc bdm protocol
1518
1519Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1520made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1521
1522* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1523
1524Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1525been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1526configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1527permanently REMOVED.
1528
1529h8300-*-*
1530mcore-*-*
1531mn10300-*-*
1532ns32k-*-*
1533sh64-*-*
1534v850-*-*
1535
ebb7c577
AC
1536*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1537
1538* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1539
1540When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1541heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1542been fixed.
1543
1544* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1545
1546When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1547fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1548IRIX long double values).
1549
1550* VAX and "next"
1551
1552A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1553command. This problem has been fixed.
1554
860660cb 1555*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1556
0dea2468
AC
1557* Fix for ``many threads''
1558
1559On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1560rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1561error message:
1562
1563 ptrace: No such process.
1564 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1565
1566This problem has been fixed.
1567
2c07db7a
AC
1568* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1569
1570Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1571GDB to dump core).
1572
c23968a2
JB
1573* New ``start'' command.
1574
1575This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1576
71009278
MK
1577* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1578
1579Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1580live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1581platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1582
1583FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1584FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1585NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1586NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1587NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1588OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1589OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1590OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1591OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1592
3c0b7db2
AC
1593* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1594
1595Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1596These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1597of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1598call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1599signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1600
73cc75f3
AC
1601Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1602features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1603include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1604
7243600a
BF
1605* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1606
6f606e1c
MK
1607* New native configurations
1608
97dc871c 1609GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1610OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1611OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1612OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1613OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1614NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1615OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1616
a1b461bf
AC
1617* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1618
1619GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1620The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1621including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1622migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1623compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1624work, was also included.
1625
1626GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1627module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1628
1629h8300-*-*
1630mcore-*-*
1631mn10300-*-*
1632ns32k-*-*
1633sh64-*-*
1634v850-*-*
1635xstormy16-*-*
1636
1637Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1638made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1639
3c7012f5
AC
1640* REMOVED configurations and files
1641
1642Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1643Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1644Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1645Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1646Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1647AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1648Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1649decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1650riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1651sonymips mips-sony-*
1652sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1653
e5fe55f7
AC
1654*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1655
1656* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1657
1658The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1659GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1660command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1661program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1662with GDB".
1663
1664* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1665
1666Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1667libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1668cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1669GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1670shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1671the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1672are created.
1673
1674Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1675
1676* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1677
1678The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1679non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1680compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1681
1682* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1683
1684Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1685wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1686
1687* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1688
1689The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1690permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1691systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1692
1693* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1694
1695Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1696has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1697
1698* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1699
1700GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1701its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1702panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1703
1704* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1705
1706When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1707by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1708not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1709
faae5abe 1710*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1711
9175c9a3
MC
1712* Removed --with-mmalloc
1713
1714Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1715conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1716
3cc87ec0
MK
1717* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1718
1719The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1720the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1721and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1722you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1723
f0424ef6
MK
1724* Revised SPARC target
1725
1726The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1727FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1728support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1729from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1730(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1731
59659be2
ILT
1732* New C++ demangler
1733
1734GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1735names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1736with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1737programs.
1738
9e08b29b
DJ
1739* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1740
1741GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1742arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1743encountered these.
1744
8dfe8985
DC
1745* C++ nested types and namespaces
1746
1747GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1748improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1749is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1750Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1751namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1752"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1753frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1754if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1755GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1756
cced5e27
MK
1757* New native configurations
1758
1759NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1760OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1761OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1762OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1763OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1764
b4b4b794
KI
1765* New debugging protocols
1766
1767M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1768
7989c619
AC
1769* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1770
1771The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1772and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1773tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1774
5994185b
AC
1775* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1776
1777Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1778been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1779configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1780permanently REMOVED.
1781
1782Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1783Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1784Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1785Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1786Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1787AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1788Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1789decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1790riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1791sonymips mips-sony-*
1792sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1793
0ddabb4c
AC
1794* REMOVED configurations and files
1795
1796SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1797SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1798Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1799Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1800H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1801HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1802HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1803HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1804PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1805386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1806Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1807 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1808 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1809SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1810SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1811Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1812Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1813
c7f1390e
DJ
1814*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1815
1fe43d45
AC
1816* Objective-C
1817
1818Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1819integrated into GDB.
1820
e6beb428
AC
1821* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1822
1823DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1824information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1825By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1826backtraces.
1827
1828The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1829have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1830DWARF 2 CFI support.
1831
1832* Hosted file I/O.
1833
1834GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1835file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1836remote protocol documentation for details.
1837
1838* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1839
1840All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1841architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1842to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1843ppc32 on ppc64).
1844
1845* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1846
1847GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1848per-thread variables.
1849
1850* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1851
1852GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1853GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1854
1855* Separate debug info.
1856
1857GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1858automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1859of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1860system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1861and optional debug files.
1862
1863* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1864
1865DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1866describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1867debugger.
1868
1869GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1870for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1871
1872* Java
1873
1874A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1875Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1876considered "useable".
1877
85f8f974
DJ
1878* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1879
1880The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1881commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1882kernel.
1883
0fac0b41
DJ
1884* GDB supports logging output to a file
1885
1886There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1887used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1888
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1889* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1890
1891The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1892disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1893command.
1894
e286caf2 1895* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1896
1897The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1898registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1899
d28f9cdf
DJ
1900* Profiling support
1901
1902A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1903be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1904session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1905"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1906data, for more informative profiling results.
1907
da0f9dcd
AC
1908* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1909
1910The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1911option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1912"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1913
1914Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1915removed.
1916
fb9b6b35
JJ
1917Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1918Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1919Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1920 in a subsequent -var-update.
1921
954a4db8
MK
1922* New native configurations.
1923
1924FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1925
6760f9e6
JB
1926* Multi-arched targets.
1927
b4263afa 1928HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1929Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1930
1b831c93
AC
1931* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1932
1933Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1934been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1935configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1936permanently REMOVED.
1937
8b0e5691 1938Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1939Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1940H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1941HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1942HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1943HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1944PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1945Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1946 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1947 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1948Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1949Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1950
5835abe7
NC
1951* REMOVED configurations and files
1952
1953V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1954Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1955IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1956i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1957i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1958i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1959HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1960 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1961 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1962Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1963Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1964Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1965OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1966I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1967
a094c6fb
AC
1968* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1969
1970The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1971the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1972context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1973address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1974The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1975
299ffc64 1976*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1977
46248966
AC
1978* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1979
1980When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1981`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1982in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1983library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1984shared libs like mad''.
1985
b9d14705 1986* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1987
b9d14705
DJ
1988Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1989the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1990arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1991powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1992
e0e9281e
JB
1993* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1994
1995GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1996and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1997they expand.
1998
dd73b9bb
AC
1999The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2000invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2001
2002The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2003macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2004
e0e9281e
JB
2005Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2006information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2007your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2008information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2009
2250ee0c
CV
2010* Multi-arched targets.
2011
6e3ba3b8
JT
2012DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2013DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2014NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2015National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2016Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2017Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2018
cd9bfe15 2019* New targets.
e33ce519 2020
456f8b9d
DB
2021Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2022
e33ce519 2023
da8ca43d
JT
2024* New native configurations
2025
2026Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2027SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2028MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2029UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2030
cd9bfe15
AC
2031* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2032
2033Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2034been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2035configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2036permanently REMOVED.
2037
92eb23c5 2038Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2039OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2040IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2041Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2042Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2043Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2044i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2045i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2046i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2047HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2048 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2049 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2050I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2051
db034ac5
AC
2052* OBSOLETE languages
2053
2054CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2055
cd9bfe15
AC
2056* REMOVED configurations and files
2057
2058AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2059A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2060AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2061AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2062AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2063
2064testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2065
20f01a46
DH
2066* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2067
2068This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2069commands. The default is 1024.
2070
a5941fbf
MK
2071* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2072
2073Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2074
89743e04
MS
2075* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2076
2077These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2078to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2079from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2080
9fb14e79
JB
2081* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2082
2083The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2084including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2085of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2086
2037aebb
AC
2087*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2088
2089* New targets.
2090
2091Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2092
2093* Bug fixes
2094
2095gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2096mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2097Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2098
2099gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2100dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2101Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2102
2103Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2104Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2105By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2106
2107i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2108avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2109By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2110
37057839 2111*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2112
1a703748
MS
2113* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2114
2115This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2116really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2117In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2118target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2119This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2120(notably embedded) targets.
2121
cefd4ef5
MS
2122* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2123
55241689
AC
2124This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2125process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2126GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2127hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2128
352ed7b4
MS
2129* New command line option
2130
2131GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2132
2133* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2134
2135There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2136command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2137a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2138be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2139open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2140issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2141a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2142it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2143GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2144is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2145
fe419ffc
RE
2146* Changes in ARM configurations.
2147
2148Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2149configuration is fully multi-arch.
2150
eb7cedd9
MK
2151* New native configurations
2152
fe419ffc 2153ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2154x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2155AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2156Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2157
c9f63e6b
CV
2158* New targets
2159
2160Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2161
9b4ff276
AC
2162* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2163
2164Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2165been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2166configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2167permanently REMOVED.
2168
2169AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2170A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2171AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2172AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2173AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2174
b4ceaee6 2175testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2176
e2caac18
AC
2177* REMOVED configurations and files
2178
2179TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2180WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2181PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2182PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2183PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2184Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2185Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2186 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2187SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2188Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2189Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2190ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2191Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2192
c2a727fa
TT
2193* Changes to command line processing
2194
2195The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2196for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2197
467d8519
TT
2198* Changes to key bindings
2199
2200There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2201
7072a954
AC
2202*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2203
2204Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2205
2206Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2207corrupted.
2208
2209Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2210
2211Numerous documentation fixes.
2212
2213Numerous testsuite fixes.
2214
34f47bc4 2215*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2216
2217* New native configurations
2218
2219Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2220x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2221MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2222MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2223ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2224s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2225
bf64bfd6
AC
2226* New targets
2227
def90278 2228Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2229CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2230UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2231
17e78a56 2232* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2233
2234x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2235Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2236Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2237 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2238TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2239WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2240Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2241PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2242PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2243PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2244SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2245Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2246ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2247Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2248
17e78a56
AC
2249stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2250kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2251
7fcca85b
AC
2252Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2253been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2254configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2255permanently REMOVED.
2256
a196c81c 2257* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2258
2259Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2260Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2261Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2262ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2263Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2264ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2265
6d6b80e5 2266* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2267
6d6b80e5 2268GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2269sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2270present.
2271
bf64bfd6
AC
2272* Other news:
2273
e23194cb
EZ
2274* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2275
2276* The MI enabled by default.
2277
2278The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2279revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2280engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2281using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2282which is now deprecated.
2283
2284* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2285
2286GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2287main features are supported:
2288
2289 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2290
2291 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2292 extension;
2293
2294 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2295
2296 - a Pascal expression parser.
2297
2298However, some important features are not yet supported.
2299
2300 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2301
2302 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2303
2304 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2305 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2306
2307 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2308
2309 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2310
2311* Changes in completion.
2312
2313Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2314to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2315users expect at the shell prompt.
2316
2317Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2318`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2319program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2320files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2321be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2322considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2323name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2324
2325`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2326
2327* New platform-independent commands:
2328
2329It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2330hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2331documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2332
2333* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2334
d7275149
MK
2335Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2336revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2337many threads as your system allows you to have.
2338
e23194cb
EZ
2339Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2340
d7275149
MK
2341Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2342multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2343
2344* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2345
2346Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2347
e23194cb
EZ
2348GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2349debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2350supported.)
2351
2352* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2353
2354Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2355breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2356implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2357put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2358and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2359registers.
2360
2361The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2362debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2363watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2364
2365* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2366
2367New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2368the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2369
2370New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2371display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2372IDT.
2373
2374New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2375from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2376New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2377a given linear address.
2378
2379GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2380program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2381which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2382
2383DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2384
6c56c069
EZ
2385It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2386
e23194cb
EZ
2387* Changes in documentation.
2388
2389All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2390Documentation License.
2391
2392Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2393manual.
2394
2395TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2396
2397Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2398manual.
2399
2400The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2401documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2402hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2403
5d6640b1
AC
2404* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2405
2406The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2407``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2408contents of this file.
2409
1a1d8446
AC
2410* gdba.el deleted
2411
2412GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2413
9debab2f 2414*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2415
c63ce875
EZ
2416* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2417
2418Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2419programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2420displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2421greater level of detail.
2422
2423* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2424
2425It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2426bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2427on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2428written.
2429
2430* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2431
2432The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2433necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2434machines ``out of the box''.
2435
2436The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2437possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2438signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2439would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2440interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2441
2442It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2443standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2444even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2445and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2446terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2447
2448The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2449enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2450also works.
2451
2452DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2453GDB.
2454
2455It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2456directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2457times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2458breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2459
ed9a39eb
JM
2460* New native configurations
2461
2462ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2463PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2464
7a292a7a
SS
2465* New targets
2466
96baa820 2467Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2468x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2469PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2470TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2471
085dd6e6
JM
2472* OBSOLETE configurations
2473
2474Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2475Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2476Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2477ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2478Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2479
9debab2f
AC
2480Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2481but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2482these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2483be permanently REMOVED.
2484
5330533d
SS
2485* Gould support removed
2486
2487Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2488
bc9e5bbf
AC
2489* New features for SVR4
2490
2491On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2492without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2493load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2494
2495* Many C++ enhancements
2496
2497C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2498in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2499
adf40b2e
JM
2500* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2501
2502A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2503sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2504with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2505``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2506
2507 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2508 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2509
43e526b9
JM
2510* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2511
2512A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2513expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2514instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2515
2516The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2517added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2518
96baa820
JM
2519* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2520
2521The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2522``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2523include ``set remote P-packet''.
2524
11cf8741
JM
2525* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2526
2527The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2528accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2529``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2530
7876dd43
DB
2531* ``apropos'' command added.
2532
2533The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2534documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2535try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2536
bc9e5bbf
AC
2537* New MI interface
2538
2539A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2540interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2541process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2542"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2543enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2544
2545 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2546
c906108c
SS
2547*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2548
2549* New native configurations
2550
2551HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2552HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2553M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2554
2555* New targets
2556
2557Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2558Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2559Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2560
2561* OBSOLETE configurations
2562
2563Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2564
2565Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2566but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2567these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2568be permanently REMOVED.
2569
2570* ANSI/ISO C
2571
2572As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2573buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2574containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2575use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2576available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2577configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2578information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2579already.
2580
2581* Readline 2.2
2582
2583GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2584
2585* set extension-language
2586
2587You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2588languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2589you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2590 set extension-language .c c++
2591The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2592and their associated languages.
2593
2594* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2595
2596When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2597you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2598PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2599
2600 set processor NAME
2601
2602sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2603following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2604
2605 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2606 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2607 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2608 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2609 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2610 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2611 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2612 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2613 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2614 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2615 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2616
2617At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2618special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2619registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2620only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2621
2622* HP-UX support
2623
2624Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2625more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2626library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2627support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2628for xdb and dbx commands.
2629
2630* Catchpoints
2631
2632HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2633generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2634to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2635
2636This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2637argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2638output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2639
2640* Debugging across forks
2641
2642On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2643in the inferior.
2644
2645* TUI
2646
2647HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2648it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2649configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2650
2651* GDB remote protocol additions
2652
2653A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2654Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2655fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2656allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2657
2658For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2659full 64-bit address. The command
2660
2661 set remoteaddresssize 32
2662
2663can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2664the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2665will be discarded.
2666
2667In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2668command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2669
2670 maint packet heythere
2671
2672sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2673disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2674time.
2675
2676The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2677target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2678downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2679
2680* Tracing can collect general expressions
2681
2682You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2683further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2684doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2685
2686* mask-address variable for Mips
2687
2688For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2689a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2690of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2691
2692* Higher serial baud rates
2693
2694GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2695230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2696to achieve all of these rates.)
2697
2698* i960 simulator
2699
2700The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2701builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2702
2703
2704*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2705
2706* New native configurations
2707
2708Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2709Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2710Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2711PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2712PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2713Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2714Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2715
2716* New targets
2717
2718Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2719Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2720Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2721Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2722MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2723MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2724MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2725Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2726Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2727Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2728NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2729
2730* New debugging protocols
2731
2732ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2733M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2734DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2735PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2736PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2737Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2738
2739* DWARF 2
2740
2741All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2742format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2743information.
2744
2745* Java frontend
2746
2747GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2748only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2749
2750* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2751
2752For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2753loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2754locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2755
2756* Live range splitting
2757
2758GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2759range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2760more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2761
2762* Hurd support
2763
2764GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2765updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2766
2767* ARM Thumb support
2768
2769GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2770instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2771instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2772accordingly.
2773
2774* MIPS16 support
2775
2776GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2777instruction set.
2778
2779* Overlay support
2780
2781GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2782linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2783will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2784control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2785additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2786in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2787
2788* info symbol
2789
2790The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2791the symbol at the specified address.
2792
2793* Trace support
2794
2795The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2796asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2797extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2798includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2799file tracepoint.c for more details.
2800
2801* MIPS simulator
2802
2803Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2804by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2805of most MIPS variants.
2806
2807* Sparc simulator
2808
2809Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2810by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2811Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2812
2813* set architecture
2814
2815For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2816basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2817architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2818the possible architectures.
2819
2820*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2821
2822* New native configurations
2823
2824Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2825M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2826PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2827PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2828PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2829RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2830
2831* New targets
2832
2833ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2834I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2835MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2836MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2837PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2838Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2839Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2840
2841* PowerPC simulator
2842
2843The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2844contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2845PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2846basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2847performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2848
2849* Solaris 2.5
2850
2851GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2852
2853* Windows 95/NT native
2854
2855GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2856To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2857which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2858Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2859ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2860
2861* dont-repeat command
2862
2863If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2864command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2865useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2866extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2867
2868* Send break instead of ^C
2869
2870The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2871rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2872GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2873
2874* Remote protocol timeout
2875
2876The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2877that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2878to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2879
2880* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2881
2882By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2883loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2884stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2885when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2886in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2887
2888Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2889/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2890automatically on hpux10.
2891
2892* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2893
2894Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2895
2896* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2897
2898When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2899may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2900the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2901every character. The default value is 1050.
2902
2903* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2904
2905If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2906a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2907replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2908details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2909remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2910to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2911
2912* Speedups for remote debugging
2913
2914GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2915the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2916and more efficient S-record downloading.
2917
2918* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2919
2920GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2921Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2922
2923*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2924
2925* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2926
2927The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2928can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2929
2930* Remote targets use caching
2931
2932Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2933remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2934it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2935debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2936off' turns the the data cache off.
2937
2938* Remote targets may have threads
2939
2940The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2941in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2942gdb/remote.c for details.
2943
2944* NetROM support
2945
2946If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2947support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2948acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2949write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2950support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2951another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2952sequence is something like
2953
2954 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2955 load <prog>
2956 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2957
2958* Macintosh host
2959
2960GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2961may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2962it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2963available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2964device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2965directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2966scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2967mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2968
2969* Autoconf
2970
2971GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2972but does simplify configuration and building.
2973
2974* hpux10
2975
2976GDB now supports hpux10.
2977
2978*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2979
2980* New native configurations
2981
2982x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2983x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2984NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2985Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2986
2987* New targets
2988
2989A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2990HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2991CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2992PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2993WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2994
2995* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2996
2997GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2998possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2999filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3000the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3001if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3002
3003* Arguments to user-defined commands
3004
3005User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3006Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3007trivial example:
3008define adder
3009 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3010
3011To execute the command use:
3012adder 1 2 3
3013
3014Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3015Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3016use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3017
3018* New `if' and `while' commands
3019
3020This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3021commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3022expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3023execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3024terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3025`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3026if the expression is zero.
3027
3028* Fortran source language mode
3029
3030GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3031Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3032variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3033with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3034Fortran compilers.
3035
3036* Better HPUX support
3037
3038Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3039running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3040processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3041for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3042that behavior do the following before running the program:
3043
3044 adb -w a.out
3045 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3046 control-d
3047
3048This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3049To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3050
3051 adb -w a.out
3052 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3053 control-d
3054
3055You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3056the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3057external linkage.
3058
3059GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3060HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3061
3062* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3063
3064You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3065commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3066current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3067"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3068associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3069configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3070
3071* New DOS host serial code
3072
3073This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3074no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3075a PC's serial port.
3076
3077*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3078
3079* New "complete" command
3080
3081This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3082were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3083
3084* Trailing space optional in prompt
3085
3086"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3087allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3088
3089* Breakpoint hit counts
3090
3091"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3092has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3093can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3094to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3095less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3096that breakpoint.
3097
3098* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3099
3100"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3101an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3102arrays actually contain only short strings.
3103
3104* Shared library breakpoints
3105
3106In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3107breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3108
3109* Hardware watchpoints
3110
3111There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3112targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3113
55241689 3114Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3115
3116* Annotations
3117
3118Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3119and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3120
3121* Improved Irix 5 support
3122
3123GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3124
3125* Improved HPPA support
3126
3127GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3128
3129* New native configurations
3130
3131Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3132HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3133Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3134RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3135
3136* New targets
3137
3138OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3139MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3140Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3141
3142* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3143
3144There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3145This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3146
3147* Fixes
3148
3149As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3150and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3151
3152*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3153
3154* Irix 5 is now supported
3155
3156* HPPA support
3157
3158GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3159to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3160GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3161of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3162can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3163
3164
3165*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3166
3167* User visible changes:
3168
3169* Remote Debugging
3170
3171The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3172target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3173debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3174integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3175debugging info for the mips target).
3176
3177* DEC Alpha native support
3178
3179GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3180debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3181work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3182Alpha-specific notes.
3183
3184* Preliminary thread implementation
3185
3186GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3187
3188* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3189
3190This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3191to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3192for details).
3193
3194* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3195
3196This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3197mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3198call methods, ...etc.
3199
3200*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3201
3202 * User visible changes:
3203
3204Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3205supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3206other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3207somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3208
3209Filename completion now works.
3210
3211When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3212arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3213addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3214
3215All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3216vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3217should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3218your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3219to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3220
3221 * DEC alpha support
3222
3223This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3224cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3225
3226
3227*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3228
3229 * Testsuite
3230
3231This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3232The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3233via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3234
3235 * C++ demangling
3236
3237'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3238emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3239Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3240disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3241use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3242
3243 * Simulators
3244
3245GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3246So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3247Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3248
3249 * New targets supported
3250
3251H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3252H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3253SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3254Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3255IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3256
3257Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3258version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3259GO32 memory extender.
3260
3261 * New remote protocols
3262
3263MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3264
3265 * New source languages supported
3266
3267This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3268used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3269into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3270
3271
3272*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3273
3274 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3275
3276GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3277version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3278University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3279compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3280format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3281(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3282
3283Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3284
3285 * Faster and better demangling
3286
3287We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3288demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3289character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3290only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3291This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3292increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3293symbol lookups.
3294
3295`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3296from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3297compiler does not actually implement.
3298
3299 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3300
3301In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3302inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3303recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3304very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3305The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3306circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3307fix.
3308
3309The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3310release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3311
3312 * Improved configure script
3313
3314The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3315you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3316host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3317done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3318
3319We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3320version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3321`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3322The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3323only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3324We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3325
3326 * Documentation improvements
3327
3328There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3329produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3330before submitting changes.
3331
3332The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3333M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3334`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3335you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3336a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3337
3338*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3339We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3340been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3341or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3342`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3343around this problem.
3344
3345 * New features
3346
3347GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3348the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3349`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3350the target program.
3351
3352The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3353how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3354
3355 * New native hosts supported
3356
3357HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3358386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3359
3360 * New targets supported
3361
3362AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3363
3364 * New file formats supported
3365
3366BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3367HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3368
3369 * Major bug fixes
3370
3371Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3372
3373We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3374printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3375
3376We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3377for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3378release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3379
3380You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3381will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3382
3383We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3384for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3385especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3386libraries.
3387
3388The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3389information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3390command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3391any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3392when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3393
3394 * Internal improvements
3395
3396GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3397debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3398
3399GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3400Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3401symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3402contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3403shared code that handles any of them.
3404
3405 * New command line options
3406
3407We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3408
3409 * Mmalloc licensing
3410
3411The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3412General Public License.
3413
3414*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3415
3416 * Host/native/target split
3417
3418GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3419hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3420target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3421local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3422ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3423
3424The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3425GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3426is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3427code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3428any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3429built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3430handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3431
3432GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3433It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3434plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3435
3436 * New hosts supported
3437
3438HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3439386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3440386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3441
3442 * New targets supported
3443
3444Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
344568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3446
3447 * New native hosts supported
3448
3449386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3450 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3451386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3452
3453 * New file formats supported
3454
3455BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3456supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3457format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3458
3459 * New commands
3460
3461`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3462`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3463These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3464
3465`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3466
3467You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3468scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3469prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3470executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3471
3472 * C++ improvements
3473
3474We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3475info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3476symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3477
3478Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3479
3480 * Major bug fixes
3481
3482The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3483fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3484by the compiler.
3485
3486We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3487support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3488
3489John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3490slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3491that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3492purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3493the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3494mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3495
3496Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3497about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3498completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3499we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3500
3501 * AMD 29k support
3502
3503A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3504specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3505calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3506usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3507in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3508
3509We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3510Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3511of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3512resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3513
3514 * Remote interfaces
3515
3516We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3517with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3518message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3519This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3520needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3521breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3522each instruction being stepped through.
3523
3524The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3525registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3526
3527There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3528find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3529Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3530processor with a serial port.
3531
3532 * Configuration
3533
3534Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3535`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3536supported, and what files each one uses.
3537
3538 * Library changes
3539
3540There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3541disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3542Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3543disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3544
3545The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3546Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3547can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3548grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3549
3550 * Documentation
3551
3552The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3553reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3554as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3555encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3556system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3557bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3558
3559And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3560
3561
3562*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3563
3564 * Better support for C++ function names
3565
3566GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3567names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3568(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3569single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3570Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3571
3572GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3573the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3574You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3575lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3576for the list of formats.
3577
3578 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3579
3580Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3581C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3582directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3583can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3584usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3585about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3586this problem.)
3587
3588 * New 'maintenance' command
3589
3590All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3591the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3592can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3593
3594 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3595 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3596 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3597 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3598 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3599 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3600
3601The following commands are new:
3602
3603 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3604 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3605 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3606
3607 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3608
3609We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3610(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3611be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3612read after argv processing.
3613
3614 * New hosts supported
3615
3616Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3617
55241689 3618GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3619
3620We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3621is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3622for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3623masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3624fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3625It costs extra.
3626
3627 * New targets supported
3628
3629Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3630
3631 * More smarts about finding #include files
3632
3633GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3634all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3635greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3636especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3637the one that contains your sources.
3638
3639We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3640breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3641try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3642
3643 * Interesting infernals change
3644
3645GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3646section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3647target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3648stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3649
3650 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3651
3652There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3653 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3654 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3655
3656See the ChangeLog for details.
3657
3658*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3659
3660 * New machines supported (host and target)
3661
3662IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3663
3664SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3665
3666 * New malloc package
3667
3668GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3669Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3670capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3671This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3672pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3673more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3674
3675 * info proc
3676
3677The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3678'help info proc' for details.
3679
3680 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3681
3682The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3683Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3684possible.
3685
3686 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3687
3688Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3689support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3690conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3691environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3692that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3693in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3694
3695 * Cross byte order fixes
3696
3697Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3698targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3699
3700 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3701
3702If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3703system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3704`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3705program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3706called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3707Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3708and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3709the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3710option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3711starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3712
3713You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3714the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3715information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3716slower, but makes future operations faster.
3717
3718The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3719build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3720A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3721use is:
3722
3723 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3724
3725The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3726It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3727shared across multiple host platforms.
3728
3729 * longjmp() handling
3730
3731GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3732siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3733all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3734platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3735
3736 * Solaris 2.0
3737
3738Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3739this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3740reading symbols.
3741
3742 * Bug fixes
3743
3744As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3745People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3746crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3747
3748*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3749
3750 * New machines supported (host and target)
3751
3752SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3753 (except core files)
3754BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3755Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3756
3757 * New machines supported (target)
3758
3759AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3760
3761 * C++ support
3762
3763GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3764The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3765per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3766
3767GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3768`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3769extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3770good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3771will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3772released.
3773
3774 * New features for SVR4
3775
3776GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3777shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3778only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3779
3780The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3781on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3782it prints the address mappings of the process.
3783
3784If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3785bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3786
3787 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3788
3789Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3790now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3791skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3792make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3793same code linked statically.
3794
3795 * New Getopt
3796
3797GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3798version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3799continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3800Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3801added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3802future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3803
3804 * Bugs fixed
3805
3806The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3807Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3808See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3809
3810
3811*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3812
3813 * New machines supported (host and target)
3814
3815Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3816NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3817Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3818
3819 * Almost SCO Unix support
3820
3821We had hoped to support:
3822SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3823(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3824that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3825about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3826
3827 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3828
3829GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3830debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3831is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3832send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3833reqired (if any).
3834
3835 * New Readline
3836
3837GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3838is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3839required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3840
3841 * Bugs fixed
3842
3843The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3844Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3845See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3846
3847 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3848
3849GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3850supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3851symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3852
3853Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3854mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3855debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3856mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3857version 2.
3858
3859Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3860really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3861line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3862variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3863situation somewhat.
3864
3865When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3866However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3867methods.
3868
3869We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3870DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3871encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3872
3873
3874*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3875
3876 * Improved configuration
3877
3878Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3879Porting BFD is simpler.
3880
3881 * Stepping improved
3882
3883The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3884of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3885in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3886function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3887
3888 * Bug fixing
3889
3890Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3891
3892 * New host supported (not target)
3893
3894Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3895
3896
3897*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3898
3899 * Multiple source language support
3900
3901GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3902It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3903and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3904language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3905You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3906`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3907
3908 * GDB and Modula-2
3909
3910GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3911currently under development at the State University of New York at
3912Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3913continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3914
3915Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3916debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3917symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3918
3919There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3920in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3921
3922 * set write on/off
3923
3924GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3925a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3926the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3927by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3928effect immediately.
3929
3930 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3931
3932When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3933shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3934The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3935examining core files.
3936
3937 * set listsize
3938
3939You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3940The default is 10.
3941
3942 * New machines supported (host and target)
3943
3944SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3945Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3946Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3947
3948 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3949
3950IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3951
3952 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3953
3954AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3955AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3956Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3957
3958 * New remote interfaces
3959
3960AMD 29000 Adapt
3961AMD 29000 Minimon
3962
3963
3964*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3965
3966 * New Facilities
3967
3968Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3969
3970Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3971target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3972is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3973remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3974remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3975also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3976using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3977stub on the target system.
3978
3979New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3980
3981GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3982library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3983object file types such as a.out and coff.
3984
3985There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3986refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3987
3988
3989 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3990
3991All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3992by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3993
3994For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3995``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3996Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3997
3998What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3999print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4000will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4001all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4002
4003confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4004 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4005 it is already running. Default is ON.
4006
4007editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4008 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4009 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4010 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4011 Default is ON.
4012
4013history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4014 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4015 or the value of the environment variable
4016 GDBHISTFILE.
4017
4018history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4019 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4020 HISTSIZE.
4021
4022history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4023 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4024 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4025
4026history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4027 history expansion will be performed on
4028 command line input. The default is OFF.
4029
4030radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4031 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4032 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4033
4034height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4035 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4036 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4037 variable TERM.
4038
4039width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4040 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4041 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4042 variable TERM.
4043
4044Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4045``set width'' instead.
4046
4047print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4048 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4049 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4050 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4051
4052print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4053 is OFF.
4054
4055print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4056 "raw" form if off.
4057
4058print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4059 like instructions.
4060
4061print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4062
4063
4064 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4065
4066The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4067new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4068are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4069window.
4070
4071
4072 * Support for Shared Libraries
4073
4074GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4075Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4076before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4077happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4078At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4079from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4080shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4081It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4082
4083sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4084 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4085 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4086
4087info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4088
4089
4090 * Watchpoints
4091
4092A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4093expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4094tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4095quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4096problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4097more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4098
4099watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4100
4101info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4102
4103delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4104disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4105enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4106
4107
4108 * C++ multiple inheritance
4109
4110When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4111for C++ programs.
4112
4113 * C++ exception handling
4114
4115Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4116ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4117the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4118handler's context).
4119
4120catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4121 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4122 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4123
4124info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4125 current stack frame.
4126
4127
4128 * Minor command changes
4129
4130The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4131command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4132is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4133
4134The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4135at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4136frames without printing.
4137
4138 * New directory command
4139
4140'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4141The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4142about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4143with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4144find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4145
4146 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4147
4148For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4149for more details.
4150
4151GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4152two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4153Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4154where the program that you are debugging will run.
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