* dwarf2read.c (read_structure_type): Allocate null cleanup later.
[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* C++ Improvements:
7
8 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
9
10 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
11 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
12 For example:
13 namespace A
14 {
15 class B { };
16 void foo (B) { }
17 }
18 ...
19 A::B b
20 foo(b)
21 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
22 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
23 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
24
25 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
26
27 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
28 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
29 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
30 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
31 entry.
32 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
33 mentioned flavors of operators.
34
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35* Windows Thread Information Block access.
36
37 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
38 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
39 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
40 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
41 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
42 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
43
44* New remote packets
45
46qGetTIBAddr
47
48 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
49
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50qRelocInsn
51
52 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
53 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
54 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
55 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
56 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
57 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
58
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59* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
60 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
61 a directory.
62
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63* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
64
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65 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints).
66 The feature is currently supported by the i386-linux and
67 amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support in gdbserver"
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68 section in the manual for more information. GDBserver JIT
69 compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent expression bytecode
70 into native code whenever possible for low overhead dynamic
71 tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints, an expression
72 that examines program state is evaluated when the tracepoint is
73 reached, in order to determine whether to capture trace data. If
74 the condition is simple and false, processing the tracepoint
75 finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
d337e9f0 76
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77 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
78
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79* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
80 it understands register description.
81
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82* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
83
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84* X86 general purpose registers
85
86 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
87 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
88 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
89 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
90 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
91
95a42b64 92* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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93 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
94 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
95 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
96 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
97 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 98
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99* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
100 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
101 in the specified file.
102
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103* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
104 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
105 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
106 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
107 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
108 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
109 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
110 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
111 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
112 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
113
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114* New commands
115
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116eval template, expressions...
117 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
118 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
119
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120set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
121show target-file-system-kind
122 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
123 names.
124
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125save breakpoints <filename>
126 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
127 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
128 definitions, use the `source' command.
129
130`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
131is now deprecated.
132
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133* Python scripting
134
adc36818 135** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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136 tables, program spaces, and frame's code blocks. Additionally, GDB
137 Parameters can now be created from the API, and manipulated via
138 set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 139
fa33c3cd 140** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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141 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
142
143** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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144
145** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 146
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147** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
148
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149** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
150 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
151 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
152
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153* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
154there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
155tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
156regular breakpoints.
157
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158* New targets
159
160ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
161
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162* D language support.
163 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
164 language.
165
bfbf3774 166*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 167
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168* C++ Improvements
169
170 ** Namespace Support
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171
172 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
173 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
174 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
175 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
176 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
177
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178 ** Bug Fixes
179
180 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
181 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
182 qualified name.
183
184 ** Cast Operators
185
186 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
187 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
188
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189* New targets
190
191Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 192Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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193
194* New Simulators
195
196Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 197Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 198
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199* Multi-program debugging.
200
201 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
202 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
203 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
204 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
205 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
206 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
207 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
208 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
209
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210* New tracing features
211
212 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
213
214 ** Trace state variables
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215
216 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
217 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
218 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
219 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
220 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
221 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
222 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
223 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
224 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
225 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 226
d5551862 227 ** Fast tracepoints
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228
229 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
230 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
231 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
232 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
233 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
234 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
235 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
236 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
237 the regular trace command.
238
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239 ** Disconnected tracing
240
241 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
242 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
243 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
244 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
245 connection is lost unexpectedly.
246
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247 ** Trace files
248
249 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
250 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
251 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
252 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
253 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
254 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
255 <name>".
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256
257 ** Circular trace buffer
258
259 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
260 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
261 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
262 not be available for all target agents.
263
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264* Changed commands
265
266disassemble
267 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
268 the arguments to be comma-separated.
269
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270info variables
271 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
272 which only declare a variable are not shown.
273
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274source
275 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
276 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
277 support.
278
279 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
280 "set script-extension" (see below).
281
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282* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
283
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284record save [<FILENAME>]
285 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
286 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
287
288record restore <FILENAME>
289 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
290 earlier time, for replay debugging.
291
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292add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
293 Add a new inferior.
294
295clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
296 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
297 inferior has loaded.
298
299remove-inferior ID
300 Remove an inferior.
301
302maint info program-spaces
303 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
304
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305set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
306show remote interrupt-sequence
307 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
308 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
309 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
310 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
311 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
312
313set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
314show remote interrupt-on-connect
315 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
316 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
317 Linux kernel.
318
319set remotebreak [on | off]
320show remotebreak
321Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
322
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323tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
324 Create or modify a trace state variable.
325
326info tvariables
327 List trace state variables and their values.
328
329delete tvariable $NAME ...
330 Delete one or more trace state variables.
331
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332teval EXPR, ...
333 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
334 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
335
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336ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
337 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
338
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339* New expression syntax
340
341 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
342 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
343
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344* New options
345
346set follow-exec-mode new|same
347show follow-exec-mode
348 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
349 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
350 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
351
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352set default-collect EXPR, ...
353show default-collect
354 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
355 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
356 such as registers or a critical global variable.
357
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358set disconnected-tracing
359show disconnected-tracing
360 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
361 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
362 upon disconnection.
363
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364set circular-trace-buffer
365show circular-trace-buffer
366 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
367 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
368 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
369 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
370
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371set script-extension off|soft|strict
372show script-extension
373 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
374 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
375 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
376 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
377 evaluation failed.
378 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
379
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380set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
381show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
382 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
383 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
384 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
385 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
386 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
387 is on.
388
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389* Python API Improvements
390
391 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
392 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
393 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
394
395 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
396 `is_base_class' attribute.
397
398 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
399
400 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
401 evaluate an expression.
402
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403* New remote packets
404
405QTDV
406 Define a trace state variable.
407
408qTV
409 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
410
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411QTDisconnected
412 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
413
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414QTBuffer:circular
415 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
416
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417qTfP, qTsP
418 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
419
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420* Bug fixes
421
422Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
423
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424Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
425much more reliable. In particular:
426 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
427 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
428 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
429 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
430 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
431 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
432 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
433 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
434 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
435 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
436 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
437 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
438 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
439 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
440 non-threaded programs.
441
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442PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
443This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
444libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
445executable program.
446
abc7453d 447*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 448
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449* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
450dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
451them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
452for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
453"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
454
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455* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
456breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
457or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
458the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
459for tracepoint actions.
460
e6158f16 461* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
7280022e 462in hex as well as in symbolic form.
e6158f16 463
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464* Process record and replay
465
466 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
467 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
468 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
469 execute commands.
470
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471* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
472step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
473set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
474reverse execution.
475
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476* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
477feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4782.6.28 or later.
479
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480* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
481target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
482char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
483literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
484U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
485`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
486system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
487the installation instructions for more information.
488
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489* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
490remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
491with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
492the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
493
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494* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
495and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
496
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497* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
498now complete on file names.
499
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500* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
501completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
502For instance, consider:
503
504 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
505 # struct example variable;
506 (gdb) p variable.
507
508If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
509completions will be "f1" and "f2".
510
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511* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
512the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
513
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514* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
515operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
516macros.
517
47a3467a 518* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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519the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
520implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
521
522* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
523registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
524can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
525and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 526
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527* New remote packets
528
529qSearch:memory:
530 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
531
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532QStartNoAckMode
533 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
534 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
535 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
536
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537vKill
538 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
539 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
540
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541qXfer:osdata:read
542 Obtains additional operating system information
543
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544qXfer:siginfo:read
545qXfer:siginfo:write
546 Read or write additional signal information.
547
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548* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
549
550 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
551 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
552 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
553
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554* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
555source+assembly.
556
c055b101 557* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 558DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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559
560* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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561and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
562`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 563
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564* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
565with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
566
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567* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
568
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569* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
570
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571* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
572which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
573
1fddbabb 574* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 575list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 576
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577* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
578conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
579have also been fixed.
580
bfb8797a 581* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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582From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
583are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 584
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585* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
586example, given:
587
588 template<typename T> class C { };
589 C<char const *> c;
590
591GDB will now correctly handle all of:
592
593 ptype C<char const *>
594 ptype C<char const*>
595 ptype C<const char *>
596 ptype C<const char*>
597
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598* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
599
600 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
601 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
602
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603 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
604 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
605 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
606
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607 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
608 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
609
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610 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
611 gdbserver.
612
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613 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
614 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
615
616 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
617 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
618 as appropriate.
619
d57a3c85
TJB
620* Python scripting
621
622 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
623 available is determined at configure time.
624
d8906c6f
TJB
625 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
626
aadc346a
JB
627* Ada tasking support
628
629 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
630 been introduced:
631
632 info tasks
633 Print the list of Ada tasks.
634 info task N
635 Print detailed information about task number N.
636 task
637 Print the task number of the current task.
638 task N
639 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
640
adb483fe
DJ
641* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
642add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
643
2277426b
PA
644* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
645
646 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
647 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
648 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
649 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
650 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
651 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
652 below.
653
08d16641
PA
654* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
655"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
656information.
657
e35359c5
UW
658* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
659to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
660architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
661See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
662more information.
663
85e747d2
UW
664* Multi-architecture debugging.
665
666 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
667 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
668 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
669 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
670 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
671
672* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
673use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
674Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
675powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
676--enable-targets configure option.
677
11ade57a
PA
678* Non-stop mode debugging.
679
680 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
681 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
682 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
683 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
684 section in the user manual for more information.
685
686 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
687 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
688 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
689 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
690 extensions on linux targets.
691
d7713ae0 692* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 693
a96d9b2e
SDJ
694catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
695 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
696 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
697 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
698 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
699 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
700 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
701 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
702 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
703
08388c79
DE
704find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
705 val1 [, val2, ...]
706 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
707
d57a3c85
TJB
708maint set python print-stack
709maint show python print-stack
710 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
711
712python [CODE]
713 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
714
d7713ae0
EZ
715macro define
716macro list
717macro undef
718 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
719 interactively.
720
721info os processes
722 Show operating system information about processes.
723
2277426b
PA
724info inferiors
725 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
726
727inferior NUM
728 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
729
730detach inferior NUM
731 Detach from inferior number NUM.
732
733kill inferior NUM
734 Kill inferior number NUM.
735
d7713ae0
EZ
736* New options
737
3285f3fe
UW
738set spu stop-on-load
739show spu stop-on-load
740 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
741
ff1a52c6
UW
742set spu auto-flush-cache
743show spu auto-flush-cache
744 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
745 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
746
d7713ae0
EZ
747set sh calling-convention
748show sh calling-convention
749 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
750
e0a3ce09 751set debug timestamp
75feb17d 752show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
753 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
754
755set disassemble-next-line
756show disassemble-next-line
757 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
758 the debuggee stops.
759
760set remote noack-packet
761show remote noack-packet
762 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
763 under "New remote packets."
764
765set remote query-attached-packet
766show remote query-attached-packet
767 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
768
769set remote read-siginfo-object
770show remote read-siginfo-object
771 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
772 packet.
773
774set remote write-siginfo-object
775show remote write-siginfo-object
776 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
777 packet.
778
40ab02ce
MS
779set remote reverse-continue
780show remote reverse-continue
781 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
782
783set remote reverse-step
784show remote reverse-step
785 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
786
d7713ae0
EZ
787set displaced-stepping
788show displaced-stepping
789 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
790 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
791 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
792
793set debug displaced
794show debug displaced
795 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
796
797maint set internal-error
798maint show internal-error
799 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
800
801maint set internal-warning
802maint show internal-warning
803 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 804
ccd213ac
DJ
805set exec-wrapper
806show exec-wrapper
807unset exec-wrapper
808 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 809
aad4b048
JB
810set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
811show multiple-symbols
812 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
813 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
814 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
815
74960c60
VP
816set breakpoint always-inserted
817show breakpoint always-inserted
818 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
819 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
820 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
821
0428b8f5
DJ
822set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
823show arm fallback-mode
824set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
825show arm force-mode
826 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
827 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
828 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
829 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
830
10568435
JK
831set disable-randomization
832show disable-randomization
833 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
834 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
835 multiple debugging sessions.
836
d7713ae0
EZ
837set non-stop
838show non-stop
839 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
840 a breakpoint.
841
b3eb342c 842set target-async
d7713ae0 843show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
844 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
845 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
846 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
847 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
848
6c7a06a3
TT
849set target-wide-charset
850show target-wide-charset
851 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
852 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
853
84603566
SL
854set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
855show tcp auto-retry
856set tcp connect-timeout
857show tcp connect-timeout
858 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
859 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
860 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
861
17a37d48
PP
862set libthread-db-search-path
863show libthread-db-search-path
864 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
865 libthread_db.
866
d4db2f36
PA
867set schedule-multiple (on|off)
868show schedule-multiple
869 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
870 the current process.
871
4e5d721f
DE
872set stack-cache
873show stack-cache
874 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
875 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
876 affecting correctness.
877
910c5da8
JB
878set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
879show interactive-mode
880 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
881 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
882 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
883 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
884 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
885
2277426b
PA
886* Removed commands
887
888info forks
889 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
890 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
891 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
892 command.
893
894fork NUM
895 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
896 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
897 alias for the `fork' command.
898
899process PID
900 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
901 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
902 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
903
904delete fork NUM
905 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
906 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
907 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
908 fork' command.
909
910detach fork NUM
911 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
912 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
913 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
914 fork' command.
915
a80b95ba
TG
916* New native configurations
917
918x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
919
b8bfd3ed
JB
920x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
921
75a2d5e7
TT
922* New targets
923
c28c63d8 924Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 925x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 926x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 927S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 928
6de3146c
PA
929* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
930 (mingw32ce) debugging.
931
d5cbbe6e
JB
932* Removed commands
933
934catch load
935catch unload
936 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
937
75feb17d 938*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 939
af5ca30d
NH
940* New native configurations
941
942NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 943Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
944
945* New targets
946
947NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 948Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 949
7a404eba
PA
950* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
951
952 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
953 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
954 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
955 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
956
430ebac9
PA
957* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
958(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
959
fe6fbf8b 960* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 961is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
962
963* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
964including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
965and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 966
10665d76
JB
967* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
968accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
969more than one contiguous range of addresses.
970
7cc46491
DJ
971* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
972
d71340b8
DJ
973* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
974registers on PowerPC targets.
975
523c4513
DJ
976* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
977targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
978
a6b151f1
DJ
979* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
980commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
981
2d717e4f
DJ
982* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
983extended-remote mode.
984
24a836bd 985* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
986The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
987error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
988The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 989
d0c678e6
UW
990* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
991building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
992target architectures.
993
d64a946d
TJB
994* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
995Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
996now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
997stored in two consecutive float registers.
998
ee163bf5
VP
999* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1000breakpoints now.
1001
b93b6ca7 1002* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1003Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1004include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1005 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1006 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1007 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1008 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1009 of an assignment
1010 - Improved command completion in Ada
1011 - Several bug fixes
1012
d001be7a
DJ
1013* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1014process.
1015
a6b151f1
DJ
1016* New commands
1017
6d53d0af
JB
1018set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1019show print frame-arguments
1020 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1021 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1022
a6b151f1
DJ
1023remote put
1024remote get
1025remote delete
1026 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1027
1028* New MI commands
1029
1030-target-file-put
1031-target-file-get
1032-target-file-delete
1033 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1034
1035* New remote packets
1036
1037vFile:open:
1038vFile:close:
1039vFile:pread:
1040vFile:pwrite:
1041vFile:unlink:
1042 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1043
2d717e4f
DJ
1044vAttach
1045 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1046 mode.
1047
1048vRun
1049 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1050
8d5f9c6f 1051*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1052
19d378fc
MS
1053* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1054bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1055Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1056
3a40aaa0
UW
1057* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1058symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1059-Bsymbolic linker option.
1060
a6ec25f2
BW
1061* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1062recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1063is not supported.
1064
6dd09645
JB
1065* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1066frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1067
c9bb8148
DJ
1068* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
106932-bit or 64-bit register values.
1070
0d5de010
DJ
1071* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1072
23181151
DJ
1073* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1074target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1075a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1076
ea37ba09
DJ
1077* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1078automatically displayed as character or string data.
1079
1080* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1081arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1082as strings.
e1f48ead 1083
123dc839
DJ
1084* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1085for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1086only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1087
05a4558a
DJ
1088* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1089iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1090
7c963485
PA
1091* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1092ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1093has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1094
b18be20d
DJ
1095* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1096
0ca420ce
UW
1097* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1098
31d99776
DJ
1099* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1100layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1101segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1102
a4642986
MR
1103* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1104immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1105
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1106* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1107"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1108packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1109where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1110Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1111
1112* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1113(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1114
1115* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1116according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1117
c9bb8148
DJ
1118* New commands
1119
23776285
MR
1120set remoteflow
1121show remoteflow
1122 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1123 when debugging using remote targets.
1124
c9bb8148
DJ
1125set mem inaccessible-by-default
1126show mem inaccessible-by-default
1127 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1128 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1129 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1130 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1131 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1132
1133set breakpoint auto-hw
1134show breakpoint auto-hw
1135 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1136 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1137 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1138 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1139 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1140 including "next" and "finish".
1141
0e420bd8
JB
1142catch exception
1143catch exception unhandled
1144 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1145
1146catch assert
1147 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1148
f822c95b
DJ
1149set sysroot
1150show sysroot
1151 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1152 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1153 an alias to "set sysroot".
1154
83cc5c53
UW
1155info spu
1156 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1157 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1158 architecture.
1159
bd372731
MK
1160* New native configurations
1161
1162OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1163
23181151
DJ
1164set tdesc filename
1165unset tdesc filename
1166show tdesc filename
1167 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1168 not query the target for its built-in description.
1169
c9bb8148
DJ
1170* New targets
1171
54fe9172 1172OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1173MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1174Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1175
6dd09645
JB
1176* New remote packets
1177
1178QPassSignals:
1179 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1180 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1181
23181151
DJ
1182qXfer:features:read:
1183 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1184 features.
6dd09645 1185
83cc5c53
UW
1186qXfer:spu:read:
1187qXfer:spu:write:
1188 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1189 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1190
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1191qXfer:libraries:read:
1192 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1193 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1194 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1195 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1196
483367ee
DJ
1197* Removed targets
1198
1199Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1200
d08950c4
UW
1201alpha*-*-osf1*
1202alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1203d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1204hppa*-*-hiux*
1205i[34567]86-ncr-*
1206i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1207i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1208i[34567]86-*-netware*
1209i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1210i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1211i[34567]86-*-sco*
1212i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1213i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1214i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1215i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1216i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1217i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1218i[34567]86-*-isc*
1219m68*-cisco*-*
1220m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1221mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1222rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1223sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1224
7ce59000
DJ
1225* Other removed features
1226
1227target abug
1228target cpu32bug
1229target est
1230target rom68k
1231
1232 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1233
ea35711c
DJ
1234target hms
1235target e7000
1236target sh3
1237target sh3e
1238
1239 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1240 H8/300.
1241
1242target ocd
1243
1244 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1245 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1246 interfaces.
1247
7ce59000
DJ
1248DWARF 1 support
1249
1250 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1251 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1252
54d61198
DJ
1253Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1254
1255 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1256 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1257 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1258 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1259
ea35711c
DJ
1260MIPS ".pdr" sections
1261
1262 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1263 in debugging information.
1264
1265Scheme support
1266
1267 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1268 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1269
1a69e1e4
DJ
1270set mips stack-arg-size
1271set mips saved-gpreg-size
1272
1273 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1274
6dd09645 1275*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1276
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1277* New targets
1278
1279Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1280Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1281
6aec2e11
DJ
1282* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1283(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1284running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1285
1286* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1287Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1288supported.
1289
17218d91
DJ
1290* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1291broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1292
9ebce043
DJ
1293* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1294stub provides the required support.
1295
7d3d3ece
DJ
1296* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1297longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1298
4f8253f3
JB
1299* New commands
1300
1301set substitute-path
1302unset substitute-path
1303show substitute-path
1304 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1305 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1306 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1307 between compilation and debugging.
1308
9fa66fd7
AS
1309set trace-commands
1310show trace-commands
1311 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1312 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1313 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1314
1f5befc1
DJ
1315* REMOVED features
1316
1317The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1318
2ec3381a
DJ
1319Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1320an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1321
3d00d119
DJ
1322The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1323
be2a5f71
DJ
1324* New remote packets
1325
1326qSupported:
1327 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1328 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1329 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1330 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1331 target.
1332
0876f84a
DJ
1333qXfer:auxv:read:
1334 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1335 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1336
9ebce043
DJ
1337qXfer:memory-map:read:
1338 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1339 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1340
1341vFlashErase:
1342vFlashWrite:
1343vFlashDone:
1344 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1345
0876f84a
DJ
1346* Removed remote packets
1347
1348qPart:auxv:read:
1349 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1350 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1351
e374b601 1352*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1353
96309189
MS
1354* New targets
1355
1356Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1357
1358Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1359
53e5f3cf
AS
1360* New commands
1361
1362init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1363 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1364
ac264b3b
MS
1365The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1366
1367checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1368
1369restart <n> Return the program state to a
1370 previously saved state.
1371
1372info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1373
1374delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1375
1376set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1377 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1378
1379info forks List forks of the user program that
1380 are available to be debugged.
1381
1382fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1383 forks of the user program that are
1384 available to be debugged.
1385
1386delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1387 that are available to be debugged (and
1388 kill the forked process).
1389
1390detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1391 that are available to be debugged (and
1392 allow the process to continue).
1393
3950dc3f
NS
1394* New architecture
1395
1396Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1397
0ea3f30e
DJ
1398* Improved Windows host support
1399
1400GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1401native console support, and remote communications using either
1402network sockets or serial ports.
1403
f79daebb
GM
1404* Improved Modula-2 language support
1405
1406GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1407basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1408pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1409printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1410written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1411GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1412
acab6ab2
MM
1413* REMOVED features
1414
1415The ARM rdi-share module.
1416
f4267320
DJ
1417The Netware NLM debug server.
1418
53e5f3cf 1419*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1420
e0ecbda1
MK
1421* New native configurations
1422
02a677ac 1423OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1424OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1425
d64a6579
KB
1426* New targets
1427
1428Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1429
b33a6190
AS
1430* New command line options
1431
1432--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1433--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1434 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1435--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1436 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1437 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1438 with the --command (-x) option.
1439
11dced61
AC
1440* Deprecated commands removed
1441
1442The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1443removed:
1444
1445 Command Replacement
1446 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1447 othernames set arm disassembler
1448 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1449 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1450 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1451 regs info registers
1452
6fe85783
MK
1453* New BSD user-level threads support
1454
1455It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1456library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1457configurations are:
1458
1459FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1460FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1461OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1462
1463Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1464are not yet supported.
1465
5260ca71
MS
1466* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1467(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1468
e84ecc99
AC
1469* REMOVED configurations and files
1470
1471VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1472Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1473National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1474
31e35378
JB
1475* New "set print array-indexes" command
1476
1477After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1478when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1479behavior.
1480
e85e5c83
MK
1481* VAX floating point support
1482
1483GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1484
d91e9901
AS
1485* User-defined command support
1486
1487In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1488to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1489section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1490
f2cb65ca
MC
1491*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1492
f47b1503
AS
1493* New command line option
1494
1495GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1496debugging.
1497
f2cb65ca
MC
1498* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1499
1500GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1501information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1502by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1503proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1504to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1505
d08c0230
AC
1506* Internationalization
1507
1508When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1509internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1510continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1511
117ea3cf
PH
1512* Ada
1513
1514Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1515implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1516into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1517
d08c0230
AC
1518* New native configurations
1519
1520GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1521
1522* Remote 'p' packet
1523
1524GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1525packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1526
1527* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1528
1529GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1530The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1531features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1532i386 application).
1533
1534GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1535compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1536continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1537configurations:
1538
1539hppa-*-hpux
1540ia64-*-aix
1541mips-*-irix*
1542*-*-lynx
1543mips-*-linux-gnu
1544sds protocol
1545xdr protocol
1546powerpc bdm protocol
1547
1548Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1549made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1550
1551* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1552
1553Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1554been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1555configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1556permanently REMOVED.
1557
1558h8300-*-*
1559mcore-*-*
1560mn10300-*-*
1561ns32k-*-*
1562sh64-*-*
1563v850-*-*
1564
ebb7c577
AC
1565*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1566
1567* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1568
1569When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1570heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1571been fixed.
1572
1573* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1574
1575When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1576fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1577IRIX long double values).
1578
1579* VAX and "next"
1580
1581A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1582command. This problem has been fixed.
1583
860660cb 1584*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1585
0dea2468
AC
1586* Fix for ``many threads''
1587
1588On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1589rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1590error message:
1591
1592 ptrace: No such process.
1593 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1594
1595This problem has been fixed.
1596
2c07db7a
AC
1597* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1598
1599Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1600GDB to dump core).
1601
c23968a2
JB
1602* New ``start'' command.
1603
1604This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1605
71009278
MK
1606* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1607
1608Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1609live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1610platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1611
1612FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1613FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1614NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1615NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1616NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1617OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1618OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1619OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1620OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1621
3c0b7db2
AC
1622* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1623
1624Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1625These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1626of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1627call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1628signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1629
73cc75f3
AC
1630Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1631features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1632include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1633
7243600a
BF
1634* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1635
6f606e1c
MK
1636* New native configurations
1637
97dc871c 1638GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1639OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1640OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1641OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1642OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1643NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1644OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1645
a1b461bf
AC
1646* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1647
1648GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1649The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1650including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1651migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1652compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1653work, was also included.
1654
1655GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1656module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1657
1658h8300-*-*
1659mcore-*-*
1660mn10300-*-*
1661ns32k-*-*
1662sh64-*-*
1663v850-*-*
1664xstormy16-*-*
1665
1666Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1667made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1668
3c7012f5
AC
1669* REMOVED configurations and files
1670
1671Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1672Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1673Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1674Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1675Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1676AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1677Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1678decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1679riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1680sonymips mips-sony-*
1681sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1682
e5fe55f7
AC
1683*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1684
1685* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1686
1687The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1688GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1689command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1690program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1691with GDB".
1692
1693* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1694
1695Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1696libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1697cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1698GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1699shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1700the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1701are created.
1702
1703Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1704
1705* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1706
1707The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1708non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1709compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1710
1711* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1712
1713Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1714wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1715
1716* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1717
1718The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1719permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1720systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1721
1722* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1723
1724Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1725has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1726
1727* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1728
1729GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1730its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1731panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1732
1733* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1734
1735When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1736by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1737not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1738
faae5abe 1739*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1740
9175c9a3
MC
1741* Removed --with-mmalloc
1742
1743Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1744conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1745
3cc87ec0
MK
1746* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1747
1748The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1749the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1750and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1751you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1752
f0424ef6
MK
1753* Revised SPARC target
1754
1755The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1756FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1757support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1758from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1759(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1760
59659be2
ILT
1761* New C++ demangler
1762
1763GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1764names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1765with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1766programs.
1767
9e08b29b
DJ
1768* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1769
1770GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1771arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1772encountered these.
1773
8dfe8985
DC
1774* C++ nested types and namespaces
1775
1776GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1777improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1778is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1779Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1780namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1781"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1782frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1783if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1784GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1785
cced5e27
MK
1786* New native configurations
1787
1788NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1789OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1790OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1791OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1792OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1793
b4b4b794
KI
1794* New debugging protocols
1795
1796M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1797
7989c619
AC
1798* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1799
1800The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1801and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1802tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1803
5994185b
AC
1804* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1805
1806Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1807been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1808configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1809permanently REMOVED.
1810
1811Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1812Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1813Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1814Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1815Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1816AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1817Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1818decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1819riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1820sonymips mips-sony-*
1821sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1822
0ddabb4c
AC
1823* REMOVED configurations and files
1824
1825SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1826SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1827Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1828Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1829H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1830HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1831HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1832HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1833PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1834386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1835Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1836 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1837 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1838SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1839SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1840Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1841Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1842
c7f1390e
DJ
1843*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1844
1fe43d45
AC
1845* Objective-C
1846
1847Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1848integrated into GDB.
1849
e6beb428
AC
1850* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1851
1852DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1853information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1854By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1855backtraces.
1856
1857The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1858have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1859DWARF 2 CFI support.
1860
1861* Hosted file I/O.
1862
1863GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1864file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1865remote protocol documentation for details.
1866
1867* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1868
1869All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1870architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1871to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1872ppc32 on ppc64).
1873
1874* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1875
1876GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1877per-thread variables.
1878
1879* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1880
1881GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1882GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1883
1884* Separate debug info.
1885
1886GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1887automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1888of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1889system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1890and optional debug files.
1891
1892* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1893
1894DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1895describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1896debugger.
1897
1898GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1899for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1900
1901* Java
1902
1903A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1904Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1905considered "useable".
1906
85f8f974
DJ
1907* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1908
1909The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1910commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1911kernel.
1912
0fac0b41
DJ
1913* GDB supports logging output to a file
1914
1915There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1916used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1917
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1918* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1919
1920The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1921disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1922command.
1923
e286caf2 1924* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1925
1926The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1927registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1928
d28f9cdf
DJ
1929* Profiling support
1930
1931A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1932be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1933session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1934"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1935data, for more informative profiling results.
1936
da0f9dcd
AC
1937* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1938
1939The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1940option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1941"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1942
1943Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1944removed.
1945
fb9b6b35
JJ
1946Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1947Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1948Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1949 in a subsequent -var-update.
1950
954a4db8
MK
1951* New native configurations.
1952
1953FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1954
6760f9e6
JB
1955* Multi-arched targets.
1956
b4263afa 1957HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1958Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1959
1b831c93
AC
1960* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1961
1962Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1963been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1964configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1965permanently REMOVED.
1966
8b0e5691 1967Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1968Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1969H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1970HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1971HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1972HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1973PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1974Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1975 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1976 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1977Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1978Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1979
5835abe7
NC
1980* REMOVED configurations and files
1981
1982V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1983Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1984IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1985i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1986i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1987i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1988HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1989 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1990 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1991Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1992Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1993Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1994OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1995I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1996
a094c6fb
AC
1997* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1998
1999The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2000the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2001context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2002address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2003The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2004
299ffc64 2005*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2006
46248966
AC
2007* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2008
2009When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2010`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2011in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2012library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2013shared libs like mad''.
2014
b9d14705 2015* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2016
b9d14705
DJ
2017Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2018the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2019arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2020powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2021
e0e9281e
JB
2022* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2023
2024GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2025and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2026they expand.
2027
dd73b9bb
AC
2028The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2029invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2030
2031The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2032macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2033
e0e9281e
JB
2034Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2035information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2036your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2037information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2038
2250ee0c
CV
2039* Multi-arched targets.
2040
6e3ba3b8
JT
2041DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2042DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2043NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2044National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2045Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2046Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2047
cd9bfe15 2048* New targets.
e33ce519 2049
456f8b9d
DB
2050Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2051
e33ce519 2052
da8ca43d
JT
2053* New native configurations
2054
2055Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2056SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2057MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2058UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2059
cd9bfe15
AC
2060* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2061
2062Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2063been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2064configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2065permanently REMOVED.
2066
92eb23c5 2067Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2068OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2069IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2070Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2071Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2072Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2073i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2074i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2075i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2076HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2077 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2078 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2079I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2080
db034ac5
AC
2081* OBSOLETE languages
2082
2083CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2084
cd9bfe15
AC
2085* REMOVED configurations and files
2086
2087AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2088A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2089AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2090AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2091AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2092
2093testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2094
20f01a46
DH
2095* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2096
2097This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2098commands. The default is 1024.
2099
a5941fbf
MK
2100* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2101
2102Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2103
89743e04
MS
2104* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2105
2106These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2107to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2108from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2109
9fb14e79
JB
2110* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2111
2112The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2113including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2114of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2115
2037aebb
AC
2116*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2117
2118* New targets.
2119
2120Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2121
2122* Bug fixes
2123
2124gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2125mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2126Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2127
2128gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2129dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2130Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2131
2132Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2133Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2134By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2135
2136i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2137avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2138By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2139
37057839 2140*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2141
1a703748
MS
2142* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2143
2144This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2145really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2146In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2147target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2148This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2149(notably embedded) targets.
2150
cefd4ef5
MS
2151* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2152
55241689
AC
2153This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2154process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2155GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2156hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2157
352ed7b4
MS
2158* New command line option
2159
2160GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2161
2162* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2163
2164There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2165command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2166a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2167be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2168open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2169issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2170a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2171it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2172GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2173is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2174
fe419ffc
RE
2175* Changes in ARM configurations.
2176
2177Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2178configuration is fully multi-arch.
2179
eb7cedd9
MK
2180* New native configurations
2181
fe419ffc 2182ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2183x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2184AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2185Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2186
c9f63e6b
CV
2187* New targets
2188
2189Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2190
9b4ff276
AC
2191* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2192
2193Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2194been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2195configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2196permanently REMOVED.
2197
2198AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2199A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2200AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2201AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2202AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2203
b4ceaee6 2204testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2205
e2caac18
AC
2206* REMOVED configurations and files
2207
2208TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2209WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2210PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2211PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2212PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2213Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2214Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2215 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2216SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2217Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2218Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2219ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2220Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2221
c2a727fa
TT
2222* Changes to command line processing
2223
2224The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2225for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2226
467d8519
TT
2227* Changes to key bindings
2228
2229There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2230
7072a954
AC
2231*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2232
2233Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2234
2235Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2236corrupted.
2237
2238Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2239
2240Numerous documentation fixes.
2241
2242Numerous testsuite fixes.
2243
34f47bc4 2244*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2245
2246* New native configurations
2247
2248Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2249x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2250MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2251MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2252ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2253s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2254
bf64bfd6
AC
2255* New targets
2256
def90278 2257Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2258CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2259UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2260
17e78a56 2261* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2262
2263x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2264Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2265Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2266 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2267TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2268WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2269Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2270PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2271PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2272PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2273SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2274Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2275ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2276Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2277
17e78a56
AC
2278stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2279kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2280
7fcca85b
AC
2281Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2282been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2283configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2284permanently REMOVED.
2285
a196c81c 2286* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2287
2288Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2289Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2290Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2291ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2292Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2293ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2294
6d6b80e5 2295* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2296
6d6b80e5 2297GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2298sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2299present.
2300
bf64bfd6
AC
2301* Other news:
2302
e23194cb
EZ
2303* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2304
2305* The MI enabled by default.
2306
2307The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2308revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2309engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2310using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2311which is now deprecated.
2312
2313* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2314
2315GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2316main features are supported:
2317
2318 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2319
2320 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2321 extension;
2322
2323 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2324
2325 - a Pascal expression parser.
2326
2327However, some important features are not yet supported.
2328
2329 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2330
2331 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2332
2333 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2334 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2335
2336 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2337
2338 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2339
2340* Changes in completion.
2341
2342Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2343to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2344users expect at the shell prompt.
2345
2346Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2347`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2348program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2349files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2350be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2351considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2352name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2353
2354`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2355
2356* New platform-independent commands:
2357
2358It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2359hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2360documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2361
2362* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2363
d7275149
MK
2364Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2365revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2366many threads as your system allows you to have.
2367
e23194cb
EZ
2368Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2369
d7275149
MK
2370Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2371multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2372
2373* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2374
2375Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2376
e23194cb
EZ
2377GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2378debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2379supported.)
2380
2381* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2382
2383Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2384breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2385implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2386put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2387and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2388registers.
2389
2390The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2391debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2392watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2393
2394* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2395
2396New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2397the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2398
2399New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2400display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2401IDT.
2402
2403New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2404from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2405New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2406a given linear address.
2407
2408GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2409program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2410which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2411
2412DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2413
6c56c069
EZ
2414It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2415
e23194cb
EZ
2416* Changes in documentation.
2417
2418All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2419Documentation License.
2420
2421Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2422manual.
2423
2424TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2425
2426Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2427manual.
2428
2429The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2430documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2431hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2432
5d6640b1
AC
2433* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2434
2435The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2436``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2437contents of this file.
2438
1a1d8446
AC
2439* gdba.el deleted
2440
2441GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2442
9debab2f 2443*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2444
c63ce875
EZ
2445* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2446
2447Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2448programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2449displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2450greater level of detail.
2451
2452* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2453
2454It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2455bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2456on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2457written.
2458
2459* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2460
2461The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2462necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2463machines ``out of the box''.
2464
2465The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2466possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2467signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2468would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2469interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2470
2471It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2472standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2473even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2474and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2475terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2476
2477The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2478enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2479also works.
2480
2481DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2482GDB.
2483
2484It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2485directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2486times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2487breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2488
ed9a39eb
JM
2489* New native configurations
2490
2491ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2492PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2493
7a292a7a
SS
2494* New targets
2495
96baa820 2496Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2497x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2498PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2499TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2500
085dd6e6
JM
2501* OBSOLETE configurations
2502
2503Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2504Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2505Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2506ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2507Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2508
9debab2f
AC
2509Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2510but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2511these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2512be permanently REMOVED.
2513
5330533d
SS
2514* Gould support removed
2515
2516Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2517
bc9e5bbf
AC
2518* New features for SVR4
2519
2520On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2521without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2522load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2523
2524* Many C++ enhancements
2525
2526C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2527in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2528
adf40b2e
JM
2529* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2530
2531A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2532sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2533with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2534``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2535
2536 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2537 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2538
43e526b9
JM
2539* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2540
2541A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2542expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2543instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2544
2545The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2546added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2547
96baa820
JM
2548* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2549
2550The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2551``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2552include ``set remote P-packet''.
2553
11cf8741
JM
2554* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2555
2556The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2557accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2558``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2559
7876dd43
DB
2560* ``apropos'' command added.
2561
2562The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2563documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2564try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2565
bc9e5bbf
AC
2566* New MI interface
2567
2568A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2569interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2570process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2571"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2572enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2573
2574 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2575
c906108c
SS
2576*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2577
2578* New native configurations
2579
2580HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2581HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2582M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2583
2584* New targets
2585
2586Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2587Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2588Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2589
2590* OBSOLETE configurations
2591
2592Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2593
2594Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2595but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2596these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2597be permanently REMOVED.
2598
2599* ANSI/ISO C
2600
2601As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2602buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2603containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2604use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2605available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2606configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2607information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2608already.
2609
2610* Readline 2.2
2611
2612GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2613
2614* set extension-language
2615
2616You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2617languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2618you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2619 set extension-language .c c++
2620The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2621and their associated languages.
2622
2623* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2624
2625When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2626you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2627PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2628
2629 set processor NAME
2630
2631sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2632following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2633
2634 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2635 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2636 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2637 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2638 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2639 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2640 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2641 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2642 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2643 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2644 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2645
2646At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2647special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2648registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2649only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2650
2651* HP-UX support
2652
2653Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2654more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2655library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2656support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2657for xdb and dbx commands.
2658
2659* Catchpoints
2660
2661HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2662generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2663to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2664
2665This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2666argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2667output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2668
2669* Debugging across forks
2670
2671On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2672in the inferior.
2673
2674* TUI
2675
2676HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2677it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2678configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2679
2680* GDB remote protocol additions
2681
2682A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2683Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2684fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2685allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2686
2687For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2688full 64-bit address. The command
2689
2690 set remoteaddresssize 32
2691
2692can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2693the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2694will be discarded.
2695
2696In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2697command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2698
2699 maint packet heythere
2700
2701sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2702disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2703time.
2704
2705The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2706target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2707downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2708
2709* Tracing can collect general expressions
2710
2711You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2712further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2713doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2714
2715* mask-address variable for Mips
2716
2717For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2718a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2719of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2720
2721* Higher serial baud rates
2722
2723GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2724230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2725to achieve all of these rates.)
2726
2727* i960 simulator
2728
2729The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2730builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2731
2732
2733*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2734
2735* New native configurations
2736
2737Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2738Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2739Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2740PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2741PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2742Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2743Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2744
2745* New targets
2746
2747Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2748Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2749Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2750Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2751MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2752MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2753MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2754Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2755Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2756Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2757NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2758
2759* New debugging protocols
2760
2761ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2762M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2763DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2764PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2765PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2766Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2767
2768* DWARF 2
2769
2770All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2771format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2772information.
2773
2774* Java frontend
2775
2776GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2777only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2778
2779* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2780
2781For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2782loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2783locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2784
2785* Live range splitting
2786
2787GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2788range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2789more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2790
2791* Hurd support
2792
2793GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2794updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2795
2796* ARM Thumb support
2797
2798GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2799instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2800instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2801accordingly.
2802
2803* MIPS16 support
2804
2805GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2806instruction set.
2807
2808* Overlay support
2809
2810GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2811linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2812will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2813control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2814additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2815in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2816
2817* info symbol
2818
2819The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2820the symbol at the specified address.
2821
2822* Trace support
2823
2824The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2825asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2826extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2827includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2828file tracepoint.c for more details.
2829
2830* MIPS simulator
2831
2832Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2833by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2834of most MIPS variants.
2835
2836* Sparc simulator
2837
2838Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2839by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2840Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2841
2842* set architecture
2843
2844For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2845basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2846architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2847the possible architectures.
2848
2849*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2850
2851* New native configurations
2852
2853Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2854M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2855PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2856PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2857PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2858RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2859
2860* New targets
2861
2862ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2863I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2864MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2865MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2866PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2867Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2868Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2869
2870* PowerPC simulator
2871
2872The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2873contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2874PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2875basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2876performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2877
2878* Solaris 2.5
2879
2880GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2881
2882* Windows 95/NT native
2883
2884GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2885To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2886which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2887Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2888ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2889
2890* dont-repeat command
2891
2892If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2893command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2894useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2895extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2896
2897* Send break instead of ^C
2898
2899The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2900rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2901GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2902
2903* Remote protocol timeout
2904
2905The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2906that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2907to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2908
2909* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2910
2911By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2912loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2913stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2914when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2915in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2916
2917Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2918/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2919automatically on hpux10.
2920
2921* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2922
2923Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2924
2925* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2926
2927When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2928may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2929the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2930every character. The default value is 1050.
2931
2932* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2933
2934If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2935a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2936replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2937details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2938remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2939to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2940
2941* Speedups for remote debugging
2942
2943GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2944the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2945and more efficient S-record downloading.
2946
2947* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2948
2949GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2950Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2951
2952*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2953
2954* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2955
2956The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2957can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2958
2959* Remote targets use caching
2960
2961Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2962remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2963it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2964debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2965off' turns the the data cache off.
2966
2967* Remote targets may have threads
2968
2969The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2970in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2971gdb/remote.c for details.
2972
2973* NetROM support
2974
2975If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2976support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2977acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2978write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2979support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2980another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2981sequence is something like
2982
2983 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2984 load <prog>
2985 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2986
2987* Macintosh host
2988
2989GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2990may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2991it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2992available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2993device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2994directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2995scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2996mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2997
2998* Autoconf
2999
3000GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3001but does simplify configuration and building.
3002
3003* hpux10
3004
3005GDB now supports hpux10.
3006
3007*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3008
3009* New native configurations
3010
3011x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3012x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3013NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3014Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3015
3016* New targets
3017
3018A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3019HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3020CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3021PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3022WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3023
3024* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3025
3026GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3027possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3028filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3029the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3030if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3031
3032* Arguments to user-defined commands
3033
3034User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3035Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3036trivial example:
3037define adder
3038 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3039
3040To execute the command use:
3041adder 1 2 3
3042
3043Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3044Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3045use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3046
3047* New `if' and `while' commands
3048
3049This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3050commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3051expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3052execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3053terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3054`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3055if the expression is zero.
3056
3057* Fortran source language mode
3058
3059GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3060Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3061variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3062with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3063Fortran compilers.
3064
3065* Better HPUX support
3066
3067Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3068running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3069processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3070for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3071that behavior do the following before running the program:
3072
3073 adb -w a.out
3074 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3075 control-d
3076
3077This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3078To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3079
3080 adb -w a.out
3081 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3082 control-d
3083
3084You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3085the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3086external linkage.
3087
3088GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3089HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3090
3091* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3092
3093You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3094commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3095current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3096"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3097associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3098configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3099
3100* New DOS host serial code
3101
3102This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3103no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3104a PC's serial port.
3105
3106*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3107
3108* New "complete" command
3109
3110This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3111were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3112
3113* Trailing space optional in prompt
3114
3115"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3116allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3117
3118* Breakpoint hit counts
3119
3120"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3121has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3122can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3123to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3124less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3125that breakpoint.
3126
3127* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3128
3129"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3130an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3131arrays actually contain only short strings.
3132
3133* Shared library breakpoints
3134
3135In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3136breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3137
3138* Hardware watchpoints
3139
3140There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3141targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3142
55241689 3143Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3144
3145* Annotations
3146
3147Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3148and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3149
3150* Improved Irix 5 support
3151
3152GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3153
3154* Improved HPPA support
3155
3156GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3157
3158* New native configurations
3159
3160Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3161HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3162Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3163RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3164
3165* New targets
3166
3167OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3168MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3169Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3170
3171* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3172
3173There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3174This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3175
3176* Fixes
3177
3178As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3179and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3180
3181*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3182
3183* Irix 5 is now supported
3184
3185* HPPA support
3186
3187GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3188to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3189GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3190of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3191can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3192
3193
3194*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3195
3196* User visible changes:
3197
3198* Remote Debugging
3199
3200The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3201target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3202debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3203integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3204debugging info for the mips target).
3205
3206* DEC Alpha native support
3207
3208GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3209debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3210work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3211Alpha-specific notes.
3212
3213* Preliminary thread implementation
3214
3215GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3216
3217* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3218
3219This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3220to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3221for details).
3222
3223* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3224
3225This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3226mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3227call methods, ...etc.
3228
3229*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3230
3231 * User visible changes:
3232
3233Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3234supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3235other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3236somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3237
3238Filename completion now works.
3239
3240When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3241arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3242addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3243
3244All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3245vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3246should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3247your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3248to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3249
3250 * DEC alpha support
3251
3252This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3253cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3254
3255
3256*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3257
3258 * Testsuite
3259
3260This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3261The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3262via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3263
3264 * C++ demangling
3265
3266'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3267emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3268Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3269disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3270use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3271
3272 * Simulators
3273
3274GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3275So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3276Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3277
3278 * New targets supported
3279
3280H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3281H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3282SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3283Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3284IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3285
3286Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3287version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3288GO32 memory extender.
3289
3290 * New remote protocols
3291
3292MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3293
3294 * New source languages supported
3295
3296This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3297used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3298into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3299
3300
3301*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3302
3303 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3304
3305GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3306version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3307University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3308compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3309format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3310(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3311
3312Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3313
3314 * Faster and better demangling
3315
3316We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3317demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3318character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3319only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3320This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3321increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3322symbol lookups.
3323
3324`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3325from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3326compiler does not actually implement.
3327
3328 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3329
3330In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3331inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3332recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3333very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3334The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3335circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3336fix.
3337
3338The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3339release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3340
3341 * Improved configure script
3342
3343The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3344you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3345host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3346done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3347
3348We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3349version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3350`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3351The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3352only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3353We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3354
3355 * Documentation improvements
3356
3357There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3358produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3359before submitting changes.
3360
3361The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3362M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3363`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3364you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3365a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3366
3367*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3368We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3369been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3370or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3371`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3372around this problem.
3373
3374 * New features
3375
3376GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3377the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3378`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3379the target program.
3380
3381The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3382how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3383
3384 * New native hosts supported
3385
3386HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3387386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3388
3389 * New targets supported
3390
3391AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3392
3393 * New file formats supported
3394
3395BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3396HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3397
3398 * Major bug fixes
3399
3400Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3401
3402We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3403printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3404
3405We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3406for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3407release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3408
3409You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3410will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3411
3412We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3413for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3414especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3415libraries.
3416
3417The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3418information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3419command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3420any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3421when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3422
3423 * Internal improvements
3424
3425GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3426debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3427
3428GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3429Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3430symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3431contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3432shared code that handles any of them.
3433
3434 * New command line options
3435
3436We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3437
3438 * Mmalloc licensing
3439
3440The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3441General Public License.
3442
3443*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3444
3445 * Host/native/target split
3446
3447GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3448hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3449target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3450local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3451ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3452
3453The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3454GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3455is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3456code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3457any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3458built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3459handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3460
3461GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3462It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3463plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3464
3465 * New hosts supported
3466
3467HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3468386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3469386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3470
3471 * New targets supported
3472
3473Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
347468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3475
3476 * New native hosts supported
3477
3478386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3479 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3480386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3481
3482 * New file formats supported
3483
3484BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3485supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3486format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3487
3488 * New commands
3489
3490`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3491`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3492These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3493
3494`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3495
3496You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3497scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3498prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3499executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3500
3501 * C++ improvements
3502
3503We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3504info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3505symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3506
3507Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3508
3509 * Major bug fixes
3510
3511The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3512fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3513by the compiler.
3514
3515We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3516support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3517
3518John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3519slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3520that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3521purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3522the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3523mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3524
3525Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3526about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3527completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3528we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3529
3530 * AMD 29k support
3531
3532A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3533specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3534calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3535usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3536in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3537
3538We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3539Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3540of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3541resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3542
3543 * Remote interfaces
3544
3545We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3546with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3547message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3548This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3549needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3550breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3551each instruction being stepped through.
3552
3553The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3554registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3555
3556There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3557find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3558Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3559processor with a serial port.
3560
3561 * Configuration
3562
3563Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3564`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3565supported, and what files each one uses.
3566
3567 * Library changes
3568
3569There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3570disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3571Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3572disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3573
3574The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3575Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3576can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3577grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3578
3579 * Documentation
3580
3581The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3582reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3583as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3584encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3585system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3586bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3587
3588And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3589
3590
3591*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3592
3593 * Better support for C++ function names
3594
3595GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3596names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3597(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3598single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3599Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3600
3601GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3602the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3603You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3604lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3605for the list of formats.
3606
3607 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3608
3609Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3610C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3611directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3612can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3613usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3614about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3615this problem.)
3616
3617 * New 'maintenance' command
3618
3619All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3620the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3621can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3622
3623 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3624 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3625 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3626 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3627 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3628 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3629
3630The following commands are new:
3631
3632 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3633 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3634 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3635
3636 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3637
3638We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3639(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3640be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3641read after argv processing.
3642
3643 * New hosts supported
3644
3645Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3646
55241689 3647GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3648
3649We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3650is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3651for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3652masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3653fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3654It costs extra.
3655
3656 * New targets supported
3657
3658Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3659
3660 * More smarts about finding #include files
3661
3662GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3663all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3664greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3665especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3666the one that contains your sources.
3667
3668We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3669breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3670try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3671
3672 * Interesting infernals change
3673
3674GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3675section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3676target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3677stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3678
3679 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3680
3681There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3682 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3683 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3684
3685See the ChangeLog for details.
3686
3687*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3688
3689 * New machines supported (host and target)
3690
3691IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3692
3693SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3694
3695 * New malloc package
3696
3697GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3698Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3699capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3700This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3701pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3702more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3703
3704 * info proc
3705
3706The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3707'help info proc' for details.
3708
3709 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3710
3711The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3712Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3713possible.
3714
3715 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3716
3717Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3718support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3719conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3720environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3721that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3722in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3723
3724 * Cross byte order fixes
3725
3726Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3727targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3728
3729 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3730
3731If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3732system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3733`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3734program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3735called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3736Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3737and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3738the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3739option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3740starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3741
3742You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3743the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3744information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3745slower, but makes future operations faster.
3746
3747The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3748build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3749A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3750use is:
3751
3752 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3753
3754The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3755It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3756shared across multiple host platforms.
3757
3758 * longjmp() handling
3759
3760GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3761siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3762all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3763platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3764
3765 * Solaris 2.0
3766
3767Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3768this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3769reading symbols.
3770
3771 * Bug fixes
3772
3773As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3774People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3775crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3776
3777*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3778
3779 * New machines supported (host and target)
3780
3781SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3782 (except core files)
3783BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3784Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3785
3786 * New machines supported (target)
3787
3788AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3789
3790 * C++ support
3791
3792GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3793The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3794per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3795
3796GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3797`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3798extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3799good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3800will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3801released.
3802
3803 * New features for SVR4
3804
3805GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3806shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3807only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3808
3809The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3810on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3811it prints the address mappings of the process.
3812
3813If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3814bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3815
3816 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3817
3818Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3819now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3820skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3821make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3822same code linked statically.
3823
3824 * New Getopt
3825
3826GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3827version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3828continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3829Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3830added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3831future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3832
3833 * Bugs fixed
3834
3835The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3836Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3837See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3838
3839
3840*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3841
3842 * New machines supported (host and target)
3843
3844Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3845NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3846Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3847
3848 * Almost SCO Unix support
3849
3850We had hoped to support:
3851SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3852(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3853that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3854about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3855
3856 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3857
3858GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3859debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3860is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3861send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3862reqired (if any).
3863
3864 * New Readline
3865
3866GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3867is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3868required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3869
3870 * Bugs fixed
3871
3872The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3873Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3874See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3875
3876 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3877
3878GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3879supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3880symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3881
3882Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3883mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3884debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3885mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3886version 2.
3887
3888Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3889really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3890line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3891variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3892situation somewhat.
3893
3894When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3895However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3896methods.
3897
3898We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3899DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3900encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3901
3902
3903*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3904
3905 * Improved configuration
3906
3907Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3908Porting BFD is simpler.
3909
3910 * Stepping improved
3911
3912The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3913of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3914in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3915function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3916
3917 * Bug fixing
3918
3919Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3920
3921 * New host supported (not target)
3922
3923Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3924
3925
3926*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3927
3928 * Multiple source language support
3929
3930GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3931It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3932and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3933language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3934You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3935`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3936
3937 * GDB and Modula-2
3938
3939GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3940currently under development at the State University of New York at
3941Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3942continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3943
3944Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3945debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3946symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3947
3948There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3949in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3950
3951 * set write on/off
3952
3953GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3954a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3955the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3956by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3957effect immediately.
3958
3959 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3960
3961When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3962shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3963The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3964examining core files.
3965
3966 * set listsize
3967
3968You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3969The default is 10.
3970
3971 * New machines supported (host and target)
3972
3973SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3974Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3975Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3976
3977 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3978
3979IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3980
3981 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3982
3983AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3984AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3985Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3986
3987 * New remote interfaces
3988
3989AMD 29000 Adapt
3990AMD 29000 Minimon
3991
3992
3993*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3994
3995 * New Facilities
3996
3997Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3998
3999Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4000target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4001is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4002remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4003remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4004also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4005using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4006stub on the target system.
4007
4008New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4009
4010GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4011library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4012object file types such as a.out and coff.
4013
4014There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4015refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4016
4017
4018 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4019
4020All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4021by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4022
4023For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4024``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4025Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4026
4027What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4028print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4029will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4030all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4031
4032confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4033 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4034 it is already running. Default is ON.
4035
4036editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4037 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4038 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4039 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4040 Default is ON.
4041
4042history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4043 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4044 or the value of the environment variable
4045 GDBHISTFILE.
4046
4047history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4048 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4049 HISTSIZE.
4050
4051history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4052 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4053 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4054
4055history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4056 history expansion will be performed on
4057 command line input. The default is OFF.
4058
4059radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4060 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4061 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4062
4063height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4064 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4065 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4066 variable TERM.
4067
4068width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4069 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4070 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4071 variable TERM.
4072
4073Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4074``set width'' instead.
4075
4076print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4077 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4078 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4079 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4080
4081print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4082 is OFF.
4083
4084print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4085 "raw" form if off.
4086
4087print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4088 like instructions.
4089
4090print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4091
4092
4093 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4094
4095The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4096new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4097are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4098window.
4099
4100
4101 * Support for Shared Libraries
4102
4103GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4104Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4105before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4106happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4107At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4108from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4109shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4110It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4111
4112sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4113 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4114 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4115
4116info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4117
4118
4119 * Watchpoints
4120
4121A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4122expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4123tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4124quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4125problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4126more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4127
4128watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4129
4130info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4131
4132delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4133disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4134enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4135
4136
4137 * C++ multiple inheritance
4138
4139When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4140for C++ programs.
4141
4142 * C++ exception handling
4143
4144Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4145ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4146the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4147handler's context).
4148
4149catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4150 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4151 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4152
4153info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4154 current stack frame.
4155
4156
4157 * Minor command changes
4158
4159The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4160command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4161is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4162
4163The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4164at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4165frames without printing.
4166
4167 * New directory command
4168
4169'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4170The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4171about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4172with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4173find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4174
4175 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4176
4177For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4178for more details.
4179
4180GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4181two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4182Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4183where the program that you are debugging will run.
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