gdb/testsuite/
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.2
5
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6* Python scripting
7
8 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
9 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
10 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
11 that function like so:
12
13 result = some_value (10,20)
14
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15* C++ Improvements:
16
17 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
18 instantiation. For example, if you have:
19
20 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
21
22 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
23 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
24 was added to GCC 4.5.
25
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26* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
27 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
28 execution to a label.
29
30* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
31 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
32 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
33 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
34
b56df873 35* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 36 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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37 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
38 of scope.
39
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40* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
41
42 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
43 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
44 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
45 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
46 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
47 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
48
49 (gdb) info threads
50 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
51
52 While now you see this:
53
54 (gdb) info threads
55 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
56
57 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
58 dumps.
59
60 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
61 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
62 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
63 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
64
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65* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
66
5ec6ebf9 67 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS 4.x and 5.x.
248c9dbc 68
76b8507d 69*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 70
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71* Shared library support for remote targets by default
72
73 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
74 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
75 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
76 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
77 was always disabled for such configurations.
78
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79* C++ Improvements:
80
81 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
82
83 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
84 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
85 For example:
86 namespace A
87 {
88 class B { };
89 void foo (B) { }
90 }
91 ...
92 A::B b
93 foo(b)
94 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
95 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
96 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
97
98 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
99
100 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
101 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
102 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
103 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
104 entry.
105 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
106 mentioned flavors of operators.
107
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108 ** static const class members
109
110 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
111 class definition has been fixed.
112
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113* Windows Thread Information Block access.
114
115 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
116 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
117 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
118 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
119 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
120 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
121
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122* Static tracepoints
123
124 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
125 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
126 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
127 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
128 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
129 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
130 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
131 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
132 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
133 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
134 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
135 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
136 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
137 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
138 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
139 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
140 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
141 the "New remote packets" section below.
142
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143* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
144
145 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
146 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
147 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
148 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
149
150* Observer mode
151
152 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
153 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
154 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
155 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
156 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
157 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
158 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
159
160* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
161 current thread.
162
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163* New remote packets
164
165qGetTIBAddr
166
167 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
168
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169qRelocInsn
170
171 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
172 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
173 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
174 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
175 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
176 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
177
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178qTfSTM, qTsSTM
179
180 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
181
182qTSTMat
183
184 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
185 program.
186
187qXfer:statictrace:read
188
189 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
190 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
191 to gdb's qSupported query.
192
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193QAllow
194
195 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
196
197QTDPsrc
198
199 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
200 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
201
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202* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
203 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
204 a directory.
205
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206* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
207
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208 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
209 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
210 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
211 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
212
213 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
214 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
215 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
216 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
217 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
218 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
219 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
220
221 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
222 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 223
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224 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
225
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226* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
227 it understands register description.
228
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229* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
230
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231* X86 general purpose registers
232
233 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
234 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
235 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
236 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
237 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
238
95a42b64 239* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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240 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
241 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
242 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
243 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
244 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 245
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246* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
247 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
248 in the specified file.
249
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250* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
251 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
252 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
253 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
254 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
255 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
256 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
257 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
258 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
259 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
260
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261* New commands
262
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263eval template, expressions...
264 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
265 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
266
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267set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
268show target-file-system-kind
269 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
270 names.
271
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272save breakpoints <filename>
273 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
274 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
275 definitions, use the `source' command.
276
277`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
278is now deprecated.
279
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280info static-tracepoint-markers
281 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
282
283strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
284 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
285 function, line, address, or marker ID.
286
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287set observer on|off
288show observer
289 Enable and disable observer mode.
290
291set may-write-registers on|off
292set may-write-memory on|off
293set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
294set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
295set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
296set may-interrupt on|off
297 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
298 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
299 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
300 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
301 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
302 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
303 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
304
305set record memory-query on|off
306show record memory-query
307 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
308 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
309
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310* Changed commands
311
312disassemble
313 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
314
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315* Python scripting
316
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317** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
318 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
319 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
320 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
321 GDB using Python' in the manual.
322
adc36818 323** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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324 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
325 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
326 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 327
fa33c3cd 328** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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329 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
330
331** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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332
333** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 334
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335** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
336
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337** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
338 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
339 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
340
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341* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
342there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
343tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
344regular breakpoints.
345
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346* New targets
347
348ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
349
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350* D language support.
351 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
352 language.
353
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354* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
355 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
356 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
357 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
358 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
359
360* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
361 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
362 conditions of the form:
363
364 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
365
366 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
367 interface mentioned above.
368
bfbf3774 369*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 370
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371* C++ Improvements
372
373 ** Namespace Support
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374
375 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
376 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
377 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
378 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
379 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
380
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381 ** Bug Fixes
382
383 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
384 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
385 qualified name.
386
387 ** Cast Operators
388
389 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
390 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
391
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392* New targets
393
394Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 395Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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396
397* New Simulators
398
399Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 400Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 401
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402* Multi-program debugging.
403
404 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
405 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
406 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
407 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
408 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
409 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
410 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
411 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
412
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413* New tracing features
414
415 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
416
417 ** Trace state variables
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418
419 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
420 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
421 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
422 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
423 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
424 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
425 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
426 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
427 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
428 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 429
d5551862 430 ** Fast tracepoints
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431
432 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
433 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
434 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
435 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
436 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
437 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
438 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
439 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
440 the regular trace command.
441
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442 ** Disconnected tracing
443
444 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
445 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
446 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
447 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
448 connection is lost unexpectedly.
449
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450 ** Trace files
451
452 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
453 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
454 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
455 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
456 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
457 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
458 <name>".
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459
460 ** Circular trace buffer
461
462 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
463 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
464 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
465 not be available for all target agents.
466
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467* Changed commands
468
469disassemble
470 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
471 the arguments to be comma-separated.
472
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473info variables
474 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
475 which only declare a variable are not shown.
476
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477source
478 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
479 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
480 support.
481
482 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
483 "set script-extension" (see below).
484
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485* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
486
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487record save [<FILENAME>]
488 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
489 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
490
491record restore <FILENAME>
492 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
493 earlier time, for replay debugging.
494
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495add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
496 Add a new inferior.
497
498clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
499 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
500 inferior has loaded.
501
502remove-inferior ID
503 Remove an inferior.
504
505maint info program-spaces
506 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
507
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508set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
509show remote interrupt-sequence
510 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
511 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
512 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
513 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
514 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
515
516set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
517show remote interrupt-on-connect
518 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
519 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
520 Linux kernel.
521
522set remotebreak [on | off]
523show remotebreak
524Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
525
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526tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
527 Create or modify a trace state variable.
528
529info tvariables
530 List trace state variables and their values.
531
532delete tvariable $NAME ...
533 Delete one or more trace state variables.
534
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535teval EXPR, ...
536 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
537 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
538
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539ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
540 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
541
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542* New expression syntax
543
544 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
545 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
546
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547* New options
548
549set follow-exec-mode new|same
550show follow-exec-mode
551 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
552 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
553 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
554
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555set default-collect EXPR, ...
556show default-collect
557 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
558 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
559 such as registers or a critical global variable.
560
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561set disconnected-tracing
562show disconnected-tracing
563 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
564 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
565 upon disconnection.
566
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567set circular-trace-buffer
568show circular-trace-buffer
569 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
570 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
571 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
572 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
573
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574set script-extension off|soft|strict
575show script-extension
576 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
577 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
578 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
579 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
580 evaluation failed.
581 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
582
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583set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
584show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
585 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
586 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
587 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
588 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
589 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
590 is on.
591
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592* Python API Improvements
593
594 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
595 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
596 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
597
598 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
599 `is_base_class' attribute.
600
601 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
602
603 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
604 evaluate an expression.
605
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606* New remote packets
607
608QTDV
609 Define a trace state variable.
610
611qTV
612 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
613
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614QTDisconnected
615 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
616
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617QTBuffer:circular
618 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
619
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620qTfP, qTsP
621 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
622
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623* Bug fixes
624
625Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
626
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627Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
628much more reliable. In particular:
629 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
630 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
631 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
632 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
633 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
634 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
635 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
636 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
637 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
638 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
639 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
640 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
641 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
642 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
643 non-threaded programs.
644
93c26624
JK
645PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
646This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
647libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
648executable program.
649
abc7453d 650*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 651
4efc6507
DE
652* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
653dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
654them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
655for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
656"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
657
782b2b07
SS
658* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
659breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
660or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
661the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
662for tracepoint actions.
663
53a71c06
CR
664* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
665raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
666modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 667
e7a8dbfb
HZ
668* Process record and replay
669
670 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
671 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
672 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
673 execute commands.
674
64644d9b
MS
675* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
676step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
677set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
678reverse execution.
679
b9412953
DD
680* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
681feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
6822.6.28 or later.
683
6c7a06a3
TT
684* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
685target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
686char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
687literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
688U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
689`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
690system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
691the installation instructions for more information.
692
f1838a98
UW
693* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
694remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
695with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
696the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
697
55333a84
DE
698* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
699and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
700
7f6a6314
PM
701* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
702now complete on file names.
703
65d12d83
TT
704* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
705completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
706For instance, consider:
707
708 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
709 # struct example variable;
710 (gdb) p variable.
711
712If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
713completions will be "f1" and "f2".
714
edb3359d
DJ
715* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
716the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
717
2fae03e8
TT
718* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
719operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
720macros.
721
47a3467a 722* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
723the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
724implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
725
726* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
727registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
728can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
729and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 730
08388c79
DE
731* New remote packets
732
733qSearch:memory:
734 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
735
a6f3e723
SL
736QStartNoAckMode
737 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
738 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
739 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
740
d7713ae0
EZ
741vKill
742 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
743 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
744
07e059b5
VP
745qXfer:osdata:read
746 Obtains additional operating system information
747
47a3467a
PA
748qXfer:siginfo:read
749qXfer:siginfo:write
750 Read or write additional signal information.
751
060871df
PA
752* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
753
754 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
755 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
756 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
757
c055b101 758* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 759DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
760
761* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
762and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
763`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 764
31fffb02
CS
765* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
766with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
767
88d8a8e0
JB
768* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
769
7f99b190
JB
770* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
771
ccd213ac
DJ
772* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
773which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
774
1fddbabb 775* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 776list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 777
a0ef4274
DJ
778* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
779conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
780have also been fixed.
781
bfb8797a 782* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
783From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
784are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 785
71c25dea
TT
786* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
787example, given:
788
789 template<typename T> class C { };
790 C<char const *> c;
791
792GDB will now correctly handle all of:
793
794 ptype C<char const *>
795 ptype C<char const*>
796 ptype C<const char *>
797 ptype C<const char*>
798
ccd213ac
DJ
799* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
800
801 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
802 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
803
7ae0e2a2
UW
804 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
805 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
806 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
807
a6f3e723
SL
808 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
809 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
810
da8bd9a3
DJ
811 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
812 gdbserver.
813
d70e31dd
DE
814 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
815 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
816
817 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
818 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
819 as appropriate.
820
d57a3c85
TJB
821* Python scripting
822
823 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
824 available is determined at configure time.
825
d8906c6f
TJB
826 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
827
aadc346a
JB
828* Ada tasking support
829
830 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
831 been introduced:
832
833 info tasks
834 Print the list of Ada tasks.
835 info task N
836 Print detailed information about task number N.
837 task
838 Print the task number of the current task.
839 task N
840 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
841
adb483fe
DJ
842* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
843add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
844
2277426b
PA
845* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
846
847 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
848 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
849 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
850 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
851 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
852 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
853 below.
854
08d16641
PA
855* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
856"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
857information.
858
e35359c5
UW
859* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
860to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
861architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
862See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
863more information.
864
85e747d2
UW
865* Multi-architecture debugging.
866
867 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
868 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
869 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
870 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
871 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
872
873* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
874use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
875Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
876powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
877--enable-targets configure option.
878
11ade57a
PA
879* Non-stop mode debugging.
880
881 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
882 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
883 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
884 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
885 section in the user manual for more information.
886
887 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
888 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
889 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
890 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
891 extensions on linux targets.
892
d7713ae0 893* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 894
a96d9b2e
SDJ
895catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
896 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
897 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
898 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
899 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
900 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
901 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
902 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
903 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
904
08388c79
DE
905find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
906 val1 [, val2, ...]
907 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
908
d57a3c85
TJB
909maint set python print-stack
910maint show python print-stack
911 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
912
913python [CODE]
914 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
915
d7713ae0
EZ
916macro define
917macro list
918macro undef
919 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
920 interactively.
921
922info os processes
923 Show operating system information about processes.
924
2277426b
PA
925info inferiors
926 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
927
928inferior NUM
929 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
930
931detach inferior NUM
932 Detach from inferior number NUM.
933
934kill inferior NUM
935 Kill inferior number NUM.
936
d7713ae0
EZ
937* New options
938
3285f3fe
UW
939set spu stop-on-load
940show spu stop-on-load
941 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
942
ff1a52c6
UW
943set spu auto-flush-cache
944show spu auto-flush-cache
945 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
946 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
947
d7713ae0
EZ
948set sh calling-convention
949show sh calling-convention
950 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
951
e0a3ce09 952set debug timestamp
75feb17d 953show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
954 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
955
956set disassemble-next-line
957show disassemble-next-line
958 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
959 the debuggee stops.
960
961set remote noack-packet
962show remote noack-packet
963 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
964 under "New remote packets."
965
966set remote query-attached-packet
967show remote query-attached-packet
968 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
969
970set remote read-siginfo-object
971show remote read-siginfo-object
972 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
973 packet.
974
975set remote write-siginfo-object
976show remote write-siginfo-object
977 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
978 packet.
979
40ab02ce
MS
980set remote reverse-continue
981show remote reverse-continue
982 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
983
984set remote reverse-step
985show remote reverse-step
986 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
987
d7713ae0
EZ
988set displaced-stepping
989show displaced-stepping
990 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
991 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
992 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
993
994set debug displaced
995show debug displaced
996 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
997
998maint set internal-error
999maint show internal-error
1000 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1001
1002maint set internal-warning
1003maint show internal-warning
1004 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1005
ccd213ac
DJ
1006set exec-wrapper
1007show exec-wrapper
1008unset exec-wrapper
1009 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1010
aad4b048
JB
1011set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1012show multiple-symbols
1013 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1014 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1015 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1016
74960c60
VP
1017set breakpoint always-inserted
1018show breakpoint always-inserted
1019 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1020 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1021 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1022
0428b8f5
DJ
1023set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1024show arm fallback-mode
1025set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1026show arm force-mode
1027 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1028 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1029 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1030 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1031
10568435
JK
1032set disable-randomization
1033show disable-randomization
1034 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1035 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1036 multiple debugging sessions.
1037
d7713ae0
EZ
1038set non-stop
1039show non-stop
1040 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1041 a breakpoint.
1042
b3eb342c 1043set target-async
d7713ae0 1044show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1045 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1046 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1047 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1048 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1049
6c7a06a3
TT
1050set target-wide-charset
1051show target-wide-charset
1052 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1053 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1054
84603566
SL
1055set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1056show tcp auto-retry
1057set tcp connect-timeout
1058show tcp connect-timeout
1059 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1060 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1061 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1062
17a37d48
PP
1063set libthread-db-search-path
1064show libthread-db-search-path
1065 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1066 libthread_db.
1067
d4db2f36
PA
1068set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1069show schedule-multiple
1070 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1071 the current process.
1072
4e5d721f
DE
1073set stack-cache
1074show stack-cache
1075 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1076 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1077 affecting correctness.
1078
910c5da8
JB
1079set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1080show interactive-mode
1081 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1082 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1083 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1084 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1085 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1086
2277426b
PA
1087* Removed commands
1088
1089info forks
1090 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1091 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1092 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1093 command.
1094
1095fork NUM
1096 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1097 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1098 alias for the `fork' command.
1099
1100process PID
1101 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1102 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1103 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1104
1105delete fork NUM
1106 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1107 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1108 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1109 fork' command.
1110
1111detach fork NUM
1112 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1113 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1114 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1115 fork' command.
1116
a80b95ba
TG
1117* New native configurations
1118
1119x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1120
b8bfd3ed
JB
1121x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1122
75a2d5e7
TT
1123* New targets
1124
c28c63d8 1125Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1126x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1127x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1128S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1129
6de3146c
PA
1130* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1131 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1132
d5cbbe6e
JB
1133* Removed commands
1134
1135catch load
1136catch unload
1137 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1138
75feb17d 1139*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1140
af5ca30d
NH
1141* New native configurations
1142
1143NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1144Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1145
1146* New targets
1147
1148NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1149Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1150
7a404eba
PA
1151* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1152
1153 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1154 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1155 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1156 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1157
430ebac9
PA
1158* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1159(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1160
fe6fbf8b 1161* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1162is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1163
1164* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1165including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1166and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1167
10665d76
JB
1168* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1169accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1170more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1171
7cc46491
DJ
1172* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1173
d71340b8
DJ
1174* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1175registers on PowerPC targets.
1176
523c4513
DJ
1177* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1178targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1179
a6b151f1
DJ
1180* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1181commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1182
2d717e4f
DJ
1183* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1184extended-remote mode.
1185
24a836bd 1186* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1187The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1188error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1189The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1190
d0c678e6
UW
1191* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1192building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1193target architectures.
1194
d64a946d
TJB
1195* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1196Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1197now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1198stored in two consecutive float registers.
1199
ee163bf5
VP
1200* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1201breakpoints now.
1202
b93b6ca7 1203* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1204Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1205include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1206 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1207 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1208 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1209 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1210 of an assignment
1211 - Improved command completion in Ada
1212 - Several bug fixes
1213
d001be7a
DJ
1214* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1215process.
1216
a6b151f1
DJ
1217* New commands
1218
6d53d0af
JB
1219set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1220show print frame-arguments
1221 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1222 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1223
a6b151f1
DJ
1224remote put
1225remote get
1226remote delete
1227 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1228
1229* New MI commands
1230
1231-target-file-put
1232-target-file-get
1233-target-file-delete
1234 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1235
1236* New remote packets
1237
1238vFile:open:
1239vFile:close:
1240vFile:pread:
1241vFile:pwrite:
1242vFile:unlink:
1243 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1244
2d717e4f
DJ
1245vAttach
1246 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1247 mode.
1248
1249vRun
1250 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1251
8d5f9c6f 1252*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1253
19d378fc
MS
1254* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1255bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1256Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1257
3a40aaa0
UW
1258* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1259symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1260-Bsymbolic linker option.
1261
a6ec25f2
BW
1262* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1263recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1264is not supported.
1265
6dd09645
JB
1266* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1267frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1268
c9bb8148
DJ
1269* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
127032-bit or 64-bit register values.
1271
0d5de010
DJ
1272* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1273
23181151
DJ
1274* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1275target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1276a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1277
ea37ba09
DJ
1278* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1279automatically displayed as character or string data.
1280
1281* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1282arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1283as strings.
e1f48ead 1284
123dc839
DJ
1285* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1286for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1287only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1288
05a4558a
DJ
1289* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1290iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1291
7c963485
PA
1292* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1293ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1294has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1295
b18be20d
DJ
1296* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1297
0ca420ce
UW
1298* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1299
31d99776
DJ
1300* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1301layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1302segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1303
a4642986
MR
1304* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1305immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1306
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1307* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1308"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1309packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1310where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1311Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1312
1313* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1314(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1315
1316* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1317according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1318
c9bb8148
DJ
1319* New commands
1320
23776285
MR
1321set remoteflow
1322show remoteflow
1323 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1324 when debugging using remote targets.
1325
c9bb8148
DJ
1326set mem inaccessible-by-default
1327show mem inaccessible-by-default
1328 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1329 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1330 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1331 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1332 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1333
1334set breakpoint auto-hw
1335show breakpoint auto-hw
1336 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1337 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1338 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1339 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1340 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1341 including "next" and "finish".
1342
0e420bd8
JB
1343catch exception
1344catch exception unhandled
1345 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1346
1347catch assert
1348 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1349
f822c95b
DJ
1350set sysroot
1351show sysroot
1352 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1353 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1354 an alias to "set sysroot".
1355
83cc5c53
UW
1356info spu
1357 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1358 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1359 architecture.
1360
bd372731
MK
1361* New native configurations
1362
1363OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1364
23181151
DJ
1365set tdesc filename
1366unset tdesc filename
1367show tdesc filename
1368 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1369 not query the target for its built-in description.
1370
c9bb8148
DJ
1371* New targets
1372
54fe9172 1373OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1374MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1375Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1376
6dd09645
JB
1377* New remote packets
1378
1379QPassSignals:
1380 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1381 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1382
23181151
DJ
1383qXfer:features:read:
1384 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1385 features.
6dd09645 1386
83cc5c53
UW
1387qXfer:spu:read:
1388qXfer:spu:write:
1389 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1390 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1391
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1392qXfer:libraries:read:
1393 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1394 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1395 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1396 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1397
483367ee
DJ
1398* Removed targets
1399
1400Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1401
d08950c4
UW
1402alpha*-*-osf1*
1403alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1404d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1405hppa*-*-hiux*
1406i[34567]86-ncr-*
1407i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1408i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1409i[34567]86-*-netware*
1410i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1411i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1412i[34567]86-*-sco*
1413i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1414i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1415i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1416i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1417i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1418i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1419i[34567]86-*-isc*
1420m68*-cisco*-*
1421m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1422mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1423rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1424sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1425
7ce59000
DJ
1426* Other removed features
1427
1428target abug
1429target cpu32bug
1430target est
1431target rom68k
1432
1433 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1434
ea35711c
DJ
1435target hms
1436target e7000
1437target sh3
1438target sh3e
1439
1440 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1441 H8/300.
1442
1443target ocd
1444
1445 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1446 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1447 interfaces.
1448
7ce59000
DJ
1449DWARF 1 support
1450
1451 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1452 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1453
54d61198
DJ
1454Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1455
1456 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1457 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1458 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1459 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1460
ea35711c
DJ
1461MIPS ".pdr" sections
1462
1463 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1464 in debugging information.
1465
1466Scheme support
1467
1468 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1469 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1470
1a69e1e4
DJ
1471set mips stack-arg-size
1472set mips saved-gpreg-size
1473
1474 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1475
6dd09645 1476*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1477
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1478* New targets
1479
1480Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1481Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1482
6aec2e11
DJ
1483* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1484(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1485running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1486
1487* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1488Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1489supported.
1490
17218d91
DJ
1491* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1492broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1493
9ebce043
DJ
1494* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1495stub provides the required support.
1496
7d3d3ece
DJ
1497* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1498longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1499
4f8253f3
JB
1500* New commands
1501
1502set substitute-path
1503unset substitute-path
1504show substitute-path
1505 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1506 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1507 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1508 between compilation and debugging.
1509
9fa66fd7
AS
1510set trace-commands
1511show trace-commands
1512 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1513 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1514 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1515
1f5befc1
DJ
1516* REMOVED features
1517
1518The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1519
2ec3381a
DJ
1520Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1521an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1522
3d00d119
DJ
1523The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1524
be2a5f71
DJ
1525* New remote packets
1526
1527qSupported:
1528 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1529 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1530 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1531 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1532 target.
1533
0876f84a
DJ
1534qXfer:auxv:read:
1535 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1536 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1537
9ebce043
DJ
1538qXfer:memory-map:read:
1539 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1540 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1541
1542vFlashErase:
1543vFlashWrite:
1544vFlashDone:
1545 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1546
0876f84a
DJ
1547* Removed remote packets
1548
1549qPart:auxv:read:
1550 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1551 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1552
e374b601 1553*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1554
96309189
MS
1555* New targets
1556
1557Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1558
1559Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1560
53e5f3cf
AS
1561* New commands
1562
1563init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1564 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1565
ac264b3b
MS
1566The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1567
1568checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1569
1570restart <n> Return the program state to a
1571 previously saved state.
1572
1573info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1574
1575delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1576
1577set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1578 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1579
1580info forks List forks of the user program that
1581 are available to be debugged.
1582
1583fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1584 forks of the user program that are
1585 available to be debugged.
1586
1587delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1588 that are available to be debugged (and
1589 kill the forked process).
1590
1591detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1592 that are available to be debugged (and
1593 allow the process to continue).
1594
3950dc3f
NS
1595* New architecture
1596
1597Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1598
0ea3f30e
DJ
1599* Improved Windows host support
1600
1601GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1602native console support, and remote communications using either
1603network sockets or serial ports.
1604
f79daebb
GM
1605* Improved Modula-2 language support
1606
1607GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1608basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1609pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1610printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1611written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1612GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1613
acab6ab2
MM
1614* REMOVED features
1615
1616The ARM rdi-share module.
1617
f4267320
DJ
1618The Netware NLM debug server.
1619
53e5f3cf 1620*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1621
e0ecbda1
MK
1622* New native configurations
1623
02a677ac 1624OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1625OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1626
d64a6579
KB
1627* New targets
1628
1629Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1630
b33a6190
AS
1631* New command line options
1632
1633--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1634--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1635 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1636--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1637 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1638 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1639 with the --command (-x) option.
1640
11dced61
AC
1641* Deprecated commands removed
1642
1643The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1644removed:
1645
1646 Command Replacement
1647 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1648 othernames set arm disassembler
1649 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1650 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1651 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1652 regs info registers
1653
6fe85783
MK
1654* New BSD user-level threads support
1655
1656It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1657library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1658configurations are:
1659
1660FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1661FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1662OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1663
1664Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1665are not yet supported.
1666
5260ca71
MS
1667* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1668(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1669
e84ecc99
AC
1670* REMOVED configurations and files
1671
1672VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1673Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1674National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1675
31e35378
JB
1676* New "set print array-indexes" command
1677
1678After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1679when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1680behavior.
1681
e85e5c83
MK
1682* VAX floating point support
1683
1684GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1685
d91e9901
AS
1686* User-defined command support
1687
1688In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1689to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1690section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1691
f2cb65ca
MC
1692*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1693
f47b1503
AS
1694* New command line option
1695
1696GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1697debugging.
1698
f2cb65ca
MC
1699* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1700
1701GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1702information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1703by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1704proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1705to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1706
d08c0230
AC
1707* Internationalization
1708
1709When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1710internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1711continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1712
117ea3cf
PH
1713* Ada
1714
1715Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1716implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1717into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1718
d08c0230
AC
1719* New native configurations
1720
1721GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1722
1723* Remote 'p' packet
1724
1725GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1726packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1727
1728* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1729
1730GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1731The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1732features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1733i386 application).
1734
1735GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1736compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1737continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1738configurations:
1739
1740hppa-*-hpux
1741ia64-*-aix
1742mips-*-irix*
1743*-*-lynx
1744mips-*-linux-gnu
1745sds protocol
1746xdr protocol
1747powerpc bdm protocol
1748
1749Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1750made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1751
1752* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1753
1754Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1755been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1756configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1757permanently REMOVED.
1758
1759h8300-*-*
1760mcore-*-*
1761mn10300-*-*
1762ns32k-*-*
1763sh64-*-*
1764v850-*-*
1765
ebb7c577
AC
1766*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1767
1768* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1769
1770When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1771heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1772been fixed.
1773
1774* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1775
1776When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1777fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1778IRIX long double values).
1779
1780* VAX and "next"
1781
1782A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1783command. This problem has been fixed.
1784
860660cb 1785*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1786
0dea2468
AC
1787* Fix for ``many threads''
1788
1789On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1790rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1791error message:
1792
1793 ptrace: No such process.
1794 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1795
1796This problem has been fixed.
1797
2c07db7a
AC
1798* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1799
1800Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1801GDB to dump core).
1802
c23968a2
JB
1803* New ``start'' command.
1804
1805This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1806
71009278
MK
1807* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1808
1809Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1810live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1811platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1812
1813FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1814FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1815NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1816NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1817NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1818OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1819OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1820OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1821OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1822
3c0b7db2
AC
1823* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1824
1825Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1826These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1827of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1828call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1829signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1830
73cc75f3
AC
1831Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1832features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1833include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1834
7243600a
BF
1835* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1836
6f606e1c
MK
1837* New native configurations
1838
97dc871c 1839GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1840OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1841OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1842OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1843OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1844NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1845OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1846
a1b461bf
AC
1847* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1848
1849GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1850The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1851including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1852migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1853compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1854work, was also included.
1855
1856GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1857module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1858
1859h8300-*-*
1860mcore-*-*
1861mn10300-*-*
1862ns32k-*-*
1863sh64-*-*
1864v850-*-*
1865xstormy16-*-*
1866
1867Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1868made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1869
3c7012f5
AC
1870* REMOVED configurations and files
1871
1872Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1873Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1874Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1875Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1876Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1877AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1878Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1879decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1880riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1881sonymips mips-sony-*
1882sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1883
e5fe55f7
AC
1884*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1885
1886* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1887
1888The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1889GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1890command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1891program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1892with GDB".
1893
1894* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1895
1896Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1897libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1898cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1899GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1900shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1901the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1902are created.
1903
1904Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1905
1906* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1907
1908The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1909non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1910compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1911
1912* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1913
1914Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1915wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1916
1917* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1918
1919The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1920permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1921systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1922
1923* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1924
1925Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1926has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1927
1928* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1929
1930GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1931its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1932panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1933
1934* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1935
1936When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1937by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1938not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1939
faae5abe 1940*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1941
9175c9a3
MC
1942* Removed --with-mmalloc
1943
1944Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1945conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1946
3cc87ec0
MK
1947* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1948
1949The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1950the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1951and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1952you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1953
f0424ef6
MK
1954* Revised SPARC target
1955
1956The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1957FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1958support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1959from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1960(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1961
59659be2
ILT
1962* New C++ demangler
1963
1964GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1965names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1966with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1967programs.
1968
9e08b29b
DJ
1969* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1970
1971GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1972arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1973encountered these.
1974
8dfe8985
DC
1975* C++ nested types and namespaces
1976
1977GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1978improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1979is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1980Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1981namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1982"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1983frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1984if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1985GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1986
cced5e27
MK
1987* New native configurations
1988
1989NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1990OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1991OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1992OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1993OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1994
b4b4b794
KI
1995* New debugging protocols
1996
1997M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1998
7989c619
AC
1999* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2000
2001The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2002and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2003tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2004
5994185b
AC
2005* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2006
2007Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2008been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2009configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2010permanently REMOVED.
2011
2012Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2013Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2014Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2015Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2016Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2017AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2018Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2019decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2020riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2021sonymips mips-sony-*
2022sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2023
0ddabb4c
AC
2024* REMOVED configurations and files
2025
2026SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2027SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2028Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2029Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2030H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2031HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2032HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2033HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2034PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2035386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2036Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2037 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2038 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2039SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2040SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2041Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2042Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2043
c7f1390e
DJ
2044*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2045
1fe43d45
AC
2046* Objective-C
2047
2048Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2049integrated into GDB.
2050
e6beb428
AC
2051* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2052
2053DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2054information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2055By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2056backtraces.
2057
2058The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2059have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2060DWARF 2 CFI support.
2061
2062* Hosted file I/O.
2063
2064GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2065file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2066remote protocol documentation for details.
2067
2068* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2069
2070All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2071architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2072to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2073ppc32 on ppc64).
2074
2075* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2076
2077GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2078per-thread variables.
2079
2080* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2081
2082GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2083GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2084
2085* Separate debug info.
2086
2087GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2088automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2089of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2090system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2091and optional debug files.
2092
2093* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2094
2095DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2096describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2097debugger.
2098
2099GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2100for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2101
2102* Java
2103
2104A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2105Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2106considered "useable".
2107
85f8f974
DJ
2108* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2109
2110The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2111commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2112kernel.
2113
0fac0b41
DJ
2114* GDB supports logging output to a file
2115
2116There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2117used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2118
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2119* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2120
2121The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2122disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2123command.
2124
e286caf2 2125* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2126
2127The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2128registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2129
d28f9cdf
DJ
2130* Profiling support
2131
2132A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2133be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2134session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2135"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2136data, for more informative profiling results.
2137
da0f9dcd
AC
2138* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2139
2140The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2141option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2142"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2143
2144Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2145removed.
2146
fb9b6b35
JJ
2147Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2148Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2149Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2150 in a subsequent -var-update.
2151
954a4db8
MK
2152* New native configurations.
2153
2154FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2155
6760f9e6
JB
2156* Multi-arched targets.
2157
b4263afa 2158HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2159Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2160
1b831c93
AC
2161* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2162
2163Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2164been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2165configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2166permanently REMOVED.
2167
8b0e5691 2168Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2169Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2170H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2171HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2172HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2173HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2174PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2175Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2176 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2177 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2178Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2179Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2180
5835abe7
NC
2181* REMOVED configurations and files
2182
2183V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2184Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2185IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2186i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2187i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2188i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2189HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2190 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2191 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2192Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2193Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2194Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2195OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2196I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2197
a094c6fb
AC
2198* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2199
2200The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2201the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2202context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2203address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2204The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2205
299ffc64 2206*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2207
46248966
AC
2208* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2209
2210When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2211`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2212in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2213library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2214shared libs like mad''.
2215
b9d14705 2216* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2217
b9d14705
DJ
2218Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2219the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2220arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2221powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2222
e0e9281e
JB
2223* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2224
2225GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2226and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2227they expand.
2228
dd73b9bb
AC
2229The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2230invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2231
2232The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2233macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2234
e0e9281e
JB
2235Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2236information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2237your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2238information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2239
2250ee0c
CV
2240* Multi-arched targets.
2241
6e3ba3b8
JT
2242DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2243DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2244NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2245National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2246Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2247Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2248
cd9bfe15 2249* New targets.
e33ce519 2250
456f8b9d
DB
2251Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2252
e33ce519 2253
da8ca43d
JT
2254* New native configurations
2255
2256Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2257SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2258MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2259UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2260
cd9bfe15
AC
2261* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2262
2263Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2264been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2265configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2266permanently REMOVED.
2267
92eb23c5 2268Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2269OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2270IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2271Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2272Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2273Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2274i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2275i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2276i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2277HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2278 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2279 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2280I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2281
db034ac5
AC
2282* OBSOLETE languages
2283
2284CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2285
cd9bfe15
AC
2286* REMOVED configurations and files
2287
2288AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2289A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2290AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2291AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2292AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2293
2294testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2295
20f01a46
DH
2296* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2297
2298This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2299commands. The default is 1024.
2300
a5941fbf
MK
2301* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2302
2303Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2304
89743e04
MS
2305* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2306
2307These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2308to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2309from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2310
9fb14e79
JB
2311* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2312
2313The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2314including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2315of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2316
2037aebb
AC
2317*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2318
2319* New targets.
2320
2321Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2322
2323* Bug fixes
2324
2325gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2326mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2327Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2328
2329gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2330dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2331Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2332
2333Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2334Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2335By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2336
2337i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2338avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2339By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2340
37057839 2341*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2342
1a703748
MS
2343* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2344
2345This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2346really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2347In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2348target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2349This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2350(notably embedded) targets.
2351
cefd4ef5
MS
2352* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2353
55241689
AC
2354This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2355process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2356GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2357hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2358
352ed7b4
MS
2359* New command line option
2360
2361GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2362
2363* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2364
2365There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2366command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2367a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2368be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2369open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2370issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2371a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2372it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2373GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2374is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2375
fe419ffc
RE
2376* Changes in ARM configurations.
2377
2378Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2379configuration is fully multi-arch.
2380
eb7cedd9
MK
2381* New native configurations
2382
fe419ffc 2383ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2384x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2385AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2386Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2387
c9f63e6b
CV
2388* New targets
2389
2390Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2391
9b4ff276
AC
2392* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2393
2394Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2395been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2396configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2397permanently REMOVED.
2398
2399AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2400A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2401AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2402AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2403AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2404
b4ceaee6 2405testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2406
e2caac18
AC
2407* REMOVED configurations and files
2408
2409TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2410WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2411PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2412PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2413PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2414Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2415Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2416 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2417SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2418Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2419Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2420ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2421Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2422
c2a727fa
TT
2423* Changes to command line processing
2424
2425The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2426for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2427
467d8519
TT
2428* Changes to key bindings
2429
2430There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2431
7072a954
AC
2432*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2433
2434Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2435
2436Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2437corrupted.
2438
2439Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2440
2441Numerous documentation fixes.
2442
2443Numerous testsuite fixes.
2444
34f47bc4 2445*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2446
2447* New native configurations
2448
2449Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2450x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2451MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2452MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2453ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2454s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2455
bf64bfd6
AC
2456* New targets
2457
def90278 2458Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2459CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2460UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2461
17e78a56 2462* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2463
2464x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2465Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2466Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2467 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2468TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2469WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2470Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2471PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2472PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2473PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2474SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2475Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2476ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2477Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2478
17e78a56
AC
2479stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2480kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2481
7fcca85b
AC
2482Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2483been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2484configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2485permanently REMOVED.
2486
a196c81c 2487* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2488
2489Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2490Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2491Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2492ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2493Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2494ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2495
6d6b80e5 2496* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2497
6d6b80e5 2498GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2499sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2500present.
2501
bf64bfd6
AC
2502* Other news:
2503
e23194cb
EZ
2504* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2505
2506* The MI enabled by default.
2507
2508The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2509revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2510engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2511using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2512which is now deprecated.
2513
2514* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2515
2516GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2517main features are supported:
2518
2519 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2520
2521 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2522 extension;
2523
2524 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2525
2526 - a Pascal expression parser.
2527
2528However, some important features are not yet supported.
2529
2530 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2531
2532 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2533
2534 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2535 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2536
2537 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2538
2539 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2540
2541* Changes in completion.
2542
2543Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2544to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2545users expect at the shell prompt.
2546
2547Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2548`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2549program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2550files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2551be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2552considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2553name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2554
2555`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2556
2557* New platform-independent commands:
2558
2559It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2560hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2561documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2562
2563* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2564
d7275149
MK
2565Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2566revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2567many threads as your system allows you to have.
2568
e23194cb
EZ
2569Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2570
d7275149
MK
2571Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2572multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2573
2574* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2575
2576Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2577
e23194cb
EZ
2578GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2579debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2580supported.)
2581
2582* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2583
2584Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2585breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2586implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2587put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2588and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2589registers.
2590
2591The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2592debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2593watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2594
2595* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2596
2597New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2598the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2599
2600New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2601display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2602IDT.
2603
2604New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2605from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2606New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2607a given linear address.
2608
2609GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2610program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2611which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2612
2613DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2614
6c56c069
EZ
2615It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2616
e23194cb
EZ
2617* Changes in documentation.
2618
2619All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2620Documentation License.
2621
2622Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2623manual.
2624
2625TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2626
2627Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2628manual.
2629
2630The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2631documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2632hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2633
5d6640b1
AC
2634* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2635
2636The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2637``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2638contents of this file.
2639
1a1d8446
AC
2640* gdba.el deleted
2641
2642GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2643
9debab2f 2644*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2645
c63ce875
EZ
2646* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2647
2648Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2649programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2650displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2651greater level of detail.
2652
2653* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2654
2655It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2656bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2657on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2658written.
2659
2660* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2661
2662The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2663necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2664machines ``out of the box''.
2665
2666The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2667possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2668signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2669would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2670interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2671
2672It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2673standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2674even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2675and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2676terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2677
2678The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2679enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2680also works.
2681
2682DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2683GDB.
2684
2685It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2686directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2687times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2688breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2689
ed9a39eb
JM
2690* New native configurations
2691
2692ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2693PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2694
7a292a7a
SS
2695* New targets
2696
96baa820 2697Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2698x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2699PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2700TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2701
085dd6e6
JM
2702* OBSOLETE configurations
2703
2704Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2705Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2706Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2707ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2708Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2709
9debab2f
AC
2710Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2711but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2712these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2713be permanently REMOVED.
2714
5330533d
SS
2715* Gould support removed
2716
2717Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2718
bc9e5bbf
AC
2719* New features for SVR4
2720
2721On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2722without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2723load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2724
2725* Many C++ enhancements
2726
2727C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2728in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2729
adf40b2e
JM
2730* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2731
2732A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2733sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2734with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2735``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2736
2737 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2738 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2739
43e526b9
JM
2740* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2741
2742A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2743expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2744instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2745
2746The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2747added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2748
96baa820
JM
2749* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2750
2751The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2752``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2753include ``set remote P-packet''.
2754
11cf8741
JM
2755* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2756
2757The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2758accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2759``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2760
7876dd43
DB
2761* ``apropos'' command added.
2762
2763The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2764documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2765try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2766
bc9e5bbf
AC
2767* New MI interface
2768
2769A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2770interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2771process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2772"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2773enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2774
2775 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2776
c906108c
SS
2777*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2778
2779* New native configurations
2780
2781HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2782HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2783M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2784
2785* New targets
2786
2787Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2788Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2789Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2790
2791* OBSOLETE configurations
2792
2793Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2794
2795Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2796but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2797these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2798be permanently REMOVED.
2799
2800* ANSI/ISO C
2801
2802As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2803buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2804containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2805use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2806available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2807configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2808information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2809already.
2810
2811* Readline 2.2
2812
2813GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2814
2815* set extension-language
2816
2817You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2818languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2819you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2820 set extension-language .c c++
2821The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2822and their associated languages.
2823
2824* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2825
2826When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2827you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2828PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2829
2830 set processor NAME
2831
2832sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2833following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2834
2835 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2836 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2837 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2838 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2839 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2840 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2841 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2842 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2843 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2844 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2845 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2846
2847At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2848special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2849registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2850only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2851
2852* HP-UX support
2853
2854Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2855more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2856library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2857support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2858for xdb and dbx commands.
2859
2860* Catchpoints
2861
2862HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2863generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2864to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2865
2866This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2867argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2868output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2869
2870* Debugging across forks
2871
2872On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2873in the inferior.
2874
2875* TUI
2876
2877HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2878it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2879configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2880
2881* GDB remote protocol additions
2882
2883A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2884Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2885fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2886allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2887
2888For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2889full 64-bit address. The command
2890
2891 set remoteaddresssize 32
2892
2893can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2894the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2895will be discarded.
2896
2897In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2898command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2899
2900 maint packet heythere
2901
2902sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2903disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2904time.
2905
2906The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2907target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2908downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2909
2910* Tracing can collect general expressions
2911
2912You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2913further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2914doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2915
2916* mask-address variable for Mips
2917
2918For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2919a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2920of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2921
2922* Higher serial baud rates
2923
2924GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2925230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2926to achieve all of these rates.)
2927
2928* i960 simulator
2929
2930The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2931builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2932
2933
2934*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2935
2936* New native configurations
2937
2938Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2939Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2940Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2941PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2942PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2943Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2944Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2945
2946* New targets
2947
2948Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2949Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2950Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2951Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2952MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2953MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2954MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2955Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2956Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2957Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2958NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2959
2960* New debugging protocols
2961
2962ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2963M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2964DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2965PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2966PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2967Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2968
2969* DWARF 2
2970
2971All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2972format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2973information.
2974
2975* Java frontend
2976
2977GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2978only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2979
2980* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2981
2982For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2983loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2984locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2985
2986* Live range splitting
2987
2988GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2989range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2990more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2991
2992* Hurd support
2993
2994GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2995updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2996
2997* ARM Thumb support
2998
2999GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3000instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3001instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3002accordingly.
3003
3004* MIPS16 support
3005
3006GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3007instruction set.
3008
3009* Overlay support
3010
3011GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3012linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3013will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3014control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3015additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3016in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3017
3018* info symbol
3019
3020The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3021the symbol at the specified address.
3022
3023* Trace support
3024
3025The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3026asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3027extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3028includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3029file tracepoint.c for more details.
3030
3031* MIPS simulator
3032
3033Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3034by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3035of most MIPS variants.
3036
3037* Sparc simulator
3038
3039Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3040by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3041Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3042
3043* set architecture
3044
3045For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3046basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3047architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3048the possible architectures.
3049
3050*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3051
3052* New native configurations
3053
3054Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3055M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3056PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3057PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3058PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3059RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3060
3061* New targets
3062
3063ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3064I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3065MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3066MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3067PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3068Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3069Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3070
3071* PowerPC simulator
3072
3073The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3074contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3075PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3076basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3077performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3078
3079* Solaris 2.5
3080
3081GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3082
3083* Windows 95/NT native
3084
3085GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3086To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3087which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3088Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3089ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3090
3091* dont-repeat command
3092
3093If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3094command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3095useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3096extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3097
3098* Send break instead of ^C
3099
3100The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3101rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3102GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3103
3104* Remote protocol timeout
3105
3106The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3107that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3108to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3109
3110* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3111
3112By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3113loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3114stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3115when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3116in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3117
3118Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3119/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3120automatically on hpux10.
3121
3122* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3123
3124Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3125
3126* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3127
3128When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3129may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3130the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3131every character. The default value is 1050.
3132
3133* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3134
3135If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3136a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3137replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3138details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3139remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3140to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3141
3142* Speedups for remote debugging
3143
3144GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3145the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3146and more efficient S-record downloading.
3147
3148* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3149
3150GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3151Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3152
3153*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3154
3155* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3156
3157The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3158can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3159
3160* Remote targets use caching
3161
3162Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3163remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3164it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3165debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3166off' turns the the data cache off.
3167
3168* Remote targets may have threads
3169
3170The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3171in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3172gdb/remote.c for details.
3173
3174* NetROM support
3175
3176If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3177support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3178acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3179write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3180support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3181another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3182sequence is something like
3183
3184 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3185 load <prog>
3186 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3187
3188* Macintosh host
3189
3190GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3191may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3192it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3193available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3194device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3195directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3196scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3197mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3198
3199* Autoconf
3200
3201GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3202but does simplify configuration and building.
3203
3204* hpux10
3205
3206GDB now supports hpux10.
3207
3208*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3209
3210* New native configurations
3211
3212x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3213x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3214NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3215Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3216
3217* New targets
3218
3219A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3220HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3221CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3222PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3223WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3224
3225* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3226
3227GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3228possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3229filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3230the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3231if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3232
3233* Arguments to user-defined commands
3234
3235User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3236Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3237trivial example:
3238define adder
3239 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3240
3241To execute the command use:
3242adder 1 2 3
3243
3244Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3245Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3246use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3247
3248* New `if' and `while' commands
3249
3250This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3251commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3252expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3253execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3254terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3255`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3256if the expression is zero.
3257
3258* Fortran source language mode
3259
3260GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3261Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3262variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3263with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3264Fortran compilers.
3265
3266* Better HPUX support
3267
3268Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3269running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3270processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3271for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3272that behavior do the following before running the program:
3273
3274 adb -w a.out
3275 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3276 control-d
3277
3278This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3279To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3280
3281 adb -w a.out
3282 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3283 control-d
3284
3285You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3286the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3287external linkage.
3288
3289GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3290HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3291
3292* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3293
3294You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3295commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3296current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3297"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3298associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3299configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3300
3301* New DOS host serial code
3302
3303This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3304no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3305a PC's serial port.
3306
3307*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3308
3309* New "complete" command
3310
3311This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3312were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3313
3314* Trailing space optional in prompt
3315
3316"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3317allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3318
3319* Breakpoint hit counts
3320
3321"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3322has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3323can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3324to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3325less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3326that breakpoint.
3327
3328* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3329
3330"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3331an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3332arrays actually contain only short strings.
3333
3334* Shared library breakpoints
3335
3336In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3337breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3338
3339* Hardware watchpoints
3340
3341There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3342targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3343
55241689 3344Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3345
3346* Annotations
3347
3348Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3349and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3350
3351* Improved Irix 5 support
3352
3353GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3354
3355* Improved HPPA support
3356
3357GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3358
3359* New native configurations
3360
3361Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3362HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3363Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3364RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3365
3366* New targets
3367
3368OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3369MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3370Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3371
3372* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3373
3374There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3375This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3376
3377* Fixes
3378
3379As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3380and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3381
3382*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3383
3384* Irix 5 is now supported
3385
3386* HPPA support
3387
3388GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3389to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3390GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3391of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3392can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3393
3394
3395*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3396
3397* User visible changes:
3398
3399* Remote Debugging
3400
3401The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3402target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3403debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3404integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3405debugging info for the mips target).
3406
3407* DEC Alpha native support
3408
3409GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3410debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3411work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3412Alpha-specific notes.
3413
3414* Preliminary thread implementation
3415
3416GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3417
3418* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3419
3420This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3421to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3422for details).
3423
3424* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3425
3426This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3427mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3428call methods, ...etc.
3429
3430*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3431
3432 * User visible changes:
3433
3434Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3435supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3436other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3437somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3438
3439Filename completion now works.
3440
3441When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3442arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3443addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3444
3445All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3446vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3447should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3448your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3449to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3450
3451 * DEC alpha support
3452
3453This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3454cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3455
3456
3457*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3458
3459 * Testsuite
3460
3461This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3462The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3463via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3464
3465 * C++ demangling
3466
3467'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3468emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3469Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3470disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3471use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3472
3473 * Simulators
3474
3475GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3476So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3477Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3478
3479 * New targets supported
3480
3481H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3482H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3483SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3484Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3485IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3486
3487Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3488version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3489GO32 memory extender.
3490
3491 * New remote protocols
3492
3493MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3494
3495 * New source languages supported
3496
3497This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3498used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3499into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3500
3501
3502*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3503
3504 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3505
3506GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3507version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3508University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3509compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3510format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3511(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3512
3513Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3514
3515 * Faster and better demangling
3516
3517We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3518demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3519character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3520only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3521This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3522increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3523symbol lookups.
3524
3525`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3526from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3527compiler does not actually implement.
3528
3529 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3530
3531In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3532inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3533recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3534very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3535The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3536circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3537fix.
3538
3539The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3540release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3541
3542 * Improved configure script
3543
3544The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3545you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3546host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3547done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3548
3549We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3550version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3551`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3552The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3553only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3554We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3555
3556 * Documentation improvements
3557
3558There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3559produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3560before submitting changes.
3561
3562The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3563M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3564`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3565you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3566a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3567
3568*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3569We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3570been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3571or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3572`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3573around this problem.
3574
3575 * New features
3576
3577GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3578the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3579`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3580the target program.
3581
3582The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3583how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3584
3585 * New native hosts supported
3586
3587HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3588386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3589
3590 * New targets supported
3591
3592AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3593
3594 * New file formats supported
3595
3596BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3597HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3598
3599 * Major bug fixes
3600
3601Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3602
3603We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3604printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3605
3606We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3607for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3608release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3609
3610You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3611will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3612
3613We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3614for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3615especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3616libraries.
3617
3618The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3619information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3620command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3621any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3622when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3623
3624 * Internal improvements
3625
3626GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3627debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3628
3629GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3630Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3631symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3632contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3633shared code that handles any of them.
3634
3635 * New command line options
3636
3637We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3638
3639 * Mmalloc licensing
3640
3641The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3642General Public License.
3643
3644*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3645
3646 * Host/native/target split
3647
3648GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3649hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3650target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3651local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3652ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3653
3654The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3655GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3656is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3657code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3658any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3659built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3660handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3661
3662GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3663It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3664plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3665
3666 * New hosts supported
3667
3668HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3669386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3670386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3671
3672 * New targets supported
3673
3674Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
367568030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3676
3677 * New native hosts supported
3678
3679386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3680 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3681386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3682
3683 * New file formats supported
3684
3685BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3686supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3687format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3688
3689 * New commands
3690
3691`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3692`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3693These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3694
3695`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3696
3697You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3698scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3699prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3700executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3701
3702 * C++ improvements
3703
3704We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3705info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3706symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3707
3708Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3709
3710 * Major bug fixes
3711
3712The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3713fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3714by the compiler.
3715
3716We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3717support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3718
3719John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3720slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3721that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3722purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3723the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3724mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3725
3726Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3727about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3728completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3729we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3730
3731 * AMD 29k support
3732
3733A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3734specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3735calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3736usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3737in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3738
3739We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3740Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3741of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3742resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3743
3744 * Remote interfaces
3745
3746We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3747with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3748message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3749This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3750needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3751breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3752each instruction being stepped through.
3753
3754The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3755registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3756
3757There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3758find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3759Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3760processor with a serial port.
3761
3762 * Configuration
3763
3764Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3765`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3766supported, and what files each one uses.
3767
3768 * Library changes
3769
3770There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3771disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3772Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3773disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3774
3775The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3776Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3777can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3778grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3779
3780 * Documentation
3781
3782The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3783reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3784as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3785encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3786system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3787bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3788
3789And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3790
3791
3792*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3793
3794 * Better support for C++ function names
3795
3796GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3797names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3798(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3799single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3800Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3801
3802GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3803the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3804You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3805lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3806for the list of formats.
3807
3808 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3809
3810Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3811C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3812directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3813can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3814usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3815about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3816this problem.)
3817
3818 * New 'maintenance' command
3819
3820All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3821the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3822can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3823
3824 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3825 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3826 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3827 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3828 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3829 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3830
3831The following commands are new:
3832
3833 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3834 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3835 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3836
3837 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3838
3839We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3840(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3841be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3842read after argv processing.
3843
3844 * New hosts supported
3845
3846Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3847
55241689 3848GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3849
3850We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3851is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3852for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3853masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3854fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3855It costs extra.
3856
3857 * New targets supported
3858
3859Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3860
3861 * More smarts about finding #include files
3862
3863GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3864all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3865greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3866especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3867the one that contains your sources.
3868
3869We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3870breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3871try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3872
3873 * Interesting infernals change
3874
3875GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3876section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3877target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3878stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3879
3880 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3881
3882There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3883 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3884 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3885
3886See the ChangeLog for details.
3887
3888*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3889
3890 * New machines supported (host and target)
3891
3892IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3893
3894SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3895
3896 * New malloc package
3897
3898GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3899Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3900capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3901This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3902pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3903more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3904
3905 * info proc
3906
3907The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3908'help info proc' for details.
3909
3910 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3911
3912The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3913Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3914possible.
3915
3916 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3917
3918Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3919support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3920conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3921environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3922that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3923in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3924
3925 * Cross byte order fixes
3926
3927Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3928targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3929
3930 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3931
3932If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3933system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3934`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3935program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3936called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3937Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3938and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3939the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3940option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3941starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3942
3943You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3944the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3945information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3946slower, but makes future operations faster.
3947
3948The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3949build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3950A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3951use is:
3952
3953 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3954
3955The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3956It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3957shared across multiple host platforms.
3958
3959 * longjmp() handling
3960
3961GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3962siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3963all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3964platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3965
3966 * Solaris 2.0
3967
3968Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3969this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3970reading symbols.
3971
3972 * Bug fixes
3973
3974As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3975People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3976crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3977
3978*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3979
3980 * New machines supported (host and target)
3981
3982SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3983 (except core files)
3984BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3985Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3986
3987 * New machines supported (target)
3988
3989AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3990
3991 * C++ support
3992
3993GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3994The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3995per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3996
3997GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3998`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3999extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4000good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4001will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4002released.
4003
4004 * New features for SVR4
4005
4006GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4007shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4008only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4009
4010The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4011on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4012it prints the address mappings of the process.
4013
4014If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4015bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4016
4017 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4018
4019Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4020now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4021skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4022make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4023same code linked statically.
4024
4025 * New Getopt
4026
4027GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4028version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4029continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4030Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4031added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4032future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4033
4034 * Bugs fixed
4035
4036The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4037Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4038See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4039
4040
4041*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4042
4043 * New machines supported (host and target)
4044
4045Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4046NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4047Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4048
4049 * Almost SCO Unix support
4050
4051We had hoped to support:
4052SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4053(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4054that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4055about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4056
4057 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4058
4059GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4060debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4061is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4062send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4063reqired (if any).
4064
4065 * New Readline
4066
4067GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4068is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4069required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4070
4071 * Bugs fixed
4072
4073The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4074Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4075See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4076
4077 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4078
4079GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4080supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4081symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4082
4083Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4084mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4085debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4086mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4087version 2.
4088
4089Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4090really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4091line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4092variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4093situation somewhat.
4094
4095When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4096However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4097methods.
4098
4099We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4100DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4101encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4102
4103
4104*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4105
4106 * Improved configuration
4107
4108Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4109Porting BFD is simpler.
4110
4111 * Stepping improved
4112
4113The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4114of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4115in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4116function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4117
4118 * Bug fixing
4119
4120Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4121
4122 * New host supported (not target)
4123
4124Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4125
4126
4127*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4128
4129 * Multiple source language support
4130
4131GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4132It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4133and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4134language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4135You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4136`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4137
4138 * GDB and Modula-2
4139
4140GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4141currently under development at the State University of New York at
4142Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4143continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4144
4145Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4146debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4147symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4148
4149There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4150in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4151
4152 * set write on/off
4153
4154GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4155a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4156the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4157by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4158effect immediately.
4159
4160 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4161
4162When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4163shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4164The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4165examining core files.
4166
4167 * set listsize
4168
4169You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4170The default is 10.
4171
4172 * New machines supported (host and target)
4173
4174SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4175Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4176Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4177
4178 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4179
4180IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4181
4182 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4183
4184AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4185AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4186Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4187
4188 * New remote interfaces
4189
4190AMD 29000 Adapt
4191AMD 29000 Minimon
4192
4193
4194*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4195
4196 * New Facilities
4197
4198Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4199
4200Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4201target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4202is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4203remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4204remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4205also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4206using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4207stub on the target system.
4208
4209New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4210
4211GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4212library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4213object file types such as a.out and coff.
4214
4215There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4216refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4217
4218
4219 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4220
4221All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4222by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4223
4224For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4225``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4226Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4227
4228What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4229print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4230will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4231all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4232
4233confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4234 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4235 it is already running. Default is ON.
4236
4237editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4238 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4239 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4240 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4241 Default is ON.
4242
4243history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4244 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4245 or the value of the environment variable
4246 GDBHISTFILE.
4247
4248history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4249 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4250 HISTSIZE.
4251
4252history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4253 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4254 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4255
4256history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4257 history expansion will be performed on
4258 command line input. The default is OFF.
4259
4260radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4261 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4262 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4263
4264height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4265 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4266 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4267 variable TERM.
4268
4269width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4270 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4271 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4272 variable TERM.
4273
4274Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4275``set width'' instead.
4276
4277print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4278 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4279 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4280 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4281
4282print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4283 is OFF.
4284
4285print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4286 "raw" form if off.
4287
4288print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4289 like instructions.
4290
4291print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4292
4293
4294 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4295
4296The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4297new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4298are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4299window.
4300
4301
4302 * Support for Shared Libraries
4303
4304GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4305Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4306before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4307happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4308At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4309from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4310shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4311It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4312
4313sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4314 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4315 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4316
4317info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4318
4319
4320 * Watchpoints
4321
4322A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4323expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4324tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4325quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4326problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4327more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4328
4329watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4330
4331info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4332
4333delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4334disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4335enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4336
4337
4338 * C++ multiple inheritance
4339
4340When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4341for C++ programs.
4342
4343 * C++ exception handling
4344
4345Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4346ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4347the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4348handler's context).
4349
4350catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4351 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4352 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4353
4354info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4355 current stack frame.
4356
4357
4358 * Minor command changes
4359
4360The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4361command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4362is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4363
4364The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4365at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4366frames without printing.
4367
4368 * New directory command
4369
4370'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4371The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4372about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4373with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4374find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4375
4376 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4377
4378For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4379for more details.
4380
4381GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4382two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4383Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4384where the program that you are debugging will run.
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