* expression.cc (Expression::Expression_eval_info): Add
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.1
5
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6* Windows Thread Information Block access.
7
8 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
9 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
10 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
11 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
12 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
13 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
14
15* New remote packets
16
17qGetTIBAddr
18
19 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
20
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21* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
22 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
23 a directory.
24
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25* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
26
27 - GDBserver now support tracepoints. The feature is currently
28 supported by the i386-linux and amd64-linux builds.
29
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30* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
31 it understands register description.
32
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33* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
34
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35* X86 general purpose registers
36
37 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
38 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
39 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
40 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
41 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
42
95a42b64 43* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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44 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
45 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
46 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
47 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
48 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 49
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50* New commands
51
52save breakpoints <filename>
53 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
54 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
55 definitions, use the `source' command.
56
57`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
58is now deprecated.
59
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60* Python scripting
61
adc36818 62** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
fa33c3cd 63 tables, program spaces, and frame's code blocks.
f870a310 64
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65** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
66 gdb.progspaces, and gdb.current_progspace.
67
68** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 69
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70* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
71there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
72tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
73regular breakpoints.
74
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75* New targets
76
77ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
78
bfbf3774 79*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 80
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81* C++ Improvements
82
83 ** Namespace Support
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84
85 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
86 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
87 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
88 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
89 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
90
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91 ** Bug Fixes
92
93 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
94 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
95 qualified name.
96
97 ** Cast Operators
98
99 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
100 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
101
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102* New targets
103
104Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 105Renesas RX rx-*-elf
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106
107* New Simulators
108
109Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 110Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 111
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112* Multi-program debugging.
113
114 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
115 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
116 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
117 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
118 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
119 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
120 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
121 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
122
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123* New tracing features
124
125 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
126
127 ** Trace state variables
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128
129 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
130 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
131 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
132 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
133 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
134 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
135 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
136 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
137 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
138 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 139
d5551862 140 ** Fast tracepoints
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141
142 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
143 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
144 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
145 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
146 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
147 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
148 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
149 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
150 the regular trace command.
151
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152 ** Disconnected tracing
153
154 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
155 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
156 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
157 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
158 connection is lost unexpectedly.
159
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160 ** Trace files
161
162 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
163 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
164 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
165 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
166 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
167 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
168 <name>".
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169
170 ** Circular trace buffer
171
172 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
173 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
174 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
175 not be available for all target agents.
176
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177* Changed commands
178
179disassemble
180 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
181 the arguments to be comma-separated.
182
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183info variables
184 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
185 which only declare a variable are not shown.
186
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187source
188 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
189 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
190 support.
191
192 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
193 "set script-extension" (see below).
194
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195* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
196
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197record save [<FILENAME>]
198 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
199 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
200
201record restore <FILENAME>
202 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
203 earlier time, for replay debugging.
204
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205add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
206 Add a new inferior.
207
208clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
209 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
210 inferior has loaded.
211
212remove-inferior ID
213 Remove an inferior.
214
215maint info program-spaces
216 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
217
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218set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
219show remote interrupt-sequence
220 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
221 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
222 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
223 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
224 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
225
226set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
227show remote interrupt-on-connect
228 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
229 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
230 Linux kernel.
231
232set remotebreak [on | off]
233show remotebreak
234Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
235
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236tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
237 Create or modify a trace state variable.
238
239info tvariables
240 List trace state variables and their values.
241
242delete tvariable $NAME ...
243 Delete one or more trace state variables.
244
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245teval EXPR, ...
246 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
247 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
248
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249ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
250 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
251
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252* New expression syntax
253
254 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
255 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
256
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257* New options
258
259set follow-exec-mode new|same
260show follow-exec-mode
261 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
262 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
263 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
264
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265set default-collect EXPR, ...
266show default-collect
267 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
268 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
269 such as registers or a critical global variable.
270
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271set disconnected-tracing
272show disconnected-tracing
273 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
274 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
275 upon disconnection.
276
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277set circular-trace-buffer
278show circular-trace-buffer
279 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
280 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
281 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
282 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
283
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284set script-extension off|soft|strict
285show script-extension
286 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
287 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
288 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
289 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
290 evaluation failed.
291 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
292
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293set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
294show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
295 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
296 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
297 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
298 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
299 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
300 is on.
301
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302* Python API Improvements
303
304 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
305 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
306 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
307
308 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
309 `is_base_class' attribute.
310
311 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
312
313 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
314 evaluate an expression.
315
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316* New remote packets
317
318QTDV
319 Define a trace state variable.
320
321qTV
322 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
323
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324QTDisconnected
325 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
326
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327QTBuffer:circular
328 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
329
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330qTfP, qTsP
331 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
332
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333* Bug fixes
334
335Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
336
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337Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
338much more reliable. In particular:
339 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
340 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
341 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
342 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
343 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
344 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
345 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
346 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
347 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
348 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
349 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
350 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
351 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
352 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
353 non-threaded programs.
354
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355PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
356This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
357libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
358executable program.
359
abc7453d 360*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 361
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362* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
363dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
364them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
365for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
366"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
367
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368* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
369breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
370or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
371the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
372for tracepoint actions.
373
e6158f16 374* "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
7280022e 375in hex as well as in symbolic form.
e6158f16 376
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377* Process record and replay
378
379 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
380 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
381 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
382 execute commands.
383
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384* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
385step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
386set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
387reverse execution.
388
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389* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
390feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3912.6.28 or later.
392
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393* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
394target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
395char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
396literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
397U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
398`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
399system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
400the installation instructions for more information.
401
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402* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
403remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
404with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
405the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
406
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407* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
408and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
409
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410* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
411now complete on file names.
412
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413* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
414completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
415For instance, consider:
416
417 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
418 # struct example variable;
419 (gdb) p variable.
420
421If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
422completions will be "f1" and "f2".
423
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424* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
425the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
426
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427* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
428operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
429macros.
430
47a3467a 431* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
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432the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
433implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
434
435* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
436registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
437can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
438and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 439
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440* New remote packets
441
442qSearch:memory:
443 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
444
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445QStartNoAckMode
446 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
447 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
448 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
449
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450vKill
451 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
452 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
453
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454qXfer:osdata:read
455 Obtains additional operating system information
456
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457qXfer:siginfo:read
458qXfer:siginfo:write
459 Read or write additional signal information.
460
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461* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
462
463 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
464 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
465 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
466
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467* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
468source+assembly.
469
c055b101 470* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 471DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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472
473* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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474and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
475`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 476
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477* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
478with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
479
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480* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
481
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482* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
483
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484* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
485which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
486
1fddbabb 487* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 488list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 489
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490* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
491conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
492have also been fixed.
493
bfb8797a 494* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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495From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
496are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 497
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498* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
499example, given:
500
501 template<typename T> class C { };
502 C<char const *> c;
503
504GDB will now correctly handle all of:
505
506 ptype C<char const *>
507 ptype C<char const*>
508 ptype C<const char *>
509 ptype C<const char*>
510
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511* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
512
513 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
514 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
515
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516 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
517 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
518 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
519
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520 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
521 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
522
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523 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
524 gdbserver.
525
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526 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
527 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
528
529 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
530 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
531 as appropriate.
532
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533* Python scripting
534
535 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
536 available is determined at configure time.
537
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538 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
539
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540* Ada tasking support
541
542 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
543 been introduced:
544
545 info tasks
546 Print the list of Ada tasks.
547 info task N
548 Print detailed information about task number N.
549 task
550 Print the task number of the current task.
551 task N
552 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
553
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554* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
555add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
556
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557* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
558
559 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
560 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
561 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
562 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
563 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
564 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
565 below.
566
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567* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
568"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
569information.
570
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571* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
572to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
573architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
574See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
575more information.
576
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577* Multi-architecture debugging.
578
579 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
580 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
581 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
582 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
583 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
584
585* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
586use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
587Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
588powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
589--enable-targets configure option.
590
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591* Non-stop mode debugging.
592
593 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
594 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
595 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
596 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
597 section in the user manual for more information.
598
599 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
600 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
601 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
602 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
603 extensions on linux targets.
604
d7713ae0 605* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 606
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607catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
608 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
609 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
610 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
611 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
612 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
613 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
614 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
615 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
616
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617find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
618 val1 [, val2, ...]
619 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
620
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TJB
621maint set python print-stack
622maint show python print-stack
623 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
624
625python [CODE]
626 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
627
d7713ae0
EZ
628macro define
629macro list
630macro undef
631 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
632 interactively.
633
634info os processes
635 Show operating system information about processes.
636
2277426b
PA
637info inferiors
638 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
639
640inferior NUM
641 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
642
643detach inferior NUM
644 Detach from inferior number NUM.
645
646kill inferior NUM
647 Kill inferior number NUM.
648
d7713ae0
EZ
649* New options
650
3285f3fe
UW
651set spu stop-on-load
652show spu stop-on-load
653 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
654
ff1a52c6
UW
655set spu auto-flush-cache
656show spu auto-flush-cache
657 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
658 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
659
d7713ae0
EZ
660set sh calling-convention
661show sh calling-convention
662 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
663
e0a3ce09 664set debug timestamp
75feb17d 665show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
666 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
667
668set disassemble-next-line
669show disassemble-next-line
670 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
671 the debuggee stops.
672
673set remote noack-packet
674show remote noack-packet
675 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
676 under "New remote packets."
677
678set remote query-attached-packet
679show remote query-attached-packet
680 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
681
682set remote read-siginfo-object
683show remote read-siginfo-object
684 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
685 packet.
686
687set remote write-siginfo-object
688show remote write-siginfo-object
689 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
690 packet.
691
40ab02ce
MS
692set remote reverse-continue
693show remote reverse-continue
694 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
695
696set remote reverse-step
697show remote reverse-step
698 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
699
d7713ae0
EZ
700set displaced-stepping
701show displaced-stepping
702 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
703 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
704 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
705
706set debug displaced
707show debug displaced
708 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
709
710maint set internal-error
711maint show internal-error
712 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
713
714maint set internal-warning
715maint show internal-warning
716 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 717
ccd213ac
DJ
718set exec-wrapper
719show exec-wrapper
720unset exec-wrapper
721 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 722
aad4b048
JB
723set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
724show multiple-symbols
725 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
726 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
727 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
728
74960c60
VP
729set breakpoint always-inserted
730show breakpoint always-inserted
731 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
732 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
733 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
734
0428b8f5
DJ
735set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
736show arm fallback-mode
737set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
738show arm force-mode
739 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
740 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
741 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
742 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
743
10568435
JK
744set disable-randomization
745show disable-randomization
746 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
747 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
748 multiple debugging sessions.
749
d7713ae0
EZ
750set non-stop
751show non-stop
752 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
753 a breakpoint.
754
b3eb342c 755set target-async
d7713ae0 756show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
757 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
758 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
759 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
760 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
761
6c7a06a3
TT
762set target-wide-charset
763show target-wide-charset
764 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
765 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
766
84603566
SL
767set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
768show tcp auto-retry
769set tcp connect-timeout
770show tcp connect-timeout
771 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
772 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
773 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
774
17a37d48
PP
775set libthread-db-search-path
776show libthread-db-search-path
777 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
778 libthread_db.
779
d4db2f36
PA
780set schedule-multiple (on|off)
781show schedule-multiple
782 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
783 the current process.
784
4e5d721f
DE
785set stack-cache
786show stack-cache
787 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
788 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
789 affecting correctness.
790
910c5da8
JB
791set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
792show interactive-mode
793 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
794 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
795 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
796 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
797 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
798
2277426b
PA
799* Removed commands
800
801info forks
802 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
803 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
804 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
805 command.
806
807fork NUM
808 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
809 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
810 alias for the `fork' command.
811
812process PID
813 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
814 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
815 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
816
817delete fork NUM
818 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
819 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
820 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
821 fork' command.
822
823detach fork NUM
824 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
825 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
826 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
827 fork' command.
828
a80b95ba
TG
829* New native configurations
830
831x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
832
b8bfd3ed
JB
833x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
834
75a2d5e7
TT
835* New targets
836
c28c63d8 837Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 838x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 839x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 840S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 841
6de3146c
PA
842* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
843 (mingw32ce) debugging.
844
d5cbbe6e
JB
845* Removed commands
846
847catch load
848catch unload
849 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
850
75feb17d 851*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 852
af5ca30d
NH
853* New native configurations
854
855NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 856Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
857
858* New targets
859
860NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 861Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 862
7a404eba
PA
863* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
864
865 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
866 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
867 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
868 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
869
430ebac9
PA
870* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
871(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
872
fe6fbf8b 873* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 874is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
875
876* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
877including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
878and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 879
10665d76
JB
880* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
881accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
882more than one contiguous range of addresses.
883
7cc46491
DJ
884* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
885
d71340b8
DJ
886* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
887registers on PowerPC targets.
888
523c4513
DJ
889* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
890targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
891
a6b151f1
DJ
892* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
893commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
894
2d717e4f
DJ
895* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
896extended-remote mode.
897
24a836bd 898* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
899The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
900error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
901The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 902
d0c678e6
UW
903* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
904building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
905target architectures.
906
d64a946d
TJB
907* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
908Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
909now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
910stored in two consecutive float registers.
911
ee163bf5
VP
912* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
913breakpoints now.
914
b93b6ca7 915* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
916Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
917include:
b93b6ca7
JB
918 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
919 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
920 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
921 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
922 of an assignment
923 - Improved command completion in Ada
924 - Several bug fixes
925
d001be7a
DJ
926* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
927process.
928
a6b151f1
DJ
929* New commands
930
6d53d0af
JB
931set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
932show print frame-arguments
933 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
934 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
935
a6b151f1
DJ
936remote put
937remote get
938remote delete
939 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
940
941* New MI commands
942
943-target-file-put
944-target-file-get
945-target-file-delete
946 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
947
948* New remote packets
949
950vFile:open:
951vFile:close:
952vFile:pread:
953vFile:pwrite:
954vFile:unlink:
955 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 956
2d717e4f
DJ
957vAttach
958 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
959 mode.
960
961vRun
962 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
963
8d5f9c6f 964*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 965
19d378fc
MS
966* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
967bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
968Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
969
3a40aaa0
UW
970* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
971symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
972-Bsymbolic linker option.
973
a6ec25f2
BW
974* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
975recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
976is not supported.
977
6dd09645
JB
978* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
979frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
980
c9bb8148
DJ
981* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
98232-bit or 64-bit register values.
983
0d5de010
DJ
984* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
985
23181151
DJ
986* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
987target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
988a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
989
ea37ba09
DJ
990* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
991automatically displayed as character or string data.
992
993* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
994arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
995as strings.
e1f48ead 996
123dc839
DJ
997* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
998for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 999only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1000
05a4558a
DJ
1001* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1002iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1003
7c963485
PA
1004* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1005ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1006has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1007
b18be20d
DJ
1008* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1009
0ca420ce
UW
1010* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1011
31d99776
DJ
1012* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1013layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1014segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1015
a4642986
MR
1016* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1017immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1018
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1019* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1020"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1021packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1022where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1023Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1024
1025* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1026(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1027
1028* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1029according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1030
c9bb8148
DJ
1031* New commands
1032
23776285
MR
1033set remoteflow
1034show remoteflow
1035 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1036 when debugging using remote targets.
1037
c9bb8148
DJ
1038set mem inaccessible-by-default
1039show mem inaccessible-by-default
1040 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1041 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1042 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1043 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1044 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1045
1046set breakpoint auto-hw
1047show breakpoint auto-hw
1048 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1049 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1050 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1051 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1052 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1053 including "next" and "finish".
1054
0e420bd8
JB
1055catch exception
1056catch exception unhandled
1057 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1058
1059catch assert
1060 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1061
f822c95b
DJ
1062set sysroot
1063show sysroot
1064 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1065 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1066 an alias to "set sysroot".
1067
83cc5c53
UW
1068info spu
1069 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1070 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1071 architecture.
1072
bd372731
MK
1073* New native configurations
1074
1075OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1076
23181151
DJ
1077set tdesc filename
1078unset tdesc filename
1079show tdesc filename
1080 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1081 not query the target for its built-in description.
1082
c9bb8148
DJ
1083* New targets
1084
54fe9172 1085OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1086MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1087Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1088
6dd09645
JB
1089* New remote packets
1090
1091QPassSignals:
1092 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1093 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1094
23181151
DJ
1095qXfer:features:read:
1096 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1097 features.
6dd09645 1098
83cc5c53
UW
1099qXfer:spu:read:
1100qXfer:spu:write:
1101 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1102 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1103
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1104qXfer:libraries:read:
1105 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1106 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1107 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1108 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1109
483367ee
DJ
1110* Removed targets
1111
1112Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1113
d08950c4
UW
1114alpha*-*-osf1*
1115alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1116d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1117hppa*-*-hiux*
1118i[34567]86-ncr-*
1119i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1120i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1121i[34567]86-*-netware*
1122i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1123i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1124i[34567]86-*-sco*
1125i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1126i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1127i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1128i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1129i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1130i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1131i[34567]86-*-isc*
1132m68*-cisco*-*
1133m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1134mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1135rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1136sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1137
7ce59000
DJ
1138* Other removed features
1139
1140target abug
1141target cpu32bug
1142target est
1143target rom68k
1144
1145 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1146
ea35711c
DJ
1147target hms
1148target e7000
1149target sh3
1150target sh3e
1151
1152 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1153 H8/300.
1154
1155target ocd
1156
1157 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1158 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1159 interfaces.
1160
7ce59000
DJ
1161DWARF 1 support
1162
1163 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1164 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1165
54d61198
DJ
1166Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1167
1168 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1169 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1170 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1171 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1172
ea35711c
DJ
1173MIPS ".pdr" sections
1174
1175 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1176 in debugging information.
1177
1178Scheme support
1179
1180 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1181 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1182
1a69e1e4
DJ
1183set mips stack-arg-size
1184set mips saved-gpreg-size
1185
1186 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1187
6dd09645 1188*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1189
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1190* New targets
1191
1192Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1193Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1194
6aec2e11
DJ
1195* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1196(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1197running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1198
1199* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1200Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1201supported.
1202
17218d91
DJ
1203* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1204broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1205
9ebce043
DJ
1206* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1207stub provides the required support.
1208
7d3d3ece
DJ
1209* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1210longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1211
4f8253f3
JB
1212* New commands
1213
1214set substitute-path
1215unset substitute-path
1216show substitute-path
1217 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1218 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1219 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1220 between compilation and debugging.
1221
9fa66fd7
AS
1222set trace-commands
1223show trace-commands
1224 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1225 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1226 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1227
1f5befc1
DJ
1228* REMOVED features
1229
1230The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1231
2ec3381a
DJ
1232Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1233an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1234
3d00d119
DJ
1235The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1236
be2a5f71
DJ
1237* New remote packets
1238
1239qSupported:
1240 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1241 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1242 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1243 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1244 target.
1245
0876f84a
DJ
1246qXfer:auxv:read:
1247 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1248 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1249
9ebce043
DJ
1250qXfer:memory-map:read:
1251 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1252 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1253
1254vFlashErase:
1255vFlashWrite:
1256vFlashDone:
1257 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1258
0876f84a
DJ
1259* Removed remote packets
1260
1261qPart:auxv:read:
1262 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1263 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1264
e374b601 1265*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1266
96309189
MS
1267* New targets
1268
1269Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1270
1271Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1272
53e5f3cf
AS
1273* New commands
1274
1275init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1276 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1277
ac264b3b
MS
1278The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1279
1280checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1281
1282restart <n> Return the program state to a
1283 previously saved state.
1284
1285info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1286
1287delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1288
1289set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1290 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1291
1292info forks List forks of the user program that
1293 are available to be debugged.
1294
1295fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1296 forks of the user program that are
1297 available to be debugged.
1298
1299delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1300 that are available to be debugged (and
1301 kill the forked process).
1302
1303detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1304 that are available to be debugged (and
1305 allow the process to continue).
1306
3950dc3f
NS
1307* New architecture
1308
1309Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1310
0ea3f30e
DJ
1311* Improved Windows host support
1312
1313GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1314native console support, and remote communications using either
1315network sockets or serial ports.
1316
f79daebb
GM
1317* Improved Modula-2 language support
1318
1319GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1320basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1321pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1322printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1323written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1324GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1325
acab6ab2
MM
1326* REMOVED features
1327
1328The ARM rdi-share module.
1329
f4267320
DJ
1330The Netware NLM debug server.
1331
53e5f3cf 1332*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1333
e0ecbda1
MK
1334* New native configurations
1335
02a677ac 1336OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1337OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1338
d64a6579
KB
1339* New targets
1340
1341Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1342
b33a6190
AS
1343* New command line options
1344
1345--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1346--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1347 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1348--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1349 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1350 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1351 with the --command (-x) option.
1352
11dced61
AC
1353* Deprecated commands removed
1354
1355The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1356removed:
1357
1358 Command Replacement
1359 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1360 othernames set arm disassembler
1361 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1362 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1363 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1364 regs info registers
1365
6fe85783
MK
1366* New BSD user-level threads support
1367
1368It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1369library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1370configurations are:
1371
1372FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1373FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1374OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1375
1376Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1377are not yet supported.
1378
5260ca71
MS
1379* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1380(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1381
e84ecc99
AC
1382* REMOVED configurations and files
1383
1384VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1385Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1386National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1387
31e35378
JB
1388* New "set print array-indexes" command
1389
1390After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1391when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1392behavior.
1393
e85e5c83
MK
1394* VAX floating point support
1395
1396GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1397
d91e9901
AS
1398* User-defined command support
1399
1400In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1401to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1402section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1403
f2cb65ca
MC
1404*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1405
f47b1503
AS
1406* New command line option
1407
1408GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1409debugging.
1410
f2cb65ca
MC
1411* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1412
1413GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1414information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1415by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1416proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1417to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1418
d08c0230
AC
1419* Internationalization
1420
1421When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1422internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1423continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1424
117ea3cf
PH
1425* Ada
1426
1427Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1428implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1429into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1430
d08c0230
AC
1431* New native configurations
1432
1433GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1434
1435* Remote 'p' packet
1436
1437GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1438packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1439
1440* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1441
1442GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1443The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1444features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1445i386 application).
1446
1447GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1448compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1449continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1450configurations:
1451
1452hppa-*-hpux
1453ia64-*-aix
1454mips-*-irix*
1455*-*-lynx
1456mips-*-linux-gnu
1457sds protocol
1458xdr protocol
1459powerpc bdm protocol
1460
1461Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1462made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1463
1464* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1465
1466Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1467been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1468configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1469permanently REMOVED.
1470
1471h8300-*-*
1472mcore-*-*
1473mn10300-*-*
1474ns32k-*-*
1475sh64-*-*
1476v850-*-*
1477
ebb7c577
AC
1478*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1479
1480* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1481
1482When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1483heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1484been fixed.
1485
1486* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1487
1488When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1489fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1490IRIX long double values).
1491
1492* VAX and "next"
1493
1494A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1495command. This problem has been fixed.
1496
860660cb 1497*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 1498
0dea2468
AC
1499* Fix for ``many threads''
1500
1501On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1502rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1503error message:
1504
1505 ptrace: No such process.
1506 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1507
1508This problem has been fixed.
1509
2c07db7a
AC
1510* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1511
1512Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1513GDB to dump core).
1514
c23968a2
JB
1515* New ``start'' command.
1516
1517This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1518
71009278
MK
1519* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1520
1521Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1522live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1523platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1524
1525FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1526FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1527NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1528NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1529NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1530OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1531OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1532OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1533OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1534
3c0b7db2
AC
1535* Signal trampoline code overhauled
1536
1537Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1538These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1539of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1540call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1541signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1542
73cc75f3
AC
1543Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1544features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1545include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 1546
7243600a
BF
1547* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1548
6f606e1c
MK
1549* New native configurations
1550
97dc871c 1551GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 1552OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
1553OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1554OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 1555OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1556NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 1557OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 1558
a1b461bf
AC
1559* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1560
1561GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1562The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1563including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1564migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1565compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1566work, was also included.
1567
1568GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1569module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1570
1571h8300-*-*
1572mcore-*-*
1573mn10300-*-*
1574ns32k-*-*
1575sh64-*-*
1576v850-*-*
1577xstormy16-*-*
1578
1579Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1580made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1581
3c7012f5
AC
1582* REMOVED configurations and files
1583
1584Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1585Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1586Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1587Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1588Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1589AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1590Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1591decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1592riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1593sonymips mips-sony-*
1594sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1595
e5fe55f7
AC
1596*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1597
1598* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1599
1600The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1601GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1602command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1603program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1604with GDB".
1605
1606* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1607
1608Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1609libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1610cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1611GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1612shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1613the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1614are created.
1615
1616Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1617
1618* Fixed ISO-C build problems
1619
1620The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1621non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1622compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1623
1624* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1625
1626Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1627wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1628
1629* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1630
1631The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1632permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1633systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1634
1635* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1636
1637Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1638has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1639
1640* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1641
1642GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1643its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1644panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1645
1646* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1647
1648When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1649by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1650not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1651
faae5abe 1652*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1653
9175c9a3
MC
1654* Removed --with-mmalloc
1655
1656Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1657conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1658
3cc87ec0
MK
1659* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1660
1661The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1662the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1663and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1664you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1665
f0424ef6
MK
1666* Revised SPARC target
1667
1668The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1669FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1670support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1671from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1672(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1673
59659be2
ILT
1674* New C++ demangler
1675
1676GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1677names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1678with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1679programs.
1680
9e08b29b
DJ
1681* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1682
1683GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1684arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1685encountered these.
1686
8dfe8985
DC
1687* C++ nested types and namespaces
1688
1689GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1690improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1691is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1692Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1693namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1694"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1695frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1696if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1697GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1698
cced5e27
MK
1699* New native configurations
1700
1701NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1702OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1703OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1704OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1705OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1706
b4b4b794
KI
1707* New debugging protocols
1708
1709M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1710
7989c619
AC
1711* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1712
1713The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1714and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1715tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1716
5994185b
AC
1717* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1718
1719Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1720been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1721configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1722permanently REMOVED.
1723
1724Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1725Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1726Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1727Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1728Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1729AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1730Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1731decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1732riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1733sonymips mips-sony-*
1734sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1735
0ddabb4c
AC
1736* REMOVED configurations and files
1737
1738SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1739SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1740Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1741Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1742H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1743HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1744HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1745HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1746PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1747386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1748Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1749 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1750 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1751SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1752SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1753Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1754Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1755
c7f1390e
DJ
1756*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1757
1fe43d45
AC
1758* Objective-C
1759
1760Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1761integrated into GDB.
1762
e6beb428
AC
1763* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1764
1765DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1766information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1767By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1768backtraces.
1769
1770The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1771have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1772DWARF 2 CFI support.
1773
1774* Hosted file I/O.
1775
1776GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1777file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1778remote protocol documentation for details.
1779
1780* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1781
1782All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1783architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1784to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1785ppc32 on ppc64).
1786
1787* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1788
1789GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1790per-thread variables.
1791
1792* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1793
1794GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1795GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1796
1797* Separate debug info.
1798
1799GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1800automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1801of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1802system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1803and optional debug files.
1804
1805* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1806
1807DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1808describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1809debugger.
1810
1811GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1812for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1813
1814* Java
1815
1816A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1817Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1818considered "useable".
1819
85f8f974
DJ
1820* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1821
1822The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1823commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1824kernel.
1825
0fac0b41
DJ
1826* GDB supports logging output to a file
1827
1828There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1829used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1830
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1831* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1832
1833The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1834disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1835command.
1836
e286caf2 1837* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1838
1839The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1840registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1841
d28f9cdf
DJ
1842* Profiling support
1843
1844A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1845be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1846session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1847"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1848data, for more informative profiling results.
1849
da0f9dcd
AC
1850* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1851
1852The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1853option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1854"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1855
1856Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1857removed.
1858
fb9b6b35
JJ
1859Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1860Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1861Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1862 in a subsequent -var-update.
1863
954a4db8
MK
1864* New native configurations.
1865
1866FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1867
6760f9e6
JB
1868* Multi-arched targets.
1869
b4263afa 1870HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1871Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1872
1b831c93
AC
1873* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1874
1875Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1876been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1877configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1878permanently REMOVED.
1879
8b0e5691 1880Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1881Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1882H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1883HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1884HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1885HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1886PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1887Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1888 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1889 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1890Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1891Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1892
5835abe7
NC
1893* REMOVED configurations and files
1894
1895V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1896Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1897IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1898i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1899i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1900i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1901HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1902 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1903 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1904Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1905Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1906Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1907OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1908I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1909
a094c6fb
AC
1910* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1911
1912The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1913the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1914context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1915address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1916The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1917
299ffc64 1918*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1919
46248966
AC
1920* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1921
1922When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1923`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1924in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1925library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1926shared libs like mad''.
1927
b9d14705 1928* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1929
b9d14705
DJ
1930Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1931the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1932arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1933powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1934
e0e9281e
JB
1935* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1936
1937GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1938and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1939they expand.
1940
dd73b9bb
AC
1941The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1942invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1943
1944The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1945macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1946
e0e9281e
JB
1947Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1948information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1949your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1950information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1951
2250ee0c
CV
1952* Multi-arched targets.
1953
6e3ba3b8
JT
1954DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1955DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1956NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1957National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1958Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1959Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1960
cd9bfe15 1961* New targets.
e33ce519 1962
456f8b9d
DB
1963Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1964
e33ce519 1965
da8ca43d
JT
1966* New native configurations
1967
1968Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1969SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1970MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1971UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1972
cd9bfe15
AC
1973* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1974
1975Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1976been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1977configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1978permanently REMOVED.
1979
92eb23c5 1980Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1981OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1982IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1983Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1984Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1985Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1986i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1987i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1988i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1989HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1990 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1991 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1992I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1993
db034ac5
AC
1994* OBSOLETE languages
1995
1996CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1997
cd9bfe15
AC
1998* REMOVED configurations and files
1999
2000AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2001A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2002AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2003AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2004AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2005
2006testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2007
20f01a46
DH
2008* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2009
2010This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2011commands. The default is 1024.
2012
a5941fbf
MK
2013* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2014
2015Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2016
89743e04
MS
2017* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2018
2019These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2020to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2021from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2022
9fb14e79
JB
2023* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2024
2025The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2026including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2027of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2028
2037aebb
AC
2029*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2030
2031* New targets.
2032
2033Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2034
2035* Bug fixes
2036
2037gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2038mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2039Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2040
2041gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2042dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2043Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2044
2045Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2046Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2047By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2048
2049i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2050avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2051By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2052
37057839 2053*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2054
1a703748
MS
2055* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2056
2057This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2058really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2059In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2060target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2061This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2062(notably embedded) targets.
2063
cefd4ef5
MS
2064* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2065
55241689
AC
2066This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2067process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2068GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2069hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2070
352ed7b4
MS
2071* New command line option
2072
2073GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2074
2075* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2076
2077There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2078command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2079a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2080be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2081open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2082issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2083a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2084it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2085GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2086is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2087
fe419ffc
RE
2088* Changes in ARM configurations.
2089
2090Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2091configuration is fully multi-arch.
2092
eb7cedd9
MK
2093* New native configurations
2094
fe419ffc 2095ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2096x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2097AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2098Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2099
c9f63e6b
CV
2100* New targets
2101
2102Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2103
9b4ff276
AC
2104* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2105
2106Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2107been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2108configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2109permanently REMOVED.
2110
2111AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2112A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2113AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2114AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2115AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2116
b4ceaee6 2117testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2118
e2caac18
AC
2119* REMOVED configurations and files
2120
2121TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2122WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2123PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2124PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2125PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2126Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2127Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2128 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2129SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2130Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2131Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2132ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2133Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2134
c2a727fa
TT
2135* Changes to command line processing
2136
2137The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2138for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2139
467d8519
TT
2140* Changes to key bindings
2141
2142There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2143
7072a954
AC
2144*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2145
2146Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2147
2148Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2149corrupted.
2150
2151Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2152
2153Numerous documentation fixes.
2154
2155Numerous testsuite fixes.
2156
34f47bc4 2157*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2158
2159* New native configurations
2160
2161Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2162x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2163MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2164MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2165ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2166s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2167
bf64bfd6
AC
2168* New targets
2169
def90278 2170Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2171CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2172UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2173
17e78a56 2174* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2175
2176x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2177Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2178Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2179 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2180TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2181WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2182Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2183PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2184PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2185PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2186SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2187Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2188ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2189Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2190
17e78a56
AC
2191stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2192kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2193
7fcca85b
AC
2194Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2195been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2196configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2197permanently REMOVED.
2198
a196c81c 2199* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2200
2201Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2202Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2203Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2204ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2205Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2206ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2207
6d6b80e5 2208* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2209
6d6b80e5 2210GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2211sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2212present.
2213
bf64bfd6
AC
2214* Other news:
2215
e23194cb
EZ
2216* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2217
2218* The MI enabled by default.
2219
2220The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2221revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2222engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2223using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2224which is now deprecated.
2225
2226* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2227
2228GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2229main features are supported:
2230
2231 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2232
2233 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2234 extension;
2235
2236 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2237
2238 - a Pascal expression parser.
2239
2240However, some important features are not yet supported.
2241
2242 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2243
2244 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2245
2246 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2247 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2248
2249 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2250
2251 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2252
2253* Changes in completion.
2254
2255Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2256to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2257users expect at the shell prompt.
2258
2259Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2260`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2261program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2262files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2263be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2264considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2265name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2266
2267`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2268
2269* New platform-independent commands:
2270
2271It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2272hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2273documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2274
2275* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2276
d7275149
MK
2277Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2278revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2279many threads as your system allows you to have.
2280
e23194cb
EZ
2281Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2282
d7275149
MK
2283Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2284multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2285
2286* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2287
2288Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2289
e23194cb
EZ
2290GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2291debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2292supported.)
2293
2294* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2295
2296Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2297breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2298implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2299put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2300and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2301registers.
2302
2303The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2304debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2305watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2306
2307* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2308
2309New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2310the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2311
2312New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2313display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2314IDT.
2315
2316New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2317from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2318New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2319a given linear address.
2320
2321GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2322program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2323which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2324
2325DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2326
6c56c069
EZ
2327It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2328
e23194cb
EZ
2329* Changes in documentation.
2330
2331All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2332Documentation License.
2333
2334Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2335manual.
2336
2337TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2338
2339Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2340manual.
2341
2342The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2343documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2344hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2345
5d6640b1
AC
2346* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2347
2348The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2349``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2350contents of this file.
2351
1a1d8446
AC
2352* gdba.el deleted
2353
2354GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2355
9debab2f 2356*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2357
c63ce875
EZ
2358* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2359
2360Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2361programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2362displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2363greater level of detail.
2364
2365* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2366
2367It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2368bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2369on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2370written.
2371
2372* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2373
2374The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2375necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2376machines ``out of the box''.
2377
2378The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2379possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2380signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2381would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2382interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2383
2384It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2385standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2386even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2387and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2388terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2389
2390The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2391enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2392also works.
2393
2394DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2395GDB.
2396
2397It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2398directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2399times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2400breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2401
ed9a39eb
JM
2402* New native configurations
2403
2404ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2405PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2406
7a292a7a
SS
2407* New targets
2408
96baa820 2409Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2410x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2411PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2412TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2413
085dd6e6
JM
2414* OBSOLETE configurations
2415
2416Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2417Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2418Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2419ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2420Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2421
9debab2f
AC
2422Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2423but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2424these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2425be permanently REMOVED.
2426
5330533d
SS
2427* Gould support removed
2428
2429Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2430
bc9e5bbf
AC
2431* New features for SVR4
2432
2433On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2434without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2435load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2436
2437* Many C++ enhancements
2438
2439C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2440in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2441
adf40b2e
JM
2442* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2443
2444A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2445sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2446with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2447``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2448
2449 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2450 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2451
43e526b9
JM
2452* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2453
2454A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2455expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2456instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2457
2458The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2459added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2460
96baa820
JM
2461* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2462
2463The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2464``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2465include ``set remote P-packet''.
2466
11cf8741
JM
2467* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2468
2469The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2470accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2471``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2472
7876dd43
DB
2473* ``apropos'' command added.
2474
2475The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2476documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2477try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2478
bc9e5bbf
AC
2479* New MI interface
2480
2481A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2482interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
2483process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2484"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2485enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
2486
2487 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2488
c906108c
SS
2489*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2490
2491* New native configurations
2492
2493HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2494HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 2495M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
2496
2497* New targets
2498
2499Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2500Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2501Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2502
2503* OBSOLETE configurations
2504
2505Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2506
2507Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2508but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2509these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2510be permanently REMOVED.
2511
2512* ANSI/ISO C
2513
2514As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2515buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2516containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2517use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2518available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2519configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2520information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2521already.
2522
2523* Readline 2.2
2524
2525GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2526
2527* set extension-language
2528
2529You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2530languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2531you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2532 set extension-language .c c++
2533The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2534and their associated languages.
2535
2536* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2537
2538When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2539you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2540PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2541
2542 set processor NAME
2543
2544sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2545following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2546
2547 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2548 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2549 403 IBM PowerPC 403
2550 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2551 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2552 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2553 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2554 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2555 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2556 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2557 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2558
2559At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2560special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2561registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2562only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2563
2564* HP-UX support
2565
2566Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2567more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2568library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2569support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2570for xdb and dbx commands.
2571
2572* Catchpoints
2573
2574HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2575generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2576to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2577
2578This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2579argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2580output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2581
2582* Debugging across forks
2583
2584On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2585in the inferior.
2586
2587* TUI
2588
2589HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2590it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2591configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2592
2593* GDB remote protocol additions
2594
2595A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2596Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2597fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2598allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2599
2600For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2601full 64-bit address. The command
2602
2603 set remoteaddresssize 32
2604
2605can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2606the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2607will be discarded.
2608
2609In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2610command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2611
2612 maint packet heythere
2613
2614sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2615disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2616time.
2617
2618The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2619target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2620downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2621
2622* Tracing can collect general expressions
2623
2624You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2625further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2626doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2627
2628* mask-address variable for Mips
2629
2630For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2631a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2632of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2633
2634* Higher serial baud rates
2635
2636GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2637230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2638to achieve all of these rates.)
2639
2640* i960 simulator
2641
2642The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2643builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2644
2645
2646*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2647
2648* New native configurations
2649
2650Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2651Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2652Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2653PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2654PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2655Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2656Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2657
2658* New targets
2659
2660Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2661Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2662Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2663Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2664MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2665MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2666MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2667Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2668Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2669Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2670NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2671
2672* New debugging protocols
2673
2674ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2675M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2676DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2677PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2678PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2679Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2680
2681* DWARF 2
2682
2683All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2684format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2685information.
2686
2687* Java frontend
2688
2689GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2690only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2691
2692* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2693
2694For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2695loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2696locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2697
2698* Live range splitting
2699
2700GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2701range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2702more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2703
2704* Hurd support
2705
2706GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2707updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2708
2709* ARM Thumb support
2710
2711GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2712instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2713instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2714accordingly.
2715
2716* MIPS16 support
2717
2718GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2719instruction set.
2720
2721* Overlay support
2722
2723GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2724linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2725will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2726control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2727additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2728in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2729
2730* info symbol
2731
2732The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2733the symbol at the specified address.
2734
2735* Trace support
2736
2737The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2738asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2739extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2740includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2741file tracepoint.c for more details.
2742
2743* MIPS simulator
2744
2745Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2746by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2747of most MIPS variants.
2748
2749* Sparc simulator
2750
2751Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2752by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2753Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2754
2755* set architecture
2756
2757For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2758basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2759architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2760the possible architectures.
2761
2762*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2763
2764* New native configurations
2765
2766Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2767M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2768PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2769PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2770PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2771RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2772
2773* New targets
2774
2775ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2776I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2777MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2778MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2779PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2780Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2781Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2782
2783* PowerPC simulator
2784
2785The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2786contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2787PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2788basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2789performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2790
2791* Solaris 2.5
2792
2793GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2794
2795* Windows 95/NT native
2796
2797GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2798To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2799which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2800Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2801ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2802
2803* dont-repeat command
2804
2805If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2806command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2807useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2808extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2809
2810* Send break instead of ^C
2811
2812The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2813rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2814GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2815
2816* Remote protocol timeout
2817
2818The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2819that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2820to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2821
2822* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2823
2824By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2825loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2826stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2827when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2828in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2829
2830Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2831/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2832automatically on hpux10.
2833
2834* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2835
2836Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2837
2838* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2839
2840When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2841may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2842the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2843every character. The default value is 1050.
2844
2845* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2846
2847If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2848a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2849replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2850details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2851remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2852to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2853
2854* Speedups for remote debugging
2855
2856GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2857the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2858and more efficient S-record downloading.
2859
2860* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2861
2862GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2863Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2864
2865*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2866
2867* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2868
2869The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2870can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2871
2872* Remote targets use caching
2873
2874Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2875remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2876it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2877debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2878off' turns the the data cache off.
2879
2880* Remote targets may have threads
2881
2882The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2883in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2884gdb/remote.c for details.
2885
2886* NetROM support
2887
2888If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2889support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2890acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2891write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2892support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2893another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2894sequence is something like
2895
2896 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2897 load <prog>
2898 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2899
2900* Macintosh host
2901
2902GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2903may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2904it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2905available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2906device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2907directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2908scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2909mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2910
2911* Autoconf
2912
2913GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2914but does simplify configuration and building.
2915
2916* hpux10
2917
2918GDB now supports hpux10.
2919
2920*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2921
2922* New native configurations
2923
2924x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2925x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2926NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2927Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2928
2929* New targets
2930
2931A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2932HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2933CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2934PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2935WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2936
2937* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2938
2939GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2940possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2941filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2942the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2943if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2944
2945* Arguments to user-defined commands
2946
2947User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2948Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2949trivial example:
2950define adder
2951 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2952
2953To execute the command use:
2954adder 1 2 3
2955
2956Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2957Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2958use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2959
2960* New `if' and `while' commands
2961
2962This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2963commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2964expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2965execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2966terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2967`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2968if the expression is zero.
2969
2970* Fortran source language mode
2971
2972GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2973Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2974variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2975with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2976Fortran compilers.
2977
2978* Better HPUX support
2979
2980Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2981running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2982processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2983for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2984that behavior do the following before running the program:
2985
2986 adb -w a.out
2987 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2988 control-d
2989
2990This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2991To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2992
2993 adb -w a.out
2994 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2995 control-d
2996
2997You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2998the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2999external linkage.
3000
3001GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3002HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3003
3004* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3005
3006You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3007commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3008current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3009"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3010associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3011configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3012
3013* New DOS host serial code
3014
3015This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3016no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3017a PC's serial port.
3018
3019*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3020
3021* New "complete" command
3022
3023This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3024were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3025
3026* Trailing space optional in prompt
3027
3028"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3029allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3030
3031* Breakpoint hit counts
3032
3033"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3034has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3035can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3036to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3037less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3038that breakpoint.
3039
3040* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3041
3042"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3043an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3044arrays actually contain only short strings.
3045
3046* Shared library breakpoints
3047
3048In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3049breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3050
3051* Hardware watchpoints
3052
3053There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3054targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3055
55241689 3056Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3057
3058* Annotations
3059
3060Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3061and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3062
3063* Improved Irix 5 support
3064
3065GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3066
3067* Improved HPPA support
3068
3069GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3070
3071* New native configurations
3072
3073Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3074HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3075Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3076RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3077
3078* New targets
3079
3080OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3081MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3082Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3083
3084* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3085
3086There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3087This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3088
3089* Fixes
3090
3091As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3092and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3093
3094*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3095
3096* Irix 5 is now supported
3097
3098* HPPA support
3099
3100GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3101to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3102GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3103of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3104can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3105
3106
3107*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3108
3109* User visible changes:
3110
3111* Remote Debugging
3112
3113The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3114target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3115debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3116integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3117debugging info for the mips target).
3118
3119* DEC Alpha native support
3120
3121GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3122debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3123work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3124Alpha-specific notes.
3125
3126* Preliminary thread implementation
3127
3128GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3129
3130* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3131
3132This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3133to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3134for details).
3135
3136* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3137
3138This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3139mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3140call methods, ...etc.
3141
3142*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3143
3144 * User visible changes:
3145
3146Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3147supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3148other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3149somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3150
3151Filename completion now works.
3152
3153When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3154arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3155addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3156
3157All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3158vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3159should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3160your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3161to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3162
3163 * DEC alpha support
3164
3165This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3166cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3167
3168
3169*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3170
3171 * Testsuite
3172
3173This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3174The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3175via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3176
3177 * C++ demangling
3178
3179'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3180emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3181Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3182disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3183use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3184
3185 * Simulators
3186
3187GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3188So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3189Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3190
3191 * New targets supported
3192
3193H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3194H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3195SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3196Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3197IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3198
3199Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3200version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3201GO32 memory extender.
3202
3203 * New remote protocols
3204
3205MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3206
3207 * New source languages supported
3208
3209This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3210used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3211into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3212
3213
3214*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3215
3216 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3217
3218GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3219version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3220University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3221compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3222format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3223(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3224
3225Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3226
3227 * Faster and better demangling
3228
3229We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3230demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3231character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3232only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3233This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3234increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3235symbol lookups.
3236
3237`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3238from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3239compiler does not actually implement.
3240
3241 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3242
3243In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3244inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3245recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3246very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3247The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3248circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3249fix.
3250
3251The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3252release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3253
3254 * Improved configure script
3255
3256The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3257you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3258host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3259done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3260
3261We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3262version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3263`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3264The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3265only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3266We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3267
3268 * Documentation improvements
3269
3270There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3271produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3272before submitting changes.
3273
3274The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3275M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3276`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3277you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3278a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3279
3280*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3281We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3282been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3283or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3284`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3285around this problem.
3286
3287 * New features
3288
3289GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3290the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3291`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3292the target program.
3293
3294The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3295how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3296
3297 * New native hosts supported
3298
3299HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3300386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3301
3302 * New targets supported
3303
3304AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3305
3306 * New file formats supported
3307
3308BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3309HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3310
3311 * Major bug fixes
3312
3313Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3314
3315We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3316printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3317
3318We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3319for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3320release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3321
3322You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3323will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3324
3325We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3326for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3327especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3328libraries.
3329
3330The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3331information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3332command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3333any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3334when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3335
3336 * Internal improvements
3337
3338GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3339debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3340
3341GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3342Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3343symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3344contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3345shared code that handles any of them.
3346
3347 * New command line options
3348
3349We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3350
3351 * Mmalloc licensing
3352
3353The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3354General Public License.
3355
3356*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3357
3358 * Host/native/target split
3359
3360GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3361hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3362target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3363local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3364ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3365
3366The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3367GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3368is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3369code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3370any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3371built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3372handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3373
3374GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3375It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3376plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3377
3378 * New hosts supported
3379
3380HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3381386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3382386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3383
3384 * New targets supported
3385
3386Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
338768030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3388
3389 * New native hosts supported
3390
3391386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3392 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3393386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3394
3395 * New file formats supported
3396
3397BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3398supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3399format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3400
3401 * New commands
3402
3403`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3404`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3405These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3406
3407`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3408
3409You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3410scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3411prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3412executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3413
3414 * C++ improvements
3415
3416We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3417info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3418symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3419
3420Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3421
3422 * Major bug fixes
3423
3424The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3425fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3426by the compiler.
3427
3428We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3429support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3430
3431John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3432slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3433that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3434purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3435the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3436mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3437
3438Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3439about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3440completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3441we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3442
3443 * AMD 29k support
3444
3445A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3446specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3447calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3448usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3449in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3450
3451We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3452Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3453of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3454resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3455
3456 * Remote interfaces
3457
3458We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3459with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3460message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3461This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3462needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3463breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3464each instruction being stepped through.
3465
3466The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3467registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3468
3469There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3470find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3471Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3472processor with a serial port.
3473
3474 * Configuration
3475
3476Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3477`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3478supported, and what files each one uses.
3479
3480 * Library changes
3481
3482There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3483disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3484Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3485disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3486
3487The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3488Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3489can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3490grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3491
3492 * Documentation
3493
3494The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3495reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3496as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3497encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3498system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3499bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3500
3501And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3502
3503
3504*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3505
3506 * Better support for C++ function names
3507
3508GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3509names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3510(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3511single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3512Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3513
3514GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3515the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3516You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3517lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3518for the list of formats.
3519
3520 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3521
3522Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3523C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3524directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3525can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3526usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3527about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3528this problem.)
3529
3530 * New 'maintenance' command
3531
3532All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3533the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3534can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3535
3536 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3537 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3538 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3539 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3540 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3541 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3542
3543The following commands are new:
3544
3545 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3546 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3547 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3548
3549 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3550
3551We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3552(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3553be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3554read after argv processing.
3555
3556 * New hosts supported
3557
3558Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3559
55241689 3560GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
3561
3562We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3563is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3564for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3565masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3566fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3567It costs extra.
3568
3569 * New targets supported
3570
3571Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3572
3573 * More smarts about finding #include files
3574
3575GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3576all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3577greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3578especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3579the one that contains your sources.
3580
3581We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3582breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3583try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3584
3585 * Interesting infernals change
3586
3587GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3588section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3589target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3590stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3591
3592 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3593
3594There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3595 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3596 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3597
3598See the ChangeLog for details.
3599
3600*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3601
3602 * New machines supported (host and target)
3603
3604IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3605
3606SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3607
3608 * New malloc package
3609
3610GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3611Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3612capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3613This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3614pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3615more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3616
3617 * info proc
3618
3619The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3620'help info proc' for details.
3621
3622 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3623
3624The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3625Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3626possible.
3627
3628 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3629
3630Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3631support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3632conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3633environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3634that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3635in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3636
3637 * Cross byte order fixes
3638
3639Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3640targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3641
3642 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3643
3644If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3645system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3646`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3647program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3648called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3649Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3650and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3651the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3652option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3653starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3654
3655You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3656the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3657information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3658slower, but makes future operations faster.
3659
3660The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3661build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3662A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3663use is:
3664
3665 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3666
3667The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3668It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3669shared across multiple host platforms.
3670
3671 * longjmp() handling
3672
3673GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3674siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3675all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3676platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3677
3678 * Solaris 2.0
3679
3680Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3681this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3682reading symbols.
3683
3684 * Bug fixes
3685
3686As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3687People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3688crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3689
3690*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3691
3692 * New machines supported (host and target)
3693
3694SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3695 (except core files)
3696BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3697Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3698
3699 * New machines supported (target)
3700
3701AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3702
3703 * C++ support
3704
3705GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3706The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3707per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3708
3709GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3710`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3711extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3712good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3713will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3714released.
3715
3716 * New features for SVR4
3717
3718GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3719shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3720only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3721
3722The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3723on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3724it prints the address mappings of the process.
3725
3726If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3727bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3728
3729 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3730
3731Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3732now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3733skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3734make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3735same code linked statically.
3736
3737 * New Getopt
3738
3739GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3740version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3741continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3742Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3743added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3744future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3745
3746 * Bugs fixed
3747
3748The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3749Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3750See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3751
3752
3753*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3754
3755 * New machines supported (host and target)
3756
3757Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3758NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3759Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3760
3761 * Almost SCO Unix support
3762
3763We had hoped to support:
3764SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3765(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3766that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3767about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3768
3769 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3770
3771GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3772debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3773is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3774send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3775reqired (if any).
3776
3777 * New Readline
3778
3779GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3780is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3781required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3782
3783 * Bugs fixed
3784
3785The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3786Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3787See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3788
3789 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3790
3791GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3792supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3793symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3794
3795Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3796mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3797debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3798mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3799version 2.
3800
3801Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3802really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3803line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3804variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3805situation somewhat.
3806
3807When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3808However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3809methods.
3810
3811We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3812DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3813encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3814
3815
3816*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3817
3818 * Improved configuration
3819
3820Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3821Porting BFD is simpler.
3822
3823 * Stepping improved
3824
3825The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3826of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3827in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3828function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3829
3830 * Bug fixing
3831
3832Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3833
3834 * New host supported (not target)
3835
3836Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3837
3838
3839*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3840
3841 * Multiple source language support
3842
3843GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3844It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3845and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3846language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3847You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3848`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3849
3850 * GDB and Modula-2
3851
3852GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3853currently under development at the State University of New York at
3854Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3855continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3856
3857Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3858debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3859symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3860
3861There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3862in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3863
3864 * set write on/off
3865
3866GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3867a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3868the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3869by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3870effect immediately.
3871
3872 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3873
3874When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3875shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3876The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3877examining core files.
3878
3879 * set listsize
3880
3881You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3882The default is 10.
3883
3884 * New machines supported (host and target)
3885
3886SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3887Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3888Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3889
3890 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3891
3892IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3893
3894 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3895
3896AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3897AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3898Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3899
3900 * New remote interfaces
3901
3902AMD 29000 Adapt
3903AMD 29000 Minimon
3904
3905
3906*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3907
3908 * New Facilities
3909
3910Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3911
3912Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3913target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3914is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3915remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3916remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3917also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3918using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3919stub on the target system.
3920
3921New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3922
3923GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3924library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3925object file types such as a.out and coff.
3926
3927There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3928refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3929
3930
3931 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3932
3933All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3934by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3935
3936For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3937``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3938Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3939
3940What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3941print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3942will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3943all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3944
3945confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3946 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3947 it is already running. Default is ON.
3948
3949editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3950 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3951 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3952 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3953 Default is ON.
3954
3955history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3956 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3957 or the value of the environment variable
3958 GDBHISTFILE.
3959
3960history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3961 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3962 HISTSIZE.
3963
3964history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3965 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3966 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3967
3968history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3969 history expansion will be performed on
3970 command line input. The default is OFF.
3971
3972radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3973 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3974 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3975
3976height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3977 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3978 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3979 variable TERM.
3980
3981width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3982 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3983 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3984 variable TERM.
3985
3986Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3987``set width'' instead.
3988
3989print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3990 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3991 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3992 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3993
3994print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3995 is OFF.
3996
3997print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3998 "raw" form if off.
3999
4000print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4001 like instructions.
4002
4003print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4004
4005
4006 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4007
4008The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4009new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4010are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4011window.
4012
4013
4014 * Support for Shared Libraries
4015
4016GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4017Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4018before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4019happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4020At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4021from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4022shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4023It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4024
4025sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4026 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4027 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4028
4029info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4030
4031
4032 * Watchpoints
4033
4034A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4035expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4036tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4037quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4038problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4039more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4040
4041watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4042
4043info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4044
4045delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4046disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4047enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4048
4049
4050 * C++ multiple inheritance
4051
4052When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4053for C++ programs.
4054
4055 * C++ exception handling
4056
4057Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4058ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4059the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4060handler's context).
4061
4062catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4063 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4064 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4065
4066info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4067 current stack frame.
4068
4069
4070 * Minor command changes
4071
4072The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4073command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4074is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4075
4076The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4077at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4078frames without printing.
4079
4080 * New directory command
4081
4082'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4083The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4084about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4085with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4086find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4087
4088 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4089
4090For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4091for more details.
4092
4093GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4094two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4095Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4096where the program that you are debugging will run.
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