14fcdf86746dfde3c9311dbd918e5e7ccf1dc766
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.0
5
6 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
7 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
8 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
9
10 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
11 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
12
13 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
14 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
15 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
16 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
17 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
18
19 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
20 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
21 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
22 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
23
24 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
25 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
26
27 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
28 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
29 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
30
31 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
32 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
33 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
34
35 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
36 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
37 environment" command.
38
39 * Completion improvements
40
41 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
42 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
43 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
44 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
45 correctly:
46
47 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
48 (gdb) b function(int)
49
50 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
51 C++ anonymous namespaces:
52
53 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
54 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
55 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
56 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
57
58 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
59 completion support, that better understands what you're
60 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
61 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
62 setting a breakpoint.
63
64 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
65
66 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
67
68 * New command line options (gcore)
69
70 -a
71 Dump all memory mappings.
72
73 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
74
75 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
76 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
77 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
78
79 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
80
81 A::B::func()
82 B::func()
83
84 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
85 on both symbols.
86
87 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
88 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
89 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
90 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
91 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
92 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
93 a breakpoint from Python.
94
95 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
96
97 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
98 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
99 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
100
101 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
102
103 function[abi:cxx11](int)
104 ^^^^^^^^^^^
105
106 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
107 no tag, like:
108
109 (gdb) b function(int)
110
111 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
112
113 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
114
115 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
116
117 * Python Scripting
118
119 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
120 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
121 description of these.
122
123 ** A new command, "rbreak" has been added to the Python API. This
124 command allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints via a
125 regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
126
127 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
128 manual for a further description of this feature.
129
130
131 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
132
133 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
134 specified initial working directory.
135
136 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
137 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
138
139 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
140 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
141
142 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
143 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
144
145 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
146 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
147 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
148 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
149 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
150
151 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
152 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
153 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
154
155 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
156 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
157 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
158 in the *stopped notification.
159
160 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
161 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
162
163 * New remote packets
164
165 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
166 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
167 the inferior when starting it.
168
169 QEnvironmentUnset
170 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
171 before starting the remote inferior.
172
173 QEnvironmentReset
174 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
175 user-set environment variables should be unset).
176
177 QStartupWithShell
178 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
179
180 QSetWorkingDir
181 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
182 working directory.
183
184 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
185 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
186
187 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
188 filter the tests to be run.
189
190 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
191 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
192
193 * New commands
194
195 set|show cwd
196 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
197
198 set|show compile-gcc
199 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
200 with the 'compile' commands.
201
202 set debug separate-debug-file
203 show debug separate-debug-file
204 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
205
206 set dump-excluded-mappings
207 show dump-excluded-mappings
208 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
209 dumped when generating a core file.
210
211 maint info selftests
212 List the registered selftests.
213
214 starti
215 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
216
217 set|show debug or1k
218 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
219
220 set|show print type nested-type-limit
221 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
222 type printer will show.
223
224 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
225 `o' for nexti.
226
227 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
228
229 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
230 'int'.
231
232 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
233 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
234 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
235 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
236
237 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
238 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
239 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
240 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
241 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
242 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
243
244 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
245 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
246 unless you tell it the variable's type:
247
248 (gdb) p var
249 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
250 (gdb) p (float) var
251 $3 = 3.14
252
253 * New native configurations
254
255 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
256 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
257
258 * New targets
259
260 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
261 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
262 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
263
264 * Removed targets and native configurations
265
266 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
267
268 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
269
270 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
271 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
272 available in future Intel CPUs.
273
274 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
275
276 * Python Scripting
277
278 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
279 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
280
281 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
282 instructions.
283
284 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
285
286 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
287
288 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
289 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
290 removed.
291
292 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
293
294 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
295 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
296
297 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
298
299 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
300 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
301 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
302 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
303 features.
304
305 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
306
307 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
308 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
309 debugger.
310
311 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
312
313 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
314 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
315
316 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
317
318 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
319
320 define mycommand
321 set $i = 0
322 while $i < $argc
323 eval "print $arg%d", $i
324 set $i = $i + 1
325 end
326 end
327
328 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
329
330 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
331 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
332
333 * New native configurations
334
335 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
336
337 * New targets
338
339 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
340 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
341
342 * Removed targets and native configurations
343
344 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
345 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
346
347 * New commands
348
349 flash-erase
350 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
351
352 maint print arc arc-instruction address
353 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
354
355 * New options
356
357 set disassembler-options
358 show disassembler-options
359 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
360 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
361 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
362 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
363 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
364
365 * New MI commands
366
367 -target-flash-erase
368 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
369 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
370
371 -file-list-shared-libraries
372 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
373 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
374
375 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
376
377 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
378
379 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
380 default. One must now explicitly configure with
381 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
382 option will be removed in a future release.
383
384 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
385 GDB connection.
386
387 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
388 memory backward from the given address. For example:
389
390 (gdb) bt
391 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
392 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
393 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
394 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
395 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
396 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
397 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
398 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
399 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
400
401 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
402 arrays of dynamic types.
403
404 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
405 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
406 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
407 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
408 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
409 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
410
411 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
412 descriptions.
413
414 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
415 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
416 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
417
418 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
419
420 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
421 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
422 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
423 signal received and code location.
424
425 For example:
426
427 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
428 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
429 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
430 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
431
432 * Rust language support.
433 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
434 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
435 Rust.
436
437 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
438
439 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
440 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
441 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
442 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
443 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
444 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
445 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
446 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
447 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
448 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
449 line.
450
451 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
452
453 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
454 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
455
456 * New commands
457
458 skip -file file
459 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
460 skip -function function
461 skip -rfunction regular-expression
462 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
463 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
464 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
465
466 maint info line-table REGEXP
467 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
468
469 maint selftest
470 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
471
472 new-ui INTERP TTY
473 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
474 using the TTY file for input/output.
475
476 * Python Scripting
477
478 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
479 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
480 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
481 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
482 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
483
484 signal-event EVENTID
485 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
486 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
487 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
488 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
489 signalling an event.
490
491 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
492 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
493 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
494
495 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
496 been removed:
497
498 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
499 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
500 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
501 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
502 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
503 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
504
505 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
506 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
507 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
508 bytecode into native code.
509
510 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
511 recording. For example:
512
513 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
514
515 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
516
517 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
518
519 * New targets
520
521 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
522
523 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
524
525 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
526
527 * Per-inferior thread numbers
528
529 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
530 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
531 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
532
533 (gdb) info threads
534 Id Target Id Frame
535 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
536 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
537 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
538 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
539
540 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
541 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
542 are no longer unique between inferiors.
543
544 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
545 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
546 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
547
548 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
549 IDs.
550
551 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
552 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
553
554 (gdb) thread 2.1
555 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
556 (gdb)
557
558 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
559 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
560 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
561 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
562 threads 2.*".
563
564 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
565 all threads.
566
567 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
568 the current thread.
569
570 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
571 current inferior.
572
573 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
574 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
575 example:
576
577 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
578 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
579
580 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
581
582 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
583
584 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
585 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
586
587 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
588 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
589 clients.
590
591 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
592 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
593 at the same time.
594
595 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
596 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
597 into native code.
598
599 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
600
601 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
602 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
603 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
604
605 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
606 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
607
608 * New commands
609
610 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
611 maint show target-non-stop
612 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
613 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
614 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
615
616 maint set bfd-sharing
617 maint show bfd-sharing
618 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
619
620 set debug bfd-cache
621 show debug bfd-cache
622 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
623
624 set debug fbsd-lwp
625 show debug fbsd-lwp
626 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
627
628 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
629 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
630 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
631
632 set remote thread-events
633 show remote thread-events
634 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
635
636 set ada print-signatures on|off
637 show ada print-signatures"
638 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
639 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
640
641 set max-value-size
642 show max-value-size
643 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
644 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
645 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
646
647 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
648 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
649 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
650 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
651 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
652 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
653
654 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
655 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
656
657 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
658 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
659
660 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
661
662 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
663 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
664 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
665 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
666 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
667 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
668
669 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
670 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
671
672 catch handlers
673 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
674
675 * New remote packets
676
677 exec stop reason
678 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
679
680 exec-events feature in qSupported
681 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
682 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
683 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
684 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
685
686 vCtrlC
687 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
688 non-stop mode.
689
690 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
691 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
692
693 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
694 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
695
696 QThreadEvents
697 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
698 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
699 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
700 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
701 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
702 stop for that same thread.
703
704 N stop reply
705 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
706 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
707 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
708
709 QCatchSyscalls
710 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
711 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
712
713 syscall_entry stop reason
714 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
715
716 syscall_return stop reason
717 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
718
719 * Extended-remote exec events
720
721 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
722 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
723 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
724
725 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
726 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
727 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
728
729 * Thread names in remote protocol
730
731 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
732 thread.
733
734 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
735
736 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
737 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
738 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
739 fork and exec catchpoints.
740
741 * Remote syscall events
742
743 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
744 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
745
746 set remote catch-syscall-packet
747 show remote catch-syscall-packet
748 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
749
750 * MI changes
751
752 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
753 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
754 left.
755
756 * Python Scripting
757
758 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
759 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
760 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
761 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
762 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
763 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
764
765 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
766
767 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
768 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
769 including advance SIMD instructions.
770
771 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
772
773 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
774 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
775 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
776 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
777 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
778 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
779 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
780
781 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
782 cpu information :
783 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
784
785 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
786 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
787 remote serial I/O.
788
789 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
790 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
791 and may include things like its command line arguments.
792
793 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
794 is now available on all platforms.
795
796 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
797 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
798 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
799 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
800 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
801 backward compatibility.
802
803 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
804 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
805 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
806 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
807
808 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
809 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
810 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
811 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
812 packets" below.
813
814 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
815
816 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
817
818 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
819 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
820 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
821 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
822 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
823 See "New remote packets" below.
824
825 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
826 available register groups, including target specific groups.
827
828 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
829 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
830 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
831 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
832 are ignored.
833
834 * Guile Scripting
835
836 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
837
838 * Python Scripting
839
840 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
841 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
842 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
843 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
844 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
845 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
846 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
847 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
848 "const" version of the value respectively.
849
850 * New commands
851
852 maint print symbol-cache
853 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
854
855 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
856 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
857
858 maint flush-symbol-cache
859 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
860
861 record btrace bts
862 record bts
863 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
864
865 compile print
866 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
867
868 tui enable
869 tui disable
870 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
871
872 show mpx bound
873 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
874 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
875
876 record btrace pt
877 record pt
878 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
879
880 maint info btrace
881 Print information about branch tracing internals.
882
883 maint btrace packet-history
884 Print the raw branch tracing data.
885
886 maint btrace clear-packet-history
887 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
888
889 maint btrace clear
890 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
891 anew by the next "record" command.
892
893 * New options
894
895 set debug dwarf-die
896 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
897 show debug dwarf-die
898 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
899
900 set debug dwarf-read
901 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
902 show debug dwarf-read
903 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
904
905 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
906 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
907 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
908 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
909
910 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
911 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
912 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
913 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
914
915 set debug dwarf-line
916 show debug dwarf-line
917 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
918
919 set max-completions
920 show max-completions
921 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
922 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
923 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
924 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
925
926 set history remove-duplicates
927 show history remove-duplicates
928 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
929
930 maint set symbol-cache-size
931 maint show symbol-cache-size
932 Control the size of the symbol cache.
933
934 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
935 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
936 BTS format.
937 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
938 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
939
940 set debug linux-namespaces
941 show debug linux-namespaces
942 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
943
944 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
945 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
946 Intel Processor Trace format.
947 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
948 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
949
950 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
951 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
952 packet history.
953
954 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
955 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
956
957 * Python/Guile scripting
958
959 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
960 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
961
962 * New remote packets
963
964 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
965 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
966
967 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
968 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
969
970 Qbtrace:pt
971 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
972 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
973 qSupported query.
974
975 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
976 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
977 Trace format.
978
979 swbreak stop reason
980 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
981 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
982 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
983 mode operation.
984
985 hwbreak stop reason
986 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
987 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
988
989 vFile:fstat:
990 Return information about files on the remote system.
991
992 qXfer:exec-file:read
993 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
994 create a process running on the remote system.
995
996 vFile:setfs:
997 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
998 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
999 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1000 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1001
1002 fork stop reason
1003 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1004
1005 vfork stop reason
1006 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1007
1008 vforkdone stop reason
1009 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1010 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1011
1012 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1013 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1014 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1015 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1016 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1017 whether these features are enabled.
1018
1019 * Extended-remote fork events
1020
1021 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1022 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1023 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1024 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1025
1026 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1027 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1028 the btrace record target.
1029 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1030
1031 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1032 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1033
1034 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1035 targets.
1036
1037 * Removed command line options
1038
1039 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1040
1041 * Removed targets and native configurations
1042
1043 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1044 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1045
1046 * New configure options
1047
1048 --with-intel-pt
1049 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1050 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1051
1052 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1053 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1054 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1055 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1056
1057 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1058
1059 * Python Scripting
1060
1061 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1062
1063 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1064
1065 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1066
1067 * Python Scripting
1068
1069 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1070 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1071 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1072 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1073 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1074 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1075 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1076 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1077 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1078 selecting a new file to debug.
1079 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1080 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1081
1082 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1083 inferior.
1084
1085 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1086 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1087 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1088 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1089
1090 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1091
1092 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1093 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1094 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1095 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1096
1097 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1098 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1099 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1100 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1101 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1102 interface with this new feature are:
1103
1104 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1105 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1106
1107 * New commands
1108
1109 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1110 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1111 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1112 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1113 as "maint demangler-warning".
1114
1115 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1116 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1117
1118 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1119 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1120 scripts.
1121
1122 maint print user-registers
1123 List all currently available "user" registers.
1124
1125 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1126 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1127 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1128
1129 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1130 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1131 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1132 provided.
1133
1134 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1135 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1136 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1137 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1138 at resume time.
1139
1140 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1141 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1142 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1143 switched threads meanwhile.
1144
1145 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1146
1147 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1148 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1149 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1150 is now the default mode.
1151
1152 * New options
1153
1154 set debug symbol-lookup
1155 show debug symbol-lookup
1156 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1157
1158 * MI changes
1159
1160 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1161 inferiors that have exited.
1162
1163 * New targets
1164
1165 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1166
1167 * Removed targets
1168
1169 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1170
1171 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1172 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1173 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1174 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1175 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1176
1177 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1178 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1179 its alias "share", instead.
1180
1181 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1182
1183 * New command line options
1184
1185 -D data-directory
1186 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1187
1188 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1189 as specified in ISO C99.
1190
1191 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1192 with or without disassembly.
1193
1194 * Guile scripting
1195
1196 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1197 available is determined at configure time.
1198 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1199 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1200
1201 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1202
1203 guile [code]
1204 gu [code]
1205 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1206
1207 guile-repl
1208 gr
1209 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1210
1211 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1212 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1213
1214 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1215 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1216
1217 * New options
1218
1219 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1220 show print symbol-loading
1221 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1222 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1223 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1224 becomes less useful.
1225
1226 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1227 show guile print-stack
1228 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1229
1230 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1231 show auto-load guile-scripts
1232 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1233
1234 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1235 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1236 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1237 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1238 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1239 usage of this option.
1240
1241 set auto-connect-native-target
1242
1243 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1244 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1245 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1246
1247 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1248 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1249 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1250
1251 maint set target-async (on|off)
1252 maint show target-async
1253 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1254 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1255 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1256 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1257
1258 set mi-async (on|off)
1259 show mi-async
1260 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1261 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1262
1263 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1264 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1265
1266 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1267 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1268 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1269 "set target-async on" command.
1270
1271 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1272
1273 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1274 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1275 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1276 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1277 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1278
1279 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1280 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1281 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1282
1283 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1284 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1285 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1286 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1287 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1288 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1289 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1290
1291 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1292 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1293
1294 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1295 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1296 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1297
1298 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1299 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1300 memory or registers.
1301
1302 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1303
1304 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1305 remote. It now works with all targets.
1306
1307 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1308 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1309 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1310 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1311 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1312 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1313 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1314 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1315 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1316 target-stack".
1317
1318 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1319 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1320 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1321
1322 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1323
1324 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1325 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1326 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1327
1328 * New remote packets
1329
1330 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1331 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1332 branch trace incrementally.
1333
1334 * Python Scripting
1335
1336 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1337 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1338 available.
1339 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1340 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1341 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1342 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1343 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1344
1345 * New targets
1346 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1347
1348 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1349 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1350 its alias "share", instead.
1351
1352 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1353 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1354 instead.
1355
1356 * MI changes
1357
1358 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1359 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1360 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1361 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1362 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1363 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1364 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1365 commands and CLI execution commands.
1366
1367 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1368
1369 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1370 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1371 recording has been added.
1372
1373 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1374
1375 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1376 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1377
1378 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1379 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1380 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1381 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1382 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1383 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1384 "void".
1385
1386 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1387
1388 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1389
1390 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1391 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1392 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1393 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1394
1395 (gdb) p $rax
1396 $1 = <not saved>
1397
1398 (gdb) info registers rax
1399 rax <not saved>
1400
1401 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1402 "*value not available*".
1403
1404 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1405 to binaries.
1406
1407 * Python scripting
1408
1409 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1410 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1411 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1412 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1413 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1414 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1415
1416 * New targets
1417
1418 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1419 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1420 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1421
1422 * Removed native configurations
1423
1424 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1425 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1426
1427 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1428 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1429 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1430 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1431 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1432 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1433 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1434
1435 * New commands:
1436 catch rethrow
1437 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1438 maint check-psymtabs
1439 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1440 maint check-symtabs
1441 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1442 maint expand-symtabs
1443 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1444
1445 show configuration
1446 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1447
1448 maint set|show per-command
1449 maint set|show per-command space
1450 maint set|show per-command time
1451 maint set|show per-command symtab
1452 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1453
1454 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1455 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1456 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1457 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1458 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1459
1460 info exceptions
1461 info exceptions REGEXP
1462 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1463 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1464 are listed.
1465
1466 * New options
1467
1468 set debug symfile off|on
1469 show debug symfile
1470 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1471 symbol tables within those files
1472
1473 set print raw frame-arguments
1474 show print raw frame-arguments
1475 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1476 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1477
1478 set remote trace-status-packet
1479 show remote trace-status-packet
1480 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1481
1482 set debug nios2
1483 show debug nios2
1484 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1485
1486 set range-stepping
1487 show range-stepping
1488 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1489
1490 set startup-with-shell
1491 show startup-with-shell
1492 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1493 directly.
1494
1495 set code-cache
1496 show code-cache
1497 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1498 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1499
1500 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1501 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1502 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1503 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1504 "set height 0".
1505
1506 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1507 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1508 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1509
1510 * New command-line options
1511 --configuration
1512 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1513
1514 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1515 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1516
1517 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1518 GDB command gcore.
1519
1520 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1521
1522 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1523 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1524
1525 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1526 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1527
1528 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1529 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1530 due to an uncaught signal.
1531
1532 * MI changes
1533
1534 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1535 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1536 command, which should contain "language-option".
1537
1538 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1539 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1540
1541 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1542 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1543 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1544 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1545 "undefined-command-error-code".
1546
1547 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1548 Trace Format now.
1549
1550 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1551
1552 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1553 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1554 are displayed.
1555
1556 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1557 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1558
1559 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1560 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1561 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1562
1563 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1564 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1565 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1566 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1567 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1568 "exec-run-start-option".
1569
1570 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1571 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1572
1573 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1574 the new "info exceptions" command.
1575
1576 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1577 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1578 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1579 ** ElinOS
1580 ** Wind River Linux
1581
1582 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1583 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1584 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1585 below.
1586
1587 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1588 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1589
1590 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1591 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1592 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1593
1594 * New remote packets
1595
1596 vCont;r
1597
1598 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1599 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1600 involvemement at each single-step.
1601
1602 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1603 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1604 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1605 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1606 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1607 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1608 speedup.
1609
1610 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1611
1612 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1613 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1614
1615 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1616 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1617 trace state variables.
1618
1619 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1620 target.
1621
1622 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1623 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1624
1625 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1626
1627 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1628 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1629 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1630 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1631
1632 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1633
1634 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1635 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1636 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1637 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1638
1639 set|show record full insn-number-max
1640 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1641 set|show record full memory-query
1642
1643 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1644 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1645 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1646 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1647 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1648
1649 record btrace
1650
1651 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1652 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1653
1654 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1655 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1656 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1657
1658 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1659 instruction granularity
1660
1661 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1662 function granularity
1663
1664 * New native configurations
1665
1666 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1667 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1668 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1669 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1670
1671 * New targets
1672
1673 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1674 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1675 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1676 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1677 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1678
1679 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1680 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1681 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1682 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1683 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1684 --data-directory command-line option.
1685
1686 * New command line options:
1687
1688 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1689 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1690
1691 * Removed command line options
1692
1693 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1694 Emacs.
1695
1696 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1697 type formatting.
1698
1699 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1700
1701 * Python scripting
1702
1703 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1704
1705 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1706
1707 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1708
1709 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1710
1711 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1712 of architecture in the Python API.
1713
1714 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1715 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1716
1717 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1718
1719 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1720 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1721 ** $_strlen(str)
1722 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1723
1724 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1725 given an argument.
1726
1727 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1728 default for GCC since November 2000.
1729
1730 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1731
1732 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1733 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1734
1735 * New configure options
1736
1737 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1738 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1739 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1740 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1741 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1742 options allow the user to override that default.
1743 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1744 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1745 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1746
1747 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1748
1749 catch signal
1750 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1751 conditions to be attached.
1752
1753 maint info bfds
1754 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1755
1756 python-interactive [command]
1757 pi [command]
1758 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1759 and print the result of expressions.
1760
1761 py [command]
1762 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1763
1764 enable type-printer [name]...
1765 disable type-printer [name]...
1766 Enable or disable type printers.
1767
1768 * Removed commands
1769
1770 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1771 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1772 instead.
1773
1774 * New options
1775
1776 set print type methods (on|off)
1777 show print type methods
1778 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1779 The default is to show them.
1780
1781 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1782 show print type typedefs
1783 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1784 The default is to show them.
1785
1786 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1787 show filename-display
1788 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1789 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1790
1791 set trace-buffer-size
1792 show trace-buffer-size
1793 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1794
1795 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1796 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1797 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1798
1799 set debug aarch64
1800 show debug aarch64
1801 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1802 The default is off.
1803
1804 set debug coff-pe-read
1805 show debug coff-pe-read
1806 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1807 exported symbols.
1808
1809 set debug mach-o
1810 show debug mach-o
1811 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1812 processing.
1813
1814 set debug notification
1815 show debug notification
1816 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1817
1818 * MI changes
1819
1820 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1821 "=cmd-param-changed".
1822 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1823 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1824 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1825 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1826 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1827 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1828 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1829 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1830 "=memory-changed".
1831 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1832 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1833 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1834 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1835 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1836 library load/unload events.
1837 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1838 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1839 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1840 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1841 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1842 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1843 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1844 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1845
1846 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1847 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1848 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1849 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1850
1851 * New remote packets
1852
1853 QTBuffer:size
1854 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1855 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1856
1857 Qbtrace:bts
1858 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1859 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1860 qSupported query.
1861
1862 Qbtrace:off
1863 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1864 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1865
1866 qXfer:btrace:read
1867 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1868 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1869
1870 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1871
1872 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1873 for more x32 ABI info.
1874
1875 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1876
1877 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1878
1879 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1880 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1881 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1882 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1883 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1884 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1885 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1886 "info os msg" lists message queues
1887 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1888
1889 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1890 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1891 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1892 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1893 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1894 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1895
1896 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1897 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1898 record/replay support.
1899
1900 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1901
1902 * Python scripting
1903
1904 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1905 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1906
1907 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1908
1909 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1910 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1911
1912 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1913
1914 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1915 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1916
1917 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1918 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1919 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1920 symbol's value.
1921
1922 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1923 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1924
1925 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1926 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1927 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1928
1929 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1930 object associated with a PC value.
1931
1932 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1933 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1934
1935 * Go language support.
1936 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1937 language.
1938
1939 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1940 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1941
1942 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1943 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1944
1945 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1946 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1947 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1948 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1949 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1950 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1951
1952 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1953 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1954 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1955 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1956
1957 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1958 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1959
1960 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1961 since December 2007.
1962
1963 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1964 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1965 command does. For instance:
1966
1967 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1968
1969 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1970 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1971 created, using the "condition" command.
1972
1973 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1974 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1975
1976 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1977
1978 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1979 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1980 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1981 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1982 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1983 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1984 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1985 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1986
1987 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1988 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1989 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1990 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1991 the .gdb_index section.
1992
1993 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1994
1995 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1996 target.
1997
1998 * MI changes
1999
2000 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2001
2002 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2003
2004 * New commands
2005
2006 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2007 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2008 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2009
2010 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2011 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2012
2013 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2014 several hits.
2015
2016 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2017 C++ and Java objects.
2018
2019 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2020 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2021 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2022 configured with '--with-python'.
2023
2024 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2025 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2026 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2027 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2028 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2029 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2030 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2031
2032 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2033 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2034 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2035 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2036
2037 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2038 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2039 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2040 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2041
2042 ** "set print symbol"
2043 "show print symbol"
2044 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2045 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2046 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2047
2048 * Deprecated commands
2049
2050 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2051 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2052
2053 * New targets
2054
2055 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2056 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2057
2058 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2059 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2060 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2061 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2062 evaluates to true.
2063
2064 * New options
2065
2066 set mips compression
2067 show mips compression
2068 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2069 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2070 mips16
2071 micromips
2072 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2073
2074 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2075 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2076 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2077 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2078 available mode.
2079 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2080 target.
2081
2082 set auto-load off
2083 Disable auto-loading globally.
2084
2085 show auto-load
2086 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2087
2088 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2089 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2090 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2091
2092 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2093 show auto-load python-scripts
2094 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2095
2096 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2097 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2098 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2099
2100 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2101 show auto-load libthread-db
2102 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2103
2104 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2105 show auto-load scripts-directory
2106 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2107 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2108 of the directories listed by this option.
2109 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2110
2111 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2112 show auto-load safe-path
2113 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2114 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2115
2116 set debug auto-load on|off
2117 show debug auto-load
2118 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2119
2120 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2121 show dprintf-style
2122 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2123 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2124 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2125 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2126
2127 set dprintf-function <expr>
2128 show dprintf-function
2129 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2130 show dprintf-channel
2131 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2132 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2133
2134 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2135 show disconnected-dprintf
2136 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2137 after GDB disconnects.
2138
2139 * New configure options
2140
2141 --with-auto-load-dir
2142 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2143 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2144 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2145 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2146 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2147
2148 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2149 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2150 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2151
2152 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2153 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2154 security feature.
2155
2156 * New remote packets
2157
2158 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2159
2160 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2161 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2162 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2163 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2164
2165 QProgramSignals:
2166
2167 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2168 program without GDB involvement.
2169
2170 * New command line options
2171
2172 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2173 before loading inferior.
2174 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2175 execute it before loading inferior.
2176
2177 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2178
2179 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2180 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2181 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2182 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2183 inferior changes.
2184
2185 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2186 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2187
2188 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2189 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2190 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2191 target hardware watchpoint.
2192
2193 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2194 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2195 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2196 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2197
2198 * Python scripting
2199
2200 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2201 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2202 existing one.
2203
2204 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2205 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2206 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2207 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2208 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2209 the stack trace.
2210
2211 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2212 Python API.
2213
2214 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2215 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2216 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2217 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2218 corresponding value.
2219
2220 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2221 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2222 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2223 on GDB start-up.
2224
2225 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2226 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2227 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2228 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2229
2230 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2231
2232 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2233 "gdb.breakpoints".
2234
2235 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2236 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2237 available in the CLI.
2238
2239 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2240 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2241 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2242 "some_type.items()".
2243
2244 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2245 new object file.
2246
2247 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2248 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2249 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2250 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2251 any anonymous fields.
2252
2253 * MI changes
2254
2255 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2256 "solib-event".
2257
2258 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2259 "=breakpoint-modified".
2260
2261 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2262
2263 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2264 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2265 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2266 lives.
2267
2268 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2269 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2270 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2271 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2272 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2273
2274 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2275 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2276
2277 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2278 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2279 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2280 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2281 use this option to specify where to find it.
2282
2283 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2284 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2285 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2286 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2287 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2288 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2289 section in the user manual for more details.
2290
2291 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2292 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2293 become available after that.
2294
2295 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2296
2297 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2298 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2299 gcc version 4.7.
2300
2301 * New commands
2302
2303 !SHELL COMMAND
2304 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2305 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2306
2307 * Changed commands
2308
2309 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2310 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2311 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2312
2313 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2314 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2315 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2316
2317 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2318 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2319 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2320 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2321 name starts with a hyphen.
2322
2323 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2324 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2325 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2326 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2327 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2328 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2329 number of bytes that will be collected.
2330
2331 tstart [NOTES]
2332 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2333 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2334 setting the variable trace-notes.
2335
2336 tstop [NOTES]
2337 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2338 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2339 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2340 trace-stop-notes.
2341
2342 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2343 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2344 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2345 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2346 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2347 is running.
2348
2349 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2350 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2351 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2352
2353 * New options
2354
2355 set debug dwarf2-read
2356 show debug dwarf2-read
2357 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2358 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2359
2360 set debug symtab-create
2361 show debug symtab-create
2362 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2363 creation. The default is off.
2364
2365 set extended-prompt
2366 show extended-prompt
2367 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2368 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2369 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2370 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2371 prompt is displayed.
2372
2373 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2374 show print entry-values
2375 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2376 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2377 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2378
2379 set debug entry-values
2380 show debug entry-values
2381 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2382 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2383
2384 set basenames-may-differ
2385 show basenames-may-differ
2386 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2387 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2388 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2389 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2390 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2391 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2392 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2393 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2394
2395 set trace-user
2396 show trace-user
2397 set trace-notes
2398 show trace-notes
2399 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2400 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2401 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2402 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2403
2404 set trace-stop-notes
2405 show trace-stop-notes
2406 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2407 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2408 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2409 started by someone else.
2410
2411 * New remote packets
2412
2413 QTEnable
2414
2415 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2416
2417 QTDisable
2418
2419 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2420
2421 QTNotes
2422
2423 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2424
2425 qTP
2426
2427 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2428
2429 qTMinFTPILen
2430
2431 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2432 be placed.
2433
2434 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2435 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2436
2437 * New targets
2438
2439 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2440
2441 * New Simulators
2442
2443 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2444
2445 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2446
2447 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2448
2449 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2450
2451 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2452 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2453 matches the given regular expression.
2454
2455 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2456
2457 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2458 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2459
2460 * New command line options
2461
2462 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2463 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2464
2465 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2466 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2467
2468 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2469 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2470 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2471
2472 * GDB now understands thread names.
2473
2474 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2475 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2476
2477 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2478 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2479
2480 * OpenCL C
2481 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2482 has been integrated into GDB.
2483
2484 * Python scripting
2485
2486 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2487 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2488 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2489
2490 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2491 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2492 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2493 and allows for more dynamic content.
2494
2495 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2496 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2497 have an is_valid method.
2498
2499 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2500 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2501 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2502
2503 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2504
2505 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2506 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2507 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2508 that function like so:
2509
2510 result = some_value (10,20)
2511
2512 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2513 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2514 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2515
2516 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2517 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2518 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2519 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2520 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2521
2522 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2523 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2524
2525 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2526
2527 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2528 selected thread.
2529
2530 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2531 holds the thread's name.
2532
2533 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2534 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2535 occurring in the process being debugged.
2536 The following events are currently supported:
2537 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2538 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2539 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2540
2541 * C++ Improvements:
2542
2543 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2544 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2545
2546 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2547
2548 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2549 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2550 was added to GCC 4.5.
2551
2552 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2553 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2554 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2555 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2556 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2557 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2558
2559 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2560 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2561 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2562 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2563 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2564
2565 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2566 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2567 execution to a label.
2568
2569 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2570 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2571 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2572 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2573
2574 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2575 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2576 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2577 of scope.
2578
2579 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2580
2581 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2582 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2583 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2584 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2585 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2586 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2587
2588 (gdb) info threads
2589 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2590
2591 While now you see this:
2592
2593 (gdb) info threads
2594 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2595
2596 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2597 dumps.
2598
2599 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2600 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2601 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2602 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2603
2604 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2605 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2606 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2607 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2608 section in the user manual for more details.
2609
2610 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2611
2612 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2613 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2614
2615 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2616
2617 * New native configurations
2618
2619 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2620
2621 * New targets:
2622
2623 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2624
2625 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2626 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2627 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2628 in the GDB user manual.
2629
2630 * Guile support was removed.
2631
2632 * New features in the GNU simulator
2633
2634 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2635
2636 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2637
2638 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2639
2640 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2641
2642 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2643 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2644 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2645 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2646 was always disabled for such configurations.
2647
2648 * C++ Improvements:
2649
2650 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2651
2652 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2653 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2654 For example:
2655 namespace A
2656 {
2657 class B { };
2658 void foo (B) { }
2659 }
2660 ...
2661 A::B b
2662 foo(b)
2663 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2664 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2665 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2666
2667 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2668
2669 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2670 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2671 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2672 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2673 entry.
2674 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2675 mentioned flavors of operators.
2676
2677 ** static const class members
2678
2679 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2680 class definition has been fixed.
2681
2682 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2683
2684 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2685 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2686 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2687 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2688 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2689 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2690
2691 * Static tracepoints
2692
2693 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2694 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2695 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2696 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2697 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2698 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2699 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2700 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2701 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2702 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2703 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2704 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2705 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2706 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2707 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2708 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2709 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2710 the "New remote packets" section below.
2711
2712 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2713
2714 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2715 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2716 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2717 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2718
2719 * Observer mode
2720
2721 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2722 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2723 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2724 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2725 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2726 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2727 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2728
2729 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2730 current thread.
2731
2732 * New remote packets
2733
2734 qGetTIBAddr
2735
2736 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2737
2738 qRelocInsn
2739
2740 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2741 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2742 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2743 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2744 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2745 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2746
2747 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2748
2749 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2750
2751 qTSTMat
2752
2753 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2754 program.
2755
2756 qXfer:statictrace:read
2757
2758 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2759 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2760 to gdb's qSupported query.
2761
2762 QAllow
2763
2764 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2765
2766 QTDPsrc
2767
2768 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2769 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2770
2771 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2772 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2773 a directory.
2774
2775 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2776
2777 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2778 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2779 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2780 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2781
2782 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2783 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2784 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2785 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2786 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2787 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2788 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2789
2790 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2791 for static tracepoints support.
2792
2793 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2794
2795 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2796 it understands register description.
2797
2798 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2799
2800 * X86 general purpose registers
2801
2802 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2803 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2804 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2805 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2806 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2807
2808 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2809 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2810 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2811 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2812 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2813 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2814
2815 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2816 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2817 in the specified file.
2818
2819 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2820 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2821 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2822 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2823 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2824 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2825 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2826 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2827 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2828 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2829
2830 * New commands
2831
2832 eval template, expressions...
2833 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2834 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2835
2836 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2837 show target-file-system-kind
2838 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2839 names.
2840
2841 save breakpoints <filename>
2842 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2843 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2844 definitions, use the `source' command.
2845
2846 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2847 is now deprecated.
2848
2849 info static-tracepoint-markers
2850 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2851
2852 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2853 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2854 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2855
2856 set observer on|off
2857 show observer
2858 Enable and disable observer mode.
2859
2860 set may-write-registers on|off
2861 set may-write-memory on|off
2862 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2863 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2864 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2865 set may-interrupt on|off
2866 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2867 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2868 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2869 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2870 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2871 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2872 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2873
2874 set record memory-query on|off
2875 show record memory-query
2876 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2877 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2878
2879 * Changed commands
2880
2881 disassemble
2882 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2883
2884 * Python scripting
2885
2886 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2887 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2888 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2889 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2890 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2891
2892 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2893 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2894 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2895 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2896
2897 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2898 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2899
2900 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2901
2902 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2903
2904 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2905
2906 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2907 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2908 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2909
2910 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2911 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2912 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2913 regular breakpoints.
2914
2915 * New targets
2916
2917 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2918
2919 * D language support.
2920 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2921 language.
2922
2923 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2924 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2925 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2926 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2927 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2928
2929 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2930 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2931 conditions of the form:
2932
2933 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2934
2935 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2936 interface mentioned above.
2937
2938 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2939
2940 * C++ Improvements
2941
2942 ** Namespace Support
2943
2944 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2945 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2946 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2947 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2948 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2949
2950 ** Bug Fixes
2951
2952 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2953 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2954 qualified name.
2955
2956 ** Cast Operators
2957
2958 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2959 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2960
2961 * New targets
2962
2963 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2964 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2965
2966 * New Simulators
2967
2968 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2969 Renesas RX rx
2970
2971 * Multi-program debugging.
2972
2973 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2974 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2975 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2976 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2977 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2978 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2979 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2980 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2981
2982 * New tracing features
2983
2984 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2985
2986 ** Trace state variables
2987
2988 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2989 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2990 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2991 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2992 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2993 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2994 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2995 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2996 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2997 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2998
2999 ** Fast tracepoints
3000
3001 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3002 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3003 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3004 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3005 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3006 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3007 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3008 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3009 the regular trace command.
3010
3011 ** Disconnected tracing
3012
3013 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3014 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3015 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3016 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3017 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3018
3019 ** Trace files
3020
3021 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3022 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3023 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3024 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3025 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3026 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3027 <name>".
3028
3029 ** Circular trace buffer
3030
3031 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3032 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3033 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3034 not be available for all target agents.
3035
3036 * Changed commands
3037
3038 disassemble
3039 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3040 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3041
3042 info variables
3043 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3044 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3045
3046 source
3047 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3048 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3049 support.
3050
3051 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3052 "set script-extension" (see below).
3053
3054 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3055
3056 record save [<FILENAME>]
3057 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3058 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3059
3060 record restore <FILENAME>
3061 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3062 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3063
3064 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3065 Add a new inferior.
3066
3067 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3068 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3069 inferior has loaded.
3070
3071 remove-inferior ID
3072 Remove an inferior.
3073
3074 maint info program-spaces
3075 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3076
3077 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3078 show remote interrupt-sequence
3079 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3080 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3081 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3082 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3083 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3084
3085 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3086 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3087 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3088 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3089 Linux kernel.
3090
3091 set remotebreak [on | off]
3092 show remotebreak
3093 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3094
3095 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3096 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3097
3098 info tvariables
3099 List trace state variables and their values.
3100
3101 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3102 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3103
3104 teval EXPR, ...
3105 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3106 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3107
3108 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3109 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3110
3111 * New expression syntax
3112
3113 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3114 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3115
3116 * New options
3117
3118 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3119 show follow-exec-mode
3120 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3121 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3122 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3123
3124 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3125 show default-collect
3126 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3127 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3128 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3129
3130 set disconnected-tracing
3131 show disconnected-tracing
3132 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3133 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3134 upon disconnection.
3135
3136 set circular-trace-buffer
3137 show circular-trace-buffer
3138 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3139 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3140 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3141 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3142
3143 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3144 show script-extension
3145 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3146 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3147 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3148 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3149 evaluation failed.
3150 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3151
3152 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3153 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3154 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3155 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3156 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3157 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3158 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3159 is on.
3160
3161 * Python API Improvements
3162
3163 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3164 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3165 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3166
3167 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3168 `is_base_class' attribute.
3169
3170 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3171
3172 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3173 evaluate an expression.
3174
3175 * New remote packets
3176
3177 QTDV
3178 Define a trace state variable.
3179
3180 qTV
3181 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3182
3183 QTDisconnected
3184 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3185
3186 QTBuffer:circular
3187 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3188
3189 qTfP, qTsP
3190 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3191
3192 * Bug fixes
3193
3194 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3195
3196 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3197 much more reliable. In particular:
3198 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3199 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3200 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3201 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3202 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3203 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3204 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3205 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3206 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3207 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3208 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3209 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3210 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3211 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3212 non-threaded programs.
3213
3214 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3215 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3216 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3217 executable program.
3218
3219 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3220
3221 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3222 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3223 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3224 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3225 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3226
3227 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3228 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3229 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3230 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3231 for tracepoint actions.
3232
3233 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3234 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3235 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3236
3237 * Process record and replay
3238
3239 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3240 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3241 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3242 execute commands.
3243
3244 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3245 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3246 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3247 reverse execution.
3248
3249 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3250 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3251 2.6.28 or later.
3252
3253 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3254 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3255 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3256 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3257 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3258 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3259 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3260 the installation instructions for more information.
3261
3262 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3263 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3264 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3265 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3266
3267 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3268 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3269
3270 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3271 now complete on file names.
3272
3273 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3274 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3275 For instance, consider:
3276
3277 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3278 # struct example variable;
3279 (gdb) p variable.
3280
3281 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3282 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3283
3284 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3285 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3286
3287 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3288 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3289 macros.
3290
3291 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3292 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3293 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3294
3295 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3296 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3297 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3298 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3299
3300 * New remote packets
3301
3302 qSearch:memory:
3303 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3304
3305 QStartNoAckMode
3306 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3307 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3308 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3309
3310 vKill
3311 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3312 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3313
3314 qXfer:osdata:read
3315 Obtains additional operating system information
3316
3317 qXfer:siginfo:read
3318 qXfer:siginfo:write
3319 Read or write additional signal information.
3320
3321 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3322
3323 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3324 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3325 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3326
3327 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3328 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3329
3330 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3331 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3332 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3333
3334 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3335 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3336
3337 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3338
3339 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3340
3341 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3342 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3343
3344 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3345 list of section offsets.
3346
3347 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3348 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3349 have also been fixed.
3350
3351 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3352 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3353 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3354
3355 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3356 example, given:
3357
3358 template<typename T> class C { };
3359 C<char const *> c;
3360
3361 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3362
3363 ptype C<char const *>
3364 ptype C<char const*>
3365 ptype C<const char *>
3366 ptype C<const char*>
3367
3368 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3369
3370 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3371 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3372
3373 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3374 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3375 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3376
3377 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3378 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3379
3380 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3381 gdbserver.
3382
3383 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3384 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3385
3386 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3387 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3388 as appropriate.
3389
3390 * Python scripting
3391
3392 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3393 available is determined at configure time.
3394
3395 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3396
3397 * Ada tasking support
3398
3399 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3400 been introduced:
3401
3402 info tasks
3403 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3404 info task N
3405 Print detailed information about task number N.
3406 task
3407 Print the task number of the current task.
3408 task N
3409 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3410
3411 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3412 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3413
3414 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3415
3416 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3417 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3418 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3419 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3420 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3421 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3422 below.
3423
3424 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3425 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3426 information.
3427
3428 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3429 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3430 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3431 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3432 more information.
3433
3434 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3435
3436 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3437 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3438 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3439 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3440 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3441
3442 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3443 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3444 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3445 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3446 --enable-targets configure option.
3447
3448 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3449
3450 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3451 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3452 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3453 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3454 section in the user manual for more information.
3455
3456 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3457 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3458 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3459 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3460 extensions on linux targets.
3461
3462 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3463
3464 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3465 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3466 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3467 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3468 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3469 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3470 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3471 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3472 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3473
3474 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3475 val1 [, val2, ...]
3476 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3477
3478 maint set python print-stack
3479 maint show python print-stack
3480 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3481
3482 python [CODE]
3483 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3484
3485 macro define
3486 macro list
3487 macro undef
3488 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3489 interactively.
3490
3491 info os processes
3492 Show operating system information about processes.
3493
3494 info inferiors
3495 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3496
3497 inferior NUM
3498 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3499
3500 detach inferior NUM
3501 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3502
3503 kill inferior NUM
3504 Kill inferior number NUM.
3505
3506 * New options
3507
3508 set spu stop-on-load
3509 show spu stop-on-load
3510 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3511
3512 set spu auto-flush-cache
3513 show spu auto-flush-cache
3514 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3515 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3516
3517 set sh calling-convention
3518 show sh calling-convention
3519 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3520
3521 set debug timestamp
3522 show debug timestamp
3523 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3524
3525 set disassemble-next-line
3526 show disassemble-next-line
3527 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3528 the debuggee stops.
3529
3530 set remote noack-packet
3531 show remote noack-packet
3532 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3533 under "New remote packets."
3534
3535 set remote query-attached-packet
3536 show remote query-attached-packet
3537 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3538
3539 set remote read-siginfo-object
3540 show remote read-siginfo-object
3541 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3542 packet.
3543
3544 set remote write-siginfo-object
3545 show remote write-siginfo-object
3546 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3547 packet.
3548
3549 set remote reverse-continue
3550 show remote reverse-continue
3551 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3552
3553 set remote reverse-step
3554 show remote reverse-step
3555 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3556
3557 set displaced-stepping
3558 show displaced-stepping
3559 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3560 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3561 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3562
3563 set debug displaced
3564 show debug displaced
3565 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3566
3567 maint set internal-error
3568 maint show internal-error
3569 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3570
3571 maint set internal-warning
3572 maint show internal-warning
3573 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3574
3575 set exec-wrapper
3576 show exec-wrapper
3577 unset exec-wrapper
3578 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3579
3580 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3581 show multiple-symbols
3582 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3583 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3584 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3585
3586 set breakpoint always-inserted
3587 show breakpoint always-inserted
3588 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3589 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3590 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3591
3592 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3593 show arm fallback-mode
3594 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3595 show arm force-mode
3596 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3597 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3598 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3599 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3600
3601 set disable-randomization
3602 show disable-randomization
3603 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3604 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3605 multiple debugging sessions.
3606
3607 set non-stop
3608 show non-stop
3609 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3610 a breakpoint.
3611
3612 set target-async
3613 show target-async
3614 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3615 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3616 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3617 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3618
3619 set target-wide-charset
3620 show target-wide-charset
3621 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3622 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3623
3624 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3625 show tcp auto-retry
3626 set tcp connect-timeout
3627 show tcp connect-timeout
3628 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3629 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3630 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3631
3632 set libthread-db-search-path
3633 show libthread-db-search-path
3634 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3635 libthread_db.
3636
3637 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3638 show schedule-multiple
3639 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3640 the current process.
3641
3642 set stack-cache
3643 show stack-cache
3644 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3645 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3646 affecting correctness.
3647
3648 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3649 show interactive-mode
3650 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3651 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3652 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3653 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3654 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3655
3656 * Removed commands
3657
3658 info forks
3659 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3660 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3661 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3662 command.
3663
3664 fork NUM
3665 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3666 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3667 alias for the `fork' command.
3668
3669 process PID
3670 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3671 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3672 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3673
3674 delete fork NUM
3675 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3676 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3677 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3678 fork' command.
3679
3680 detach fork NUM
3681 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3682 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3683 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3684 fork' command.
3685
3686 * New native configurations
3687
3688 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3689
3690 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3691
3692 * New targets
3693
3694 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3695 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3696 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3697 S+core 3 score-*-*
3698
3699 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3700 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3701
3702 * Removed commands
3703
3704 catch load
3705 catch unload
3706 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3707
3708 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3709
3710 * New native configurations
3711
3712 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3713 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3714
3715 * New targets
3716
3717 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3718 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3719
3720 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3721
3722 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3723 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3724 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3725 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3726
3727 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3728 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3729
3730 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3731 is resolved.
3732
3733 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3734 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3735 and in inlined functions.
3736
3737 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3738 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3739 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3740
3741 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3742
3743 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3744 registers on PowerPC targets.
3745
3746 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3747 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3748
3749 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3750 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3751
3752 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3753 extended-remote mode.
3754
3755 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3756 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3757 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3758 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3759
3760 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3761 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3762 target architectures.
3763
3764 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3765 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3766 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3767 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3768
3769 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3770 breakpoints now.
3771
3772 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3773 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3774 include:
3775 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3776 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3777 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3778 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3779 of an assignment
3780 - Improved command completion in Ada
3781 - Several bug fixes
3782
3783 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3784 process.
3785
3786 * New commands
3787
3788 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3789 show print frame-arguments
3790 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3791 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3792
3793 remote put
3794 remote get
3795 remote delete
3796 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3797
3798 * New MI commands
3799
3800 -target-file-put
3801 -target-file-get
3802 -target-file-delete
3803 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3804
3805 * New remote packets
3806
3807 vFile:open:
3808 vFile:close:
3809 vFile:pread:
3810 vFile:pwrite:
3811 vFile:unlink:
3812 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3813
3814 vAttach
3815 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3816 mode.
3817
3818 vRun
3819 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3820
3821 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3822
3823 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3824 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3825 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3826
3827 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3828 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3829 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3830
3831 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3832 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3833 is not supported.
3834
3835 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3836 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3837
3838 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3839 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3840
3841 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3842
3843 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3844 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3845 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3846
3847 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3848 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3849
3850 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3851 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3852 as strings.
3853
3854 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3855 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3856 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3857
3858 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3859 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3860
3861 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3862 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3863 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3864
3865 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3866
3867 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3868
3869 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3870 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3871 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3872
3873 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3874 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3875
3876 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3877 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3878 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3879 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3880 Windows and SymbianOS).
3881
3882 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3883 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3884
3885 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3886 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3887
3888 * New commands
3889
3890 set remoteflow
3891 show remoteflow
3892 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3893 when debugging using remote targets.
3894
3895 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3896 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3897 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3898 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3899 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3900 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3901 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3902
3903 set breakpoint auto-hw
3904 show breakpoint auto-hw
3905 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3906 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3907 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3908 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3909 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3910 including "next" and "finish".
3911
3912 catch exception
3913 catch exception unhandled
3914 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3915
3916 catch assert
3917 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3918
3919 set sysroot
3920 show sysroot
3921 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3922 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3923 an alias to "set sysroot".
3924
3925 info spu
3926 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3927 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3928 architecture.
3929
3930 * New native configurations
3931
3932 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3933
3934 set tdesc filename
3935 unset tdesc filename
3936 show tdesc filename
3937 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3938 not query the target for its built-in description.
3939
3940 * New targets
3941
3942 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3943 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3944 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3945
3946 * New remote packets
3947
3948 QPassSignals:
3949 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3950 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3951
3952 qXfer:features:read:
3953 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3954 features.
3955
3956 qXfer:spu:read:
3957 qXfer:spu:write:
3958 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3959 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3960
3961 qXfer:libraries:read:
3962 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3963 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3964 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3965 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3966
3967 * Removed targets
3968
3969 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3970
3971 alpha*-*-osf1*
3972 alpha*-*-osf2*
3973 d10v-*-*
3974 hppa*-*-hiux*
3975 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3976 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3977 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3978 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3979 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3980 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3981 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3982 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3983 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3984 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3985 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3986 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3987 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3988 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3989 m68*-cisco*-*
3990 m68*-tandem-*
3991 mips*-*-pe
3992 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3993 sh*-*-pe
3994
3995 * Other removed features
3996
3997 target abug
3998 target cpu32bug
3999 target est
4000 target rom68k
4001
4002 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4003
4004 target hms
4005 target e7000
4006 target sh3
4007 target sh3e
4008
4009 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4010 H8/300.
4011
4012 target ocd
4013
4014 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4015 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4016 interfaces.
4017
4018 DWARF 1 support
4019
4020 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4021 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4022
4023 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4024
4025 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4026 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4027 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4028 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4029
4030 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4031
4032 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4033 in debugging information.
4034
4035 Scheme support
4036
4037 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4038 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4039
4040 set mips stack-arg-size
4041 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4042
4043 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4044
4045 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4046
4047 * New targets
4048
4049 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4050 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4051
4052 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4053 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4054 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4055
4056 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4057 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4058 supported.
4059
4060 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4061 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4062
4063 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4064 stub provides the required support.
4065
4066 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4067 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4068
4069 * New commands
4070
4071 set substitute-path
4072 unset substitute-path
4073 show substitute-path
4074 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4075 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4076 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4077 between compilation and debugging.
4078
4079 set trace-commands
4080 show trace-commands
4081 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4082 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4083 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4084
4085 * REMOVED features
4086
4087 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4088
4089 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4090 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4091
4092 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4093
4094 * New remote packets
4095
4096 qSupported:
4097 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4098 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4099 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4100 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4101 target.
4102
4103 qXfer:auxv:read:
4104 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4105 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4106
4107 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4108 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4109 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4110
4111 vFlashErase:
4112 vFlashWrite:
4113 vFlashDone:
4114 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4115
4116 * Removed remote packets
4117
4118 qPart:auxv:read:
4119 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4120 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4121
4122 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4123
4124 * New targets
4125
4126 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4127
4128 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4129
4130 * New commands
4131
4132 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4133 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4134
4135 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4136
4137 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4138
4139 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4140 previously saved state.
4141
4142 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4143
4144 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4145
4146 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4147 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4148
4149 info forks List forks of the user program that
4150 are available to be debugged.
4151
4152 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4153 forks of the user program that are
4154 available to be debugged.
4155
4156 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4157 that are available to be debugged (and
4158 kill the forked process).
4159
4160 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4161 that are available to be debugged (and
4162 allow the process to continue).
4163
4164 * New architecture
4165
4166 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4167
4168 * Improved Windows host support
4169
4170 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4171 native console support, and remote communications using either
4172 network sockets or serial ports.
4173
4174 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4175
4176 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4177 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4178 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4179 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4180 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4181 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4182
4183 * REMOVED features
4184
4185 The ARM rdi-share module.
4186
4187 The Netware NLM debug server.
4188
4189 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4190
4191 * New native configurations
4192
4193 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4194 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4195
4196 * New targets
4197
4198 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4199
4200 * New command line options
4201
4202 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4203 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4204 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4205 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4206 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4207 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4208 with the --command (-x) option.
4209
4210 * Deprecated commands removed
4211
4212 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4213 removed:
4214
4215 Command Replacement
4216 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4217 othernames set arm disassembler
4218 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4219 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4220 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4221 regs info registers
4222
4223 * New BSD user-level threads support
4224
4225 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4226 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4227 configurations are:
4228
4229 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4230 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4231 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4232
4233 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4234 are not yet supported.
4235
4236 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4237 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4238
4239 * REMOVED configurations and files
4240
4241 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4242 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4243 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4244
4245 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4246
4247 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4248 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4249 behavior.
4250
4251 * VAX floating point support
4252
4253 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4254
4255 * User-defined command support
4256
4257 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4258 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4259 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4260
4261 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4262
4263 * New command line option
4264
4265 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4266 debugging.
4267
4268 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4269
4270 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4271 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4272 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4273 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4274 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4275
4276 * Internationalization
4277
4278 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4279 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4280 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4281
4282 * Ada
4283
4284 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4285 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4286 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4287
4288 * New native configurations
4289
4290 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4291
4292 * Remote 'p' packet
4293
4294 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4295 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4296
4297 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4298
4299 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4300 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4301 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4302 i386 application).
4303
4304 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4305 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4306 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4307 configurations:
4308
4309 hppa-*-hpux
4310 ia64-*-aix
4311 mips-*-irix*
4312 *-*-lynx
4313 mips-*-linux-gnu
4314 sds protocol
4315 xdr protocol
4316 powerpc bdm protocol
4317
4318 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4319 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4320
4321 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4322
4323 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4324 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4325 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4326 permanently REMOVED.
4327
4328 h8300-*-*
4329 mcore-*-*
4330 mn10300-*-*
4331 ns32k-*-*
4332 sh64-*-*
4333 v850-*-*
4334
4335 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4336
4337 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4338
4339 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4340 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4341 been fixed.
4342
4343 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4344
4345 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4346 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4347 IRIX long double values).
4348
4349 * VAX and "next"
4350
4351 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4352 command. This problem has been fixed.
4353
4354 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4355
4356 * Fix for ``many threads''
4357
4358 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4359 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4360 error message:
4361
4362 ptrace: No such process.
4363 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4364
4365 This problem has been fixed.
4366
4367 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4368
4369 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4370 GDB to dump core).
4371
4372 * New ``start'' command.
4373
4374 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4375
4376 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4377
4378 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4379 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4380 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4381
4382 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4383 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4384 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4385 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4386 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4387 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4388 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4389 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4390 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4391
4392 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4393
4394 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4395 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4396 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4397 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4398 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4399
4400 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4401 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4402 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4403
4404 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4405
4406 * New native configurations
4407
4408 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4409 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4410 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4411 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4412 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4413 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4414 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4415
4416 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4417
4418 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4419 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4420 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4421 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4422 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4423 work, was also included.
4424
4425 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4426 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4427
4428 h8300-*-*
4429 mcore-*-*
4430 mn10300-*-*
4431 ns32k-*-*
4432 sh64-*-*
4433 v850-*-*
4434 xstormy16-*-*
4435
4436 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4437 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4438
4439 * REMOVED configurations and files
4440
4441 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4442 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4443 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4444 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4445 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4446 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4447 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4448 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4449 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4450 sonymips mips-sony-*
4451 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4452
4453 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4454
4455 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4456
4457 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4458 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4459 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4460 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4461 with GDB".
4462
4463 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4464
4465 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4466 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4467 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4468 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4469 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4470 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4471 are created.
4472
4473 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4474
4475 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4476
4477 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4478 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4479 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4480
4481 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4482
4483 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4484 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4485
4486 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4487
4488 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4489 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4490 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4491
4492 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4493
4494 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4495 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4496
4497 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4498
4499 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4500 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4501 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4502
4503 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4504
4505 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4506 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4507 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4508
4509 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4510
4511 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4512
4513 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4514 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4515
4516 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4517
4518 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4519 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4520 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4521 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4522
4523 * Revised SPARC target
4524
4525 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4526 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4527 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4528 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4529 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4530
4531 * New C++ demangler
4532
4533 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4534 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4535 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4536 programs.
4537
4538 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4539
4540 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4541 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4542 encountered these.
4543
4544 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4545
4546 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4547 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4548 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4549 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4550 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4551 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4552 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4553 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4554 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4555
4556 * New native configurations
4557
4558 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4559 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4560 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4561 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4562 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4563
4564 * New debugging protocols
4565
4566 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4567
4568 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4569
4570 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4571 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4572 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4573
4574 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4575
4576 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4577 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4578 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4579 permanently REMOVED.
4580
4581 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4582 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4583 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4584 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4585 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4586 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4587 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4588 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4589 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4590 sonymips mips-sony-*
4591 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4592
4593 * REMOVED configurations and files
4594
4595 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4596 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4597 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4598 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4599 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4600 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4601 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4602 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4603 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4604 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4605 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4606 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4607 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4608 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4609 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4610 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4611 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4612
4613 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4614
4615 * Objective-C
4616
4617 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4618 integrated into GDB.
4619
4620 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4621
4622 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4623 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4624 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4625 backtraces.
4626
4627 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4628 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4629 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4630
4631 * Hosted file I/O.
4632
4633 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4634 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4635 remote protocol documentation for details.
4636
4637 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4638
4639 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4640 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4641 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4642 ppc32 on ppc64).
4643
4644 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4645
4646 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4647 per-thread variables.
4648
4649 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4650
4651 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4652 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4653
4654 * Separate debug info.
4655
4656 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4657 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4658 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4659 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4660 and optional debug files.
4661
4662 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4663
4664 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4665 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4666 debugger.
4667
4668 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4669 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4670
4671 * Java
4672
4673 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4674 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4675 considered "useable".
4676
4677 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4678
4679 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4680 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4681 kernel.
4682
4683 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4684
4685 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4686 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4687
4688 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4689
4690 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4691 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4692 command.
4693
4694 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4695
4696 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4697 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4698
4699 * Profiling support
4700
4701 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4702 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4703 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4704 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4705 data, for more informative profiling results.
4706
4707 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4708
4709 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4710 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4711 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4712
4713 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4714 removed.
4715
4716 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4717 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4718 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4719 in a subsequent -var-update.
4720
4721 * New native configurations.
4722
4723 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4724
4725 * Multi-arched targets.
4726
4727 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4728 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4729
4730 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4731
4732 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4733 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4734 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4735 permanently REMOVED.
4736
4737 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4738 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4739 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4740 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4741 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4742 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4743 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4744 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4745 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4746 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4747 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4748 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4749
4750 * REMOVED configurations and files
4751
4752 V850EA ISA
4753 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4754 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4755 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4756 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4757 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4758 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4759 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4760 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4761 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4762 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4763 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4764 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4765 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4766
4767 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4768
4769 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4770 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4771 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4772 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4773 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4774
4775 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4776
4777 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4778
4779 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4780 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4781 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4782 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4783 shared libs like mad''.
4784
4785 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4786
4787 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4788 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4789 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4790 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4791
4792 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4793
4794 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4795 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4796 they expand.
4797
4798 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4799 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4800
4801 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4802 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4803
4804 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4805 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4806 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4807 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4808
4809 * Multi-arched targets.
4810
4811 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4812 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4813 NEC V850 v850-*-*
4814 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4815 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4816 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4817
4818 * New targets.
4819
4820 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4821
4822
4823 * New native configurations
4824
4825 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4826 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4827 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4828 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4829
4830 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4831
4832 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4833 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4834 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4835 permanently REMOVED.
4836
4837 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4838 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4839 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4840 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4841 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4842 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4843 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4844 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4845 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4846 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4847 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4848 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4849 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4850
4851 * OBSOLETE languages
4852
4853 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4854
4855 * REMOVED configurations and files
4856
4857 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4858 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4859 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4860 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4861 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4862
4863 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4864
4865 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4866
4867 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4868 commands. The default is 1024.
4869
4870 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4871
4872 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4873
4874 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4875
4876 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4877 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4878 from a file into memory (restore).
4879
4880 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4881
4882 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4883 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4884 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4885
4886 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4887
4888 * New targets.
4889
4890 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4891
4892 * Bug fixes
4893
4894 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4895 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4896 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4897
4898 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4899 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4900 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4901
4902 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4903 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4904 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4905
4906 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4907 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4908 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4909
4910 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4911
4912 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4913
4914 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4915 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4916 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4917 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4918 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4919 (notably embedded) targets.
4920
4921 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4922
4923 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4924 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4925 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4926 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4927
4928 * New command line option
4929
4930 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4931
4932 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4933
4934 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4935 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4936 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4937 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4938 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4939 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4940 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4941 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4942 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4943 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4944
4945 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4946
4947 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4948 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4949
4950 * New native configurations
4951
4952 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4953 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4954 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4955 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4956
4957 * New targets
4958
4959 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4960
4961 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4962
4963 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4964 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4965 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4966 permanently REMOVED.
4967
4968 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4969 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4970 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4971 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4972 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4973
4974 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4975
4976 * REMOVED configurations and files
4977
4978 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4979 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4980 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4981 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4982 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4983 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4984 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4985 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4986 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4987 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4988 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4989 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4990 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4991
4992 * Changes to command line processing
4993
4994 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4995 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4996
4997 * Changes to key bindings
4998
4999 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5000
5001 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5002
5003 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5004
5005 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5006 corrupted.
5007
5008 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5009
5010 Numerous documentation fixes.
5011
5012 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5013
5014 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5015
5016 * New native configurations
5017
5018 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5019 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5020 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5021 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5022 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5023 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5024
5025 * New targets
5026
5027 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5028 CRIS cris-axis
5029 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5030
5031 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5032
5033 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5034 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5035 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5036 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5037 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5038 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5039 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5040 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5041 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5042 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5043 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5044 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5045 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5046 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5047
5048 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5049 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5050
5051 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5052 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5053 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5054 permanently REMOVED.
5055
5056 * REMOVED configurations and files
5057
5058 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5059 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5060 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5061 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5062 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5063 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5064
5065 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5066
5067 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5068 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5069 present.
5070
5071 * Other news:
5072
5073 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5074
5075 * The MI enabled by default.
5076
5077 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5078 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5079 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5080 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5081 which is now deprecated.
5082
5083 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5084
5085 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5086 main features are supported:
5087
5088 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5089
5090 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5091 extension;
5092
5093 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5094
5095 - a Pascal expression parser.
5096
5097 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5098
5099 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5100
5101 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5102
5103 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5104 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5105
5106 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5107
5108 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5109
5110 * Changes in completion.
5111
5112 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5113 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5114 users expect at the shell prompt.
5115
5116 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5117 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5118 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5119 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5120 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5121 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5122 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5123
5124 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5125
5126 * New platform-independent commands:
5127
5128 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5129 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5130 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5131
5132 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5133
5134 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5135 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5136 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5137
5138 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5139
5140 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5141 multi-threaded programs though.
5142
5143 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5144
5145 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5146
5147 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5148 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5149 supported.)
5150
5151 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5152
5153 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5154 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5155 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5156 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5157 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5158 registers.
5159
5160 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5161 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5162 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5163
5164 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5165
5166 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5167 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5168
5169 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5170 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5171 IDT.
5172
5173 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5174 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5175 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5176 a given linear address.
5177
5178 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5179 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5180 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5181
5182 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5183
5184 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5185
5186 * Changes in documentation.
5187
5188 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5189 Documentation License.
5190
5191 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5192 manual.
5193
5194 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5195
5196 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5197 manual.
5198
5199 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5200 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5201 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5202
5203 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5204
5205 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5206 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5207 contents of this file.
5208
5209 * gdba.el deleted
5210
5211 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5212
5213 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5214
5215 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5216
5217 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5218 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5219 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5220 greater level of detail.
5221
5222 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5223
5224 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5225 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5226 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5227 written.
5228
5229 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5230
5231 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5232 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5233 machines ``out of the box''.
5234
5235 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5236 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5237 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5238 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5239 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5240
5241 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5242 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5243 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5244 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5245 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5246
5247 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5248 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5249 also works.
5250
5251 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5252 GDB.
5253
5254 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5255 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5256 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5257 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5258
5259 * New native configurations
5260
5261 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5262 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5263
5264 * New targets
5265
5266 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5267 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5268 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5269 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5270
5271 * OBSOLETE configurations
5272
5273 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5274 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5275 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5276 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5277 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5278
5279 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5280 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5281 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5282 be permanently REMOVED.
5283
5284 * Gould support removed
5285
5286 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5287
5288 * New features for SVR4
5289
5290 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5291 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5292 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5293
5294 * Many C++ enhancements
5295
5296 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5297 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5298
5299 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5300
5301 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5302 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5303 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5304 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5305
5306 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5307 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5308
5309 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5310
5311 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5312 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5313 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5314
5315 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5316 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5317
5318 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5319
5320 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5321 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5322 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5323
5324 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5325
5326 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5327 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5328 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5329
5330 * ``apropos'' command added.
5331
5332 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5333 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5334 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5335
5336 * New MI interface
5337
5338 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5339 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5340 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5341 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5342 enabled by configuring with:
5343
5344 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5345
5346 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5347
5348 * New native configurations
5349
5350 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5351 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5352 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5353
5354 * New targets
5355
5356 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5357 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5358 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5359
5360 * OBSOLETE configurations
5361
5362 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5363
5364 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5365 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5366 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5367 be permanently REMOVED.
5368
5369 * ANSI/ISO C
5370
5371 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5372 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5373 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5374 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5375 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5376 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5377 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5378 already.
5379
5380 * Readline 2.2
5381
5382 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5383
5384 * set extension-language
5385
5386 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5387 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5388 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5389 set extension-language .c c++
5390 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5391 and their associated languages.
5392
5393 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5394
5395 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5396 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5397 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5398
5399 set processor NAME
5400
5401 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5402 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5403
5404 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5405 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5406 403 IBM PowerPC 403
5407 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5408 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5409 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5410 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5411 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5412 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5413 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5414 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5415
5416 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5417 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5418 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5419 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5420
5421 * HP-UX support
5422
5423 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5424 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5425 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5426 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5427 for xdb and dbx commands.
5428
5429 * Catchpoints
5430
5431 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5432 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5433 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5434
5435 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5436 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5437 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5438
5439 * Debugging across forks
5440
5441 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5442 in the inferior.
5443
5444 * TUI
5445
5446 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5447 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5448 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5449
5450 * GDB remote protocol additions
5451
5452 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5453 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5454 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5455 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5456
5457 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5458 full 64-bit address. The command
5459
5460 set remoteaddresssize 32
5461
5462 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5463 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5464 will be discarded.
5465
5466 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5467 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5468
5469 maint packet heythere
5470
5471 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5472 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5473 time.
5474
5475 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5476 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5477 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5478
5479 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5480
5481 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5482 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5483 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5484
5485 * mask-address variable for Mips
5486
5487 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5488 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5489 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5490
5491 * Higher serial baud rates
5492
5493 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5494 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5495 to achieve all of these rates.)
5496
5497 * i960 simulator
5498
5499 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5500 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5501
5502
5503 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5504
5505 * New native configurations
5506
5507 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5508 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5509 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5510 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5511 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5512 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5513 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5514
5515 * New targets
5516
5517 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5518 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5519 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5520 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5521 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5522 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5523 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5524 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5525 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5526 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5527 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5528
5529 * New debugging protocols
5530
5531 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5532 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5533 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5534 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5535 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5536 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5537
5538 * DWARF 2
5539
5540 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5541 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5542 information.
5543
5544 * Java frontend
5545
5546 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5547 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5548
5549 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5550
5551 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5552 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5553 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5554
5555 * Live range splitting
5556
5557 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5558 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5559 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5560
5561 * Hurd support
5562
5563 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5564 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5565
5566 * ARM Thumb support
5567
5568 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5569 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5570 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5571 accordingly.
5572
5573 * MIPS16 support
5574
5575 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5576 instruction set.
5577
5578 * Overlay support
5579
5580 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5581 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5582 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5583 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5584 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5585 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5586
5587 * info symbol
5588
5589 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5590 the symbol at the specified address.
5591
5592 * Trace support
5593
5594 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5595 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5596 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5597 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5598 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5599
5600 * MIPS simulator
5601
5602 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5603 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5604 of most MIPS variants.
5605
5606 * Sparc simulator
5607
5608 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5609 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5610 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5611
5612 * set architecture
5613
5614 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5615 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5616 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5617 the possible architectures.
5618
5619 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5620
5621 * New native configurations
5622
5623 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5624 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5625 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5626 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5627 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5628 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5629
5630 * New targets
5631
5632 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5633 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5634 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5635 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5636 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5637 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5638 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5639
5640 * PowerPC simulator
5641
5642 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5643 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5644 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5645 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5646 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5647
5648 * Solaris 2.5
5649
5650 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5651
5652 * Windows 95/NT native
5653
5654 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5655 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5656 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5657 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5658 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5659
5660 * dont-repeat command
5661
5662 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5663 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5664 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5665 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5666
5667 * Send break instead of ^C
5668
5669 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5670 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5671 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5672
5673 * Remote protocol timeout
5674
5675 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5676 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5677 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5678
5679 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5680
5681 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5682 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5683 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5684 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5685 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5686
5687 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5688 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5689 automatically on hpux10.
5690
5691 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5692
5693 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5694
5695 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5696
5697 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5698 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5699 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5700 every character. The default value is 1050.
5701
5702 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5703
5704 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5705 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5706 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5707 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5708 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5709 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5710
5711 * Speedups for remote debugging
5712
5713 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5714 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5715 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5716
5717 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5718
5719 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5720 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5721
5722 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5723
5724 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5725
5726 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5727 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5728
5729 * Remote targets use caching
5730
5731 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5732 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5733 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5734 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5735 off' turns the the data cache off.
5736
5737 * Remote targets may have threads
5738
5739 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5740 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5741 gdb/remote.c for details.
5742
5743 * NetROM support
5744
5745 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5746 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5747 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5748 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5749 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5750 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5751 sequence is something like
5752
5753 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5754 load <prog>
5755 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5756
5757 * Macintosh host
5758
5759 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5760 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5761 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5762 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5763 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5764 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5765 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5766 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5767
5768 * Autoconf
5769
5770 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5771 but does simplify configuration and building.
5772
5773 * hpux10
5774
5775 GDB now supports hpux10.
5776
5777 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5778
5779 * New native configurations
5780
5781 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5782 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5783 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5784 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5785
5786 * New targets
5787
5788 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5789 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5790 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5791 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5792 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5793
5794 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5795
5796 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5797 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5798 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5799 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5800 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5801
5802 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5803
5804 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5805 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5806 trivial example:
5807 define adder
5808 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5809
5810 To execute the command use:
5811 adder 1 2 3
5812
5813 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5814 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5815 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5816
5817 * New `if' and `while' commands
5818
5819 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5820 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5821 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5822 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5823 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5824 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5825 if the expression is zero.
5826
5827 * Fortran source language mode
5828
5829 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5830 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5831 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5832 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5833 Fortran compilers.
5834
5835 * Better HPUX support
5836
5837 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5838 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5839 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5840 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5841 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5842
5843 adb -w a.out
5844 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5845 control-d
5846
5847 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5848 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5849
5850 adb -w a.out
5851 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5852 control-d
5853
5854 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5855 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5856 external linkage.
5857
5858 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5859 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5860
5861 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5862
5863 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5864 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5865 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5866 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5867 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5868 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5869
5870 * New DOS host serial code
5871
5872 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5873 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5874 a PC's serial port.
5875
5876 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5877
5878 * New "complete" command
5879
5880 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5881 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5882
5883 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5884
5885 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5886 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5887
5888 * Breakpoint hit counts
5889
5890 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5891 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5892 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5893 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5894 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5895 that breakpoint.
5896
5897 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5898
5899 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5900 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5901 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5902
5903 * Shared library breakpoints
5904
5905 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5906 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5907
5908 * Hardware watchpoints
5909
5910 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5911 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5912
5913 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5914
5915 * Annotations
5916
5917 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5918 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5919
5920 * Improved Irix 5 support
5921
5922 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5923
5924 * Improved HPPA support
5925
5926 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5927
5928 * New native configurations
5929
5930 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5931 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5932 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5933 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5934
5935 * New targets
5936
5937 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5938 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5939 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5940
5941 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5942
5943 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5944 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5945
5946 * Fixes
5947
5948 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5949 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5950
5951 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5952
5953 * Irix 5 is now supported
5954
5955 * HPPA support
5956
5957 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5958 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5959 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5960 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5961 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5962
5963
5964 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5965
5966 * User visible changes:
5967
5968 * Remote Debugging
5969
5970 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5971 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5972 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5973 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5974 debugging info for the mips target).
5975
5976 * DEC Alpha native support
5977
5978 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5979 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5980 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5981 Alpha-specific notes.
5982
5983 * Preliminary thread implementation
5984
5985 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5986
5987 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5988
5989 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5990 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5991 for details).
5992
5993 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5994
5995 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5996 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5997 call methods, ...etc.
5998
5999 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6000
6001 * User visible changes:
6002
6003 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6004 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6005 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6006 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6007
6008 Filename completion now works.
6009
6010 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6011 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6012 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6013
6014 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6015 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6016 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6017 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6018 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6019
6020 * DEC alpha support
6021
6022 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6023 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6024
6025
6026 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6027
6028 * Testsuite
6029
6030 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6031 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6032 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6033
6034 * C++ demangling
6035
6036 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6037 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6038 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6039 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6040 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6041
6042 * Simulators
6043
6044 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6045 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6046 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6047
6048 * New targets supported
6049
6050 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6051 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6052 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6053 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6054 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6055
6056 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6057 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6058 GO32 memory extender.
6059
6060 * New remote protocols
6061
6062 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6063
6064 * New source languages supported
6065
6066 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6067 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6068 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6069
6070
6071 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6072
6073 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6074
6075 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6076 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6077 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6078 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6079 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6080 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6081
6082 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6083
6084 * Faster and better demangling
6085
6086 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6087 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6088 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6089 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6090 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6091 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6092 symbol lookups.
6093
6094 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6095 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6096 compiler does not actually implement.
6097
6098 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6099
6100 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6101 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6102 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6103 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6104 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6105 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6106 fix.
6107
6108 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6109 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6110
6111 * Improved configure script
6112
6113 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6114 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6115 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6116 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6117
6118 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6119 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6120 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6121 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6122 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6123 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6124
6125 * Documentation improvements
6126
6127 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6128 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6129 before submitting changes.
6130
6131 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6132 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6133 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6134 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6135 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6136
6137 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6138 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6139 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6140 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6141 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6142 around this problem.
6143
6144 * New features
6145
6146 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6147 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6148 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6149 the target program.
6150
6151 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6152 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6153
6154 * New native hosts supported
6155
6156 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6157 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6158
6159 * New targets supported
6160
6161 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6162
6163 * New file formats supported
6164
6165 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6166 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6167
6168 * Major bug fixes
6169
6170 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6171
6172 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6173 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6174
6175 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6176 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6177 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6178
6179 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6180 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6181
6182 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6183 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6184 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6185 libraries.
6186
6187 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6188 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6189 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6190 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6191 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6192
6193 * Internal improvements
6194
6195 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6196 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6197
6198 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6199 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6200 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6201 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6202 shared code that handles any of them.
6203
6204 * New command line options
6205
6206 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6207
6208 * Mmalloc licensing
6209
6210 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6211 General Public License.
6212
6213 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6214
6215 * Host/native/target split
6216
6217 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6218 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6219 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6220 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6221 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6222
6223 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6224 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6225 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6226 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6227 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6228 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6229 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6230
6231 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6232 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6233 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6234
6235 * New hosts supported
6236
6237 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6238 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6239 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6240
6241 * New targets supported
6242
6243 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6244 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6245
6246 * New native hosts supported
6247
6248 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6249 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6250 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6251
6252 * New file formats supported
6253
6254 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6255 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6256 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6257
6258 * New commands
6259
6260 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6261 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6262 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6263
6264 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6265
6266 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6267 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6268 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6269 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6270
6271 * C++ improvements
6272
6273 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6274 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6275 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6276
6277 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6278
6279 * Major bug fixes
6280
6281 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6282 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6283 by the compiler.
6284
6285 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6286 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6287
6288 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6289 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6290 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6291 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6292 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6293 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6294
6295 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6296 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6297 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6298 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6299
6300 * AMD 29k support
6301
6302 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6303 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6304 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6305 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6306 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6307
6308 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6309 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6310 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6311 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6312
6313 * Remote interfaces
6314
6315 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6316 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6317 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6318 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6319 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6320 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6321 each instruction being stepped through.
6322
6323 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6324 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6325
6326 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6327 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6328 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6329 processor with a serial port.
6330
6331 * Configuration
6332
6333 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6334 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6335 supported, and what files each one uses.
6336
6337 * Library changes
6338
6339 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6340 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6341 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6342 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6343
6344 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6345 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6346 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6347 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6348
6349 * Documentation
6350
6351 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6352 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6353 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6354 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6355 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6356 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6357
6358 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6359
6360
6361 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6362
6363 * Better support for C++ function names
6364
6365 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6366 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6367 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6368 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6369 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6370
6371 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6372 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6373 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6374 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6375 for the list of formats.
6376
6377 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6378
6379 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6380 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6381 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6382 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6383 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6384 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6385 this problem.)
6386
6387 * New 'maintenance' command
6388
6389 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6390 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6391 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6392
6393 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6394 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6395 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6396 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6397 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6398 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6399
6400 The following commands are new:
6401
6402 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6403 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6404 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6405
6406 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6407
6408 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6409 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6410 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6411 read after argv processing.
6412
6413 * New hosts supported
6414
6415 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6416
6417 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6418
6419 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6420 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6421 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6422 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6423 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6424 It costs extra.
6425
6426 * New targets supported
6427
6428 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6429
6430 * More smarts about finding #include files
6431
6432 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6433 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6434 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6435 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6436 the one that contains your sources.
6437
6438 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6439 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6440 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6441
6442 * Interesting infernals change
6443
6444 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6445 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6446 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6447 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6448
6449 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6450
6451 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6452 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6453 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6454
6455 See the ChangeLog for details.
6456
6457 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6458
6459 * New machines supported (host and target)
6460
6461 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6462
6463 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6464
6465 * New malloc package
6466
6467 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6468 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6469 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6470 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6471 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6472 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6473
6474 * info proc
6475
6476 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6477 'help info proc' for details.
6478
6479 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6480
6481 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6482 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6483 possible.
6484
6485 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6486
6487 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6488 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6489 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6490 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6491 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6492 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6493
6494 * Cross byte order fixes
6495
6496 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6497 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6498
6499 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6500
6501 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6502 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6503 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6504 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6505 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6506 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6507 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6508 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6509 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6510 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6511
6512 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6513 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6514 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6515 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6516
6517 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6518 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6519 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6520 use is:
6521
6522 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6523
6524 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6525 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6526 shared across multiple host platforms.
6527
6528 * longjmp() handling
6529
6530 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6531 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6532 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6533 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6534
6535 * Solaris 2.0
6536
6537 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6538 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6539 reading symbols.
6540
6541 * Bug fixes
6542
6543 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6544 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6545 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6546
6547 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6548
6549 * New machines supported (host and target)
6550
6551 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6552 (except core files)
6553 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6554 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6555
6556 * New machines supported (target)
6557
6558 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6559
6560 * C++ support
6561
6562 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6563 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6564 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6565
6566 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6567 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6568 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6569 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6570 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6571 released.
6572
6573 * New features for SVR4
6574
6575 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6576 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6577 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6578
6579 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6580 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6581 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6582
6583 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6584 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6585
6586 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6587
6588 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6589 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6590 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6591 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6592 same code linked statically.
6593
6594 * New Getopt
6595
6596 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6597 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6598 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6599 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6600 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6601 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6602
6603 * Bugs fixed
6604
6605 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6606 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6607 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6608
6609
6610 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6611
6612 * New machines supported (host and target)
6613
6614 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6615 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6616 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6617
6618 * Almost SCO Unix support
6619
6620 We had hoped to support:
6621 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6622 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6623 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6624 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6625
6626 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6627
6628 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6629 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6630 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6631 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6632 reqired (if any).
6633
6634 * New Readline
6635
6636 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6637 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6638 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6639
6640 * Bugs fixed
6641
6642 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6643 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6644 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6645
6646 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6647
6648 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6649 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6650 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6651
6652 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6653 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6654 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6655 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6656 version 2.
6657
6658 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6659 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6660 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6661 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6662 situation somewhat.
6663
6664 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6665 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6666 methods.
6667
6668 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6669 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6670 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6671
6672
6673 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6674
6675 * Improved configuration
6676
6677 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6678 Porting BFD is simpler.
6679
6680 * Stepping improved
6681
6682 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6683 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6684 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6685 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6686
6687 * Bug fixing
6688
6689 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6690
6691 * New host supported (not target)
6692
6693 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6694
6695
6696 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6697
6698 * Multiple source language support
6699
6700 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6701 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6702 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6703 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6704 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6705 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6706
6707 * GDB and Modula-2
6708
6709 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6710 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6711 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6712 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6713
6714 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6715 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6716 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6717
6718 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6719 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6720
6721 * set write on/off
6722
6723 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6724 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6725 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6726 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6727 effect immediately.
6728
6729 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6730
6731 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6732 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6733 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6734 examining core files.
6735
6736 * set listsize
6737
6738 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6739 The default is 10.
6740
6741 * New machines supported (host and target)
6742
6743 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6744 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6745 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6746
6747 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6748
6749 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6750
6751 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6752
6753 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6754 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6755 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6756
6757 * New remote interfaces
6758
6759 AMD 29000 Adapt
6760 AMD 29000 Minimon
6761
6762
6763 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6764
6765 * New Facilities
6766
6767 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6768
6769 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6770 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6771 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6772 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6773 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6774 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6775 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6776 stub on the target system.
6777
6778 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6779
6780 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6781 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6782 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6783
6784 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6785 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6786
6787
6788 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6789
6790 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6791 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6792
6793 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6794 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6795 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6796
6797 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6798 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6799 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6800 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6801
6802 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6803 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6804 it is already running. Default is ON.
6805
6806 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6807 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6808 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6809 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6810 Default is ON.
6811
6812 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6813 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6814 or the value of the environment variable
6815 GDBHISTFILE.
6816
6817 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6818 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6819 HISTSIZE.
6820
6821 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6822 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6823 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6824
6825 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6826 history expansion will be performed on
6827 command line input. The default is OFF.
6828
6829 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6830 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6831 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6832
6833 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6834 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6835 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6836 variable TERM.
6837
6838 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6839 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6840 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6841 variable TERM.
6842
6843 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6844 ``set width'' instead.
6845
6846 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6847 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6848 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6849 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6850
6851 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6852 is OFF.
6853
6854 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6855 "raw" form if off.
6856
6857 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6858 like instructions.
6859
6860 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6861
6862
6863 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6864
6865 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6866 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6867 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6868 window.
6869
6870
6871 * Support for Shared Libraries
6872
6873 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6874 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6875 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6876 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6877 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6878 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6879 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6880 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6881
6882 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6883 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6884 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6885
6886 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6887
6888
6889 * Watchpoints
6890
6891 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6892 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6893 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6894 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6895 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6896 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6897
6898 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6899
6900 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6901
6902 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6903 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6904 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6905
6906
6907 * C++ multiple inheritance
6908
6909 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6910 for C++ programs.
6911
6912 * C++ exception handling
6913
6914 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6915 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6916 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6917 handler's context).
6918
6919 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6920 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6921 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6922
6923 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6924 current stack frame.
6925
6926
6927 * Minor command changes
6928
6929 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6930 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6931 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6932
6933 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6934 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6935 frames without printing.
6936
6937 * New directory command
6938
6939 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6940 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6941 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6942 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6943 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6944
6945 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6946
6947 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6948 for more details.
6949
6950 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6951 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6952 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6953 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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