1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.6
6 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
7 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
10 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
11 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
13 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
14 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
16 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
18 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
19 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
20 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
22 * Arrays of explicitly SIGNED or UNSIGNED CHARs are now printed as arrays
25 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
26 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
29 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
32 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
33 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
34 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
36 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
38 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
44 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
45 when debugging using remote targets.
47 set mem inaccessible-by-default
48 show mem inaccessible-by-default
49 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
50 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
51 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
52 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
53 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
55 set breakpoint auto-hw
56 show breakpoint auto-hw
57 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
58 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
59 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
60 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
61 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
62 including "next" and "finish".
65 catch exception unhandled
66 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
69 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
73 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
74 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
75 an alias to "set sysroot".
78 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
79 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
82 * New native configurations
84 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
89 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
90 not query the target for its built-in description.
94 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
95 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
96 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
101 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
102 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
105 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
110 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
111 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
115 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
124 i[34567]86-*-netware*
125 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
126 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
128 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
131 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
132 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
141 * Other removed features
148 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
155 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
160 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
161 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
166 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
167 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
169 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
171 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
172 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
173 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
174 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
178 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
179 in debugging information.
183 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
184 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
186 set mips stack-arg-size
187 set mips saved-gpreg-size
189 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
191 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
196 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
198 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
199 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
200 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
202 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
203 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
206 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
207 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
209 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
210 stub provides the required support.
212 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
213 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
218 unset substitute-path
220 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
221 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
222 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
223 between compilation and debugging.
227 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
228 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
229 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
233 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
235 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
236 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
238 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
243 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
244 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
245 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
246 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
250 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
251 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
253 qXfer:memory-map:read:
254 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
255 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
260 Erase and program a flash memory device.
262 * Removed remote packets
265 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
266 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
268 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
272 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
274 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
278 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
279 only if it doesn't already have a value.
281 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
283 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
285 restart <n> Return the program state to a
286 previously saved state.
288 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
290 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
292 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
293 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
295 info forks List forks of the user program that
296 are available to be debugged.
298 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
299 forks of the user program that are
300 available to be debugged.
302 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
303 that are available to be debugged (and
304 kill the forked process).
306 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
307 that are available to be debugged (and
308 allow the process to continue).
312 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
314 * Improved Windows host support
316 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
317 native console support, and remote communications using either
318 network sockets or serial ports.
320 * Improved Modula-2 language support
322 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
323 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
324 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
325 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
326 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
327 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
331 The ARM rdi-share module.
333 The Netware NLM debug server.
335 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
337 * New native configurations
339 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
340 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
344 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
346 * New command line options
348 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
349 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
350 the child (debugged) program exited with.
351 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
352 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
353 specified multiple times and in conjunction
354 with the --command (-x) option.
356 * Deprecated commands removed
358 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
362 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
363 othernames set arm disassembler
364 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
365 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
366 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
369 * New BSD user-level threads support
371 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
372 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
375 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
376 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
377 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
379 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
380 are not yet supported.
382 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
383 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
385 * REMOVED configurations and files
387 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
388 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
389 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
391 * New "set print array-indexes" command
393 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
394 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
397 * VAX floating point support
399 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
401 * User-defined command support
403 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
404 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
405 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
407 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
409 * New command line option
411 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
414 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
416 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
417 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
418 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
419 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
420 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
422 * Internationalization
424 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
425 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
426 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
430 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
431 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
432 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
434 * New native configurations
436 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
440 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
441 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
443 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
445 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
446 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
447 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
450 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
451 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
452 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
464 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
465 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
467 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
469 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
470 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
471 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
481 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
483 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
485 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
486 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
489 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
491 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
492 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
493 IRIX long double values).
497 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
498 command. This problem has been fixed.
500 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
502 * Fix for ``many threads''
504 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
505 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
508 ptrace: No such process.
509 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
511 This problem has been fixed.
513 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
515 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
518 * New ``start'' command.
520 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
522 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
524 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
525 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
526 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
528 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
529 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
530 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
531 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
532 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
533 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
534 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
535 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
536 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
538 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
540 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
541 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
542 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
543 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
544 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
546 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
547 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
548 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
550 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
552 * New native configurations
554 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
555 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
556 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
557 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
558 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
559 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
560 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
562 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
564 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
565 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
566 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
567 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
568 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
569 work, was also included.
571 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
572 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
582 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
583 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
585 * REMOVED configurations and files
587 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
588 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
589 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
590 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
591 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
592 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
593 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
594 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
595 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
597 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
599 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
601 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
603 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
604 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
605 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
606 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
609 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
611 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
612 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
613 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
614 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
615 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
616 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
619 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
621 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
623 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
624 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
625 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
627 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
629 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
630 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
632 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
634 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
635 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
636 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
638 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
640 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
641 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
643 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
645 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
646 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
647 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
649 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
651 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
652 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
653 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
655 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
657 * Removed --with-mmalloc
659 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
660 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
662 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
664 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
665 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
666 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
667 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
669 * Revised SPARC target
671 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
672 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
673 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
674 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
675 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
679 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
680 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
681 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
684 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
686 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
687 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
690 * C++ nested types and namespaces
692 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
693 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
694 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
695 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
696 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
697 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
698 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
699 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
700 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
702 * New native configurations
704 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
705 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
706 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
707 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
708 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
710 * New debugging protocols
712 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
714 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
716 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
717 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
718 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
720 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
722 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
723 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
724 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
727 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
728 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
729 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
730 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
731 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
732 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
733 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
734 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
735 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
737 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
739 * REMOVED configurations and files
741 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
742 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
743 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
744 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
745 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
746 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
747 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
748 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
749 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
750 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
751 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
752 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
753 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
754 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
755 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
756 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
757 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
759 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
763 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
766 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
768 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
769 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
770 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
773 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
774 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
779 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
780 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
781 remote protocol documentation for details.
783 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
785 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
786 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
787 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
790 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
792 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
793 per-thread variables.
795 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
797 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
798 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
800 * Separate debug info.
802 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
803 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
804 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
805 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
806 and optional debug files.
808 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
810 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
811 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
814 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
815 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
819 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
820 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
821 considered "useable".
823 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
825 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
826 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
829 * GDB supports logging output to a file
831 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
832 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
834 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
836 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
837 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
840 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
842 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
843 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
847 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
848 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
849 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
850 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
851 data, for more informative profiling results.
853 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
855 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
856 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
857 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
859 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
862 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
863 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
864 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
865 in a subsequent -var-update.
867 * New native configurations.
869 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
871 * Multi-arched targets.
873 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
874 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
876 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
878 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
879 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
880 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
883 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
884 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
885 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
886 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
887 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
888 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
889 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
890 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
891 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
892 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
893 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
894 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
896 * REMOVED configurations and files
899 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
900 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
901 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
902 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
903 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
904 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
906 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
907 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
908 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
909 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
910 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
911 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
913 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
915 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
916 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
917 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
918 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
919 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
921 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
923 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
925 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
926 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
927 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
928 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
929 shared libs like mad''.
931 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
933 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
934 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
935 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
936 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
938 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
940 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
941 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
944 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
945 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
947 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
948 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
950 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
951 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
952 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
953 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
955 * Multi-arched targets.
957 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
958 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
960 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
961 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
962 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
966 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
969 * New native configurations
971 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
972 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
973 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
974 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
976 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
978 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
979 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
980 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
983 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
984 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
985 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
986 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
987 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
988 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
989 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
990 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
991 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
992 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
994 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
995 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
999 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1001 * REMOVED configurations and files
1003 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1004 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1005 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1006 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1007 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1009 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1011 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1013 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1014 commands. The default is 1024.
1016 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1018 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1020 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1022 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1023 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1024 from a file into memory (restore).
1026 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1028 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1029 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1030 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1032 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1040 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1041 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1042 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1044 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1045 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1046 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1048 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1049 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1050 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1052 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1053 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1054 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1056 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1058 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1060 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1061 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1062 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1063 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1064 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1065 (notably embedded) targets.
1067 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1069 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1070 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1071 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1072 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1074 * New command line option
1076 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1078 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1080 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1081 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1082 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1083 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1084 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1085 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1086 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1087 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1088 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1089 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1091 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1093 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1094 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1096 * New native configurations
1098 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1099 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1100 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1101 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1105 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1107 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1109 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1110 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1111 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1112 permanently REMOVED.
1114 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1115 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1116 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1117 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1118 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1120 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1122 * REMOVED configurations and files
1124 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1126 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1127 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1128 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1129 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1130 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1131 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1132 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1133 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1134 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1135 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1136 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1138 * Changes to command line processing
1140 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1141 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1143 * Changes to key bindings
1145 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1147 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1149 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1151 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1154 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1156 Numerous documentation fixes.
1158 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1160 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1162 * New native configurations
1164 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1165 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1166 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1167 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1168 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1169 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1173 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1175 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1177 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1179 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1180 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1181 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1182 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1183 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1185 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1186 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1187 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1188 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1189 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1190 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1191 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1192 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1194 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1195 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1197 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1198 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1199 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1200 permanently REMOVED.
1202 * REMOVED configurations and files
1204 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1205 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1207 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1211 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1213 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1214 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1219 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1221 * The MI enabled by default.
1223 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1224 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1225 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1226 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1227 which is now deprecated.
1229 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1231 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1232 main features are supported:
1234 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1236 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1239 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1241 - a Pascal expression parser.
1243 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1245 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1247 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1249 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1250 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1252 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1254 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1256 * Changes in completion.
1258 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1259 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1260 users expect at the shell prompt.
1262 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1263 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1264 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1265 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1266 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1267 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1268 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1270 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1272 * New platform-independent commands:
1274 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1275 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1276 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1278 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1280 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1281 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1282 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1284 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1286 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1287 multi-threaded programs though.
1289 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1291 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1293 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1294 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1297 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1299 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1300 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1301 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1302 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1303 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1306 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1307 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1308 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1310 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1312 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1313 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1315 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1316 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1319 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1320 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1321 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1322 a given linear address.
1324 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1325 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1326 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1328 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1330 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1332 * Changes in documentation.
1334 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1335 Documentation License.
1337 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1340 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1342 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1345 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1346 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1347 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1349 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1351 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1352 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1353 contents of this file.
1357 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
1359 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
1361 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1363 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1364 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1365 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1366 greater level of detail.
1368 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1370 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1371 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1372 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1375 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1377 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1378 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1379 machines ``out of the box''.
1381 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1382 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1383 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1384 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1385 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1387 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1388 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1389 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1390 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1391 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1393 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1394 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1397 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1400 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1401 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1402 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1403 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1405 * New native configurations
1407 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
1408 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1412 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
1413 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1414 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
1415 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1417 * OBSOLETE configurations
1419 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1420 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1422 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1425 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1426 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1427 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1428 be permanently REMOVED.
1430 * Gould support removed
1432 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1434 * New features for SVR4
1436 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1437 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1438 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1440 * Many C++ enhancements
1442 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1443 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1445 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1447 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1448 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1449 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1450 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1452 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1453 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1455 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
1457 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1458 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1459 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1461 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1462 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1464 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1466 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1467 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1468 include ``set remote P-packet''.
1470 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1472 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1473 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1474 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1476 * ``apropos'' command added.
1478 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1479 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1480 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1484 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1485 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
1486 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1487 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1488 enabled by configuring with:
1490 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1492 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1494 * New native configurations
1496 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1497 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1498 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1502 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1503 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1504 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1506 * OBSOLETE configurations
1508 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1510 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1511 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1512 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1513 be permanently REMOVED.
1517 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1518 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1519 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1520 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1521 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1522 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1523 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1528 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1530 * set extension-language
1532 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1533 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1534 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1535 set extension-language .c c++
1536 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1537 and their associated languages.
1539 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1541 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1542 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1543 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1547 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1548 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1550 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1551 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1553 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1554 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1555 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1556 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1557 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1558 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1559 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1560 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1562 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1563 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1564 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1565 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1569 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1570 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1571 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1572 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1573 for xdb and dbx commands.
1577 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1578 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1579 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1581 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1582 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1583 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1585 * Debugging across forks
1587 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1592 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1593 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1594 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1596 * GDB remote protocol additions
1598 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1599 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1600 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1601 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1603 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1604 full 64-bit address. The command
1606 set remoteaddresssize 32
1608 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1609 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1612 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1613 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1615 maint packet heythere
1617 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1618 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1621 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1622 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1623 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1625 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1627 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1628 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1629 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1631 * mask-address variable for Mips
1633 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1634 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1635 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1637 * Higher serial baud rates
1639 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1640 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1641 to achieve all of these rates.)
1645 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1646 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1649 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1651 * New native configurations
1653 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1654 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1655 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1656 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1657 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1658 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1659 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1663 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1664 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1665 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1666 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1667 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1668 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1669 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1670 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1671 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1672 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1673 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1675 * New debugging protocols
1677 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1678 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1679 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1680 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1681 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1682 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1686 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1687 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1692 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1693 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1695 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1697 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1698 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1699 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1701 * Live range splitting
1703 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1704 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1705 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1709 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1710 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1714 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1715 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1716 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1721 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1726 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1727 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1728 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1729 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1730 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1731 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1735 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1736 the symbol at the specified address.
1740 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1741 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1742 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1743 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1744 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1748 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1749 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1750 of most MIPS variants.
1754 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1755 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1756 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1760 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1761 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1762 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1763 the possible architectures.
1765 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1767 * New native configurations
1769 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1770 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1771 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1772 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1773 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1774 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1778 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1779 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1780 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1781 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1782 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1784 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1788 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1789 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1790 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1791 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1792 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1796 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1798 * Windows 95/NT native
1800 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1801 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1802 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1803 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1804 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1806 * dont-repeat command
1808 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1809 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1810 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1811 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1813 * Send break instead of ^C
1815 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1816 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1817 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1819 * Remote protocol timeout
1821 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1822 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1823 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1825 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1827 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1828 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1829 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1830 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1831 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1833 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1834 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1835 automatically on hpux10.
1837 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1839 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1841 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1843 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1844 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1845 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1846 every character. The default value is 1050.
1848 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1850 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1851 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1852 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1853 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1854 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1855 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1857 * Speedups for remote debugging
1859 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1860 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1861 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1863 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1865 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1866 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1868 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1870 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1872 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1873 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1875 * Remote targets use caching
1877 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1878 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1879 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1880 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1881 off' turns the the data cache off.
1883 * Remote targets may have threads
1885 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1886 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1887 gdb/remote.c for details.
1891 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1892 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1893 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1894 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1895 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1896 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1897 sequence is something like
1899 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1901 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1905 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1906 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1907 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1908 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1909 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1910 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1911 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1912 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1916 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1917 but does simplify configuration and building.
1921 GDB now supports hpux10.
1923 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1925 * New native configurations
1927 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1928 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1929 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1930 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1934 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1935 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1936 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1937 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1940 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1942 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1943 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1944 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1945 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1946 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1948 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1950 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1951 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1954 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1956 To execute the command use:
1959 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1960 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1961 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1963 * New `if' and `while' commands
1965 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1966 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1967 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1968 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1969 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1970 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1971 if the expression is zero.
1973 * Fortran source language mode
1975 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1976 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1977 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1978 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1981 * Better HPUX support
1983 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1984 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1985 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1986 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1987 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1993 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1994 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2000 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2001 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2004 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2005 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2007 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2009 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2010 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2011 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2012 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2013 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2014 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2016 * New DOS host serial code
2018 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2019 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2022 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2024 * New "complete" command
2026 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2027 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2029 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2031 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2032 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2034 * Breakpoint hit counts
2036 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2037 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2038 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2039 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2040 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2043 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2045 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2046 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2047 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2049 * Shared library breakpoints
2051 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2052 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2054 * Hardware watchpoints
2056 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2057 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2059 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2063 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2064 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2066 * Improved Irix 5 support
2068 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2070 * Improved HPPA support
2072 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2074 * New native configurations
2076 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2077 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2078 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2079 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2083 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2084 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2087 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2089 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2090 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2094 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2095 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2097 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2099 * Irix 5 is now supported
2103 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2104 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2105 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2106 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2107 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2110 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2112 * User visible changes:
2116 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2117 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2118 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2119 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2120 debugging info for the mips target).
2122 * DEC Alpha native support
2124 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2125 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2126 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2127 Alpha-specific notes.
2129 * Preliminary thread implementation
2131 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2133 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2135 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2136 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2139 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2141 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2142 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2143 call methods, ...etc.
2145 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2147 * User visible changes:
2149 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2150 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2151 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2152 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2154 Filename completion now works.
2156 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2157 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2158 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2160 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2161 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2162 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2163 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2164 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2168 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2169 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2172 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2176 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2177 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2178 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2182 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2183 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2184 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2185 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2186 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2190 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2191 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2192 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2194 * New targets supported
2196 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2197 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2198 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2199 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2200 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2202 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2203 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2204 GO32 memory extender.
2206 * New remote protocols
2208 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2210 * New source languages supported
2212 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2213 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2214 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2217 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2219 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2221 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2222 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2223 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2224 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2225 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2226 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2228 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2230 * Faster and better demangling
2232 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2233 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2234 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2235 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2236 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2237 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2240 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2241 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2242 compiler does not actually implement.
2244 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2246 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2247 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2248 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2249 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2250 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2251 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2254 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2255 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2257 * Improved configure script
2259 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2260 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2261 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2262 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2264 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2265 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2266 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2267 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2268 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2269 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2271 * Documentation improvements
2273 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2274 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2275 before submitting changes.
2277 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2278 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2279 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2280 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2281 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2283 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2284 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2285 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2286 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2287 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2288 around this problem.
2292 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2293 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2294 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2297 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2298 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2300 * New native hosts supported
2302 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2303 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2305 * New targets supported
2307 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2309 * New file formats supported
2311 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2312 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2316 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2318 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2319 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2321 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2322 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2323 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2325 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2326 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2328 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2329 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2330 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2333 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2334 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2335 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2336 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2337 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2339 * Internal improvements
2341 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2342 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2344 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2345 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2346 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2347 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2348 shared code that handles any of them.
2350 * New command line options
2352 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2356 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2357 General Public License.
2359 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2361 * Host/native/target split
2363 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2364 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2365 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2366 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2367 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2369 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2370 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2371 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2372 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2373 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2374 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2375 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2377 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2378 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2379 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2381 * New hosts supported
2383 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2384 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2385 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2387 * New targets supported
2389 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
2390 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2392 * New native hosts supported
2394 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2395 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2396 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2398 * New file formats supported
2400 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2401 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2402 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2406 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2407 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2408 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2410 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2412 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2413 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2414 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2415 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2419 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2420 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2421 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2423 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2427 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2428 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2431 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2432 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2434 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2435 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2436 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2437 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2438 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2439 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2441 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2442 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2443 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2444 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2448 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2449 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2450 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2451 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2452 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2454 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2455 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2456 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2457 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2461 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2462 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2463 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2464 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2465 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2466 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2467 each instruction being stepped through.
2469 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2470 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2472 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2473 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2474 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2475 processor with a serial port.
2479 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2480 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2481 supported, and what files each one uses.
2485 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2486 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2487 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2488 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2490 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2491 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2492 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2493 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2497 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2498 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2499 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2500 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2501 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2502 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2504 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2507 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2509 * Better support for C++ function names
2511 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2512 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2513 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2514 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2515 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2517 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2518 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2519 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2520 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2521 for the list of formats.
2523 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2525 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2526 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2527 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2528 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2529 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2530 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2533 * New 'maintenance' command
2535 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2536 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2537 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2539 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2540 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2541 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2542 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2543 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2544 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2546 The following commands are new:
2548 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2549 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2550 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2552 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2554 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2555 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2556 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2557 read after argv processing.
2559 * New hosts supported
2561 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2563 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2565 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2566 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2567 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2568 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2569 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2572 * New targets supported
2574 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2576 * More smarts about finding #include files
2578 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2579 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2580 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2581 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2582 the one that contains your sources.
2584 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2585 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2586 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2588 * Interesting infernals change
2590 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2591 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2592 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2593 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2595 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2597 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2598 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2599 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2601 See the ChangeLog for details.
2603 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2605 * New machines supported (host and target)
2607 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2609 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2611 * New malloc package
2613 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2614 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2615 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2616 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2617 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2618 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2622 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2623 'help info proc' for details.
2625 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2627 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2628 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2631 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2633 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2634 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2635 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2636 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2637 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2638 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2640 * Cross byte order fixes
2642 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2643 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2645 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2647 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2648 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2649 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2650 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2651 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2652 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2653 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2654 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2655 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2656 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2658 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2659 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2660 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2661 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2663 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2664 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2665 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2668 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2670 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2671 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2672 shared across multiple host platforms.
2674 * longjmp() handling
2676 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2677 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2678 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2679 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2683 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2684 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2689 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2690 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2691 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2693 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2695 * New machines supported (host and target)
2697 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2699 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2700 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2702 * New machines supported (target)
2704 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2708 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2709 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2710 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2712 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2713 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2714 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2715 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2716 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2719 * New features for SVR4
2721 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2722 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2723 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2725 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2726 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2727 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2729 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2730 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2732 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2734 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2735 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2736 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2737 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2738 same code linked statically.
2742 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2743 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2744 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2745 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2746 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2747 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2751 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2752 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2753 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2756 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2758 * New machines supported (host and target)
2760 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2761 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2762 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2764 * Almost SCO Unix support
2766 We had hoped to support:
2767 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2768 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2769 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2770 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2772 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2774 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2775 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2776 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2777 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2782 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2783 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2784 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2788 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2789 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2790 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2792 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2794 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2795 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2796 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2798 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2799 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2800 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2801 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2804 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2805 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2806 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2807 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2810 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2811 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2814 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2815 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2816 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2819 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2821 * Improved configuration
2823 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2824 Porting BFD is simpler.
2828 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2829 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2830 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2831 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2835 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2837 * New host supported (not target)
2839 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2842 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2844 * Multiple source language support
2846 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2847 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2848 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2849 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2850 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2851 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2855 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2856 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2857 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2858 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2860 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2861 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2862 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2864 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2865 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2869 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2870 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2871 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2872 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2875 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2877 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2878 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2879 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2880 examining core files.
2884 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2887 * New machines supported (host and target)
2889 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2890 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2891 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2893 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2895 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2897 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2899 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2900 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2901 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2903 * New remote interfaces
2909 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2913 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2915 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2916 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2917 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2918 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2919 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2920 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2921 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2922 stub on the target system.
2924 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2926 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2927 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2928 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2930 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2931 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2934 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2936 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2937 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2939 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2940 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2941 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2943 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2944 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2945 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2946 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2948 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2949 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2950 it is already running. Default is ON.
2952 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2953 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2954 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2955 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2958 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2959 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2960 or the value of the environment variable
2963 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2964 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2967 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2968 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2969 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2971 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2972 history expansion will be performed on
2973 command line input. The default is OFF.
2975 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2976 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2977 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2979 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2980 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2981 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2984 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2985 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2986 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2989 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2990 ``set width'' instead.
2992 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2993 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2994 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2995 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2997 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3000 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3003 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3006 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3009 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3011 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3012 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3013 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3017 * Support for Shared Libraries
3019 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3020 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3021 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3022 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3023 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3024 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3025 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3026 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3028 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3029 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3030 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3032 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3037 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3038 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3039 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3040 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3041 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3042 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3044 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3046 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3048 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3049 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3050 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3053 * C++ multiple inheritance
3055 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3058 * C++ exception handling
3060 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3061 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3062 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3065 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3066 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3067 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3069 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3070 current stack frame.
3073 * Minor command changes
3075 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3076 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3077 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3079 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3080 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3081 frames without printing.
3083 * New directory command
3085 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3086 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3087 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3088 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3089 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3091 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3093 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3096 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3097 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3098 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3099 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob