1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.9
7 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
8 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
9 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
10 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
11 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
12 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
13 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
15 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
17 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
19 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
20 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
23 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
24 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
25 and may include things like its command line arguments.
27 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
28 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
29 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
30 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
31 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
32 backward compatibility.
34 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
35 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
36 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
37 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
39 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
40 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
41 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
42 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
47 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
48 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
49 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
50 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
54 maint print symbol-cache
55 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
57 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
58 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
60 maint flush-symbol-cache
61 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
65 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
71 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
72 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
73 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
74 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
76 maint set symbol-cache-size
77 maint show symbol-cache-size
78 Control the size of the symbol cache.
80 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
81 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
83 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
84 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
86 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
87 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
89 * Python/Guile scripting
91 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
92 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
96 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
97 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
100 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
103 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
104 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
105 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
109 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
110 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
113 Return information about files on the remote system.
116 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
117 create a process running on the remote system.
119 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
120 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
121 the btrace record target.
122 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
124 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
125 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
127 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
130 * Removed command line options
132 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
134 * Removed targets and native configurations
136 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
137 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
139 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
141 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
145 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
146 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
147 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
148 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
149 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
150 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
151 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
152 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
153 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
154 selecting a new file to debug.
155 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
156 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
158 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
161 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
162 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
163 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
164 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
166 * New Python-based convenience functions:
168 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
169 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
170 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
171 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
173 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
174 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
175 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
176 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
177 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
178 interface with this new feature are:
180 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
181 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
185 demangle [-l language] [--] name
186 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
187 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
188 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
189 as "maint demangler-warning".
191 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
192 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
194 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
195 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
198 maint print user-registers
199 List all currently available "user" registers.
201 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
202 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
203 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
205 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
206 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
207 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
210 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
211 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
212 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
213 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
216 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
217 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
218 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
219 switched threads meanwhile.
221 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
223 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
224 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
225 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
226 is now the default mode.
230 set debug symbol-lookup
231 show debug symbol-lookup
232 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
236 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
237 inferiors that have exited.
241 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
245 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
247 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
248 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
249 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
250 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
251 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
253 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
254 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
255 its alias "share", instead.
257 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
259 * New command line options
262 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
264 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
265 as specified in ISO C99.
267 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
268 with or without disassembly.
272 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
273 available is determined at configure time.
274 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
275 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
277 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
281 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
285 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
287 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
288 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
290 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
291 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
295 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
296 show print symbol-loading
297 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
298 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
299 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
302 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
303 show guile print-stack
304 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
306 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
307 show auto-load guile-scripts
308 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
310 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
311 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
312 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
313 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
314 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
315 usage of this option.
317 set auto-connect-native-target
319 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
320 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
321 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
323 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
324 show record btrace replay-memory-access
325 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
327 maint set target-async (on|off)
328 maint show target-async
329 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
330 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
331 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
332 occurring only in synchronous mode.
334 set mi-async (on|off)
336 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
337 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
339 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
340 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
342 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
343 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
344 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
345 "set target-async on" command.
347 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
349 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
350 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
351 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
352 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
353 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
355 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
356 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
357 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
359 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
360 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
361 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
362 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
363 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
364 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
365 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
367 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
368 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
370 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
371 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
372 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
374 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
375 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
378 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
380 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
381 remote. It now works with all targets.
383 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
384 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
385 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
386 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
387 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
388 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
389 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
390 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
391 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
394 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
395 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
396 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
398 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
400 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
401 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
402 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
406 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
407 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
408 branch trace incrementally.
412 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
413 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
415 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
416 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
417 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
418 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
419 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
422 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
424 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
425 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
426 its alias "share", instead.
428 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
429 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
434 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
435 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
436 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
437 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
438 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
439 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
440 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
441 commands and CLI execution commands.
443 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
445 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
446 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
447 recording has been added.
449 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
451 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
452 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
454 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
455 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
456 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
457 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
458 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
459 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
462 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
464 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
466 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
467 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
468 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
469 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
474 (gdb) info registers rax
477 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
478 "*value not available*".
480 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
485 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
486 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
487 ** Line tables representation has been added.
488 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
489 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
490 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
494 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
495 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
496 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
498 * Removed native configurations
500 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
501 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
503 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
504 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
505 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
506 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
507 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
508 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
509 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
513 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
515 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
517 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
519 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
522 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
524 maint set|show per-command
525 maint set|show per-command space
526 maint set|show per-command time
527 maint set|show per-command symtab
528 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
530 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
531 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
532 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
533 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
534 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
537 info exceptions REGEXP
538 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
539 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
544 set debug symfile off|on
546 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
547 symbol tables within those files
549 set print raw frame-arguments
550 show print raw frame-arguments
551 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
552 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
554 set remote trace-status-packet
555 show remote trace-status-packet
556 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
560 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
564 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
566 set startup-with-shell
567 show startup-with-shell
568 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
573 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
574 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
576 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
577 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
578 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
579 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
582 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
583 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
584 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
586 * New command-line options
588 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
590 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
591 buffer in Common Trace Format.
593 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
596 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
598 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
599 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
601 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
602 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
604 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
605 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
606 due to an uncaught signal.
610 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
611 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
612 command, which should contain "language-option".
614 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
615 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
617 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
618 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
619 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
620 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
621 "undefined-command-error-code".
623 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
626 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
628 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
629 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
632 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
633 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
635 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
636 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
637 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
639 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
640 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
641 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
642 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
643 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
644 "exec-run-start-option".
646 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
647 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
649 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
650 the new "info exceptions" command.
652 * New system-wide configuration scripts
653 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
654 configuration scripts for the following systems:
658 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
659 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
660 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
663 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
664 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
666 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
667 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
668 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
674 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
675 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
676 involvemement at each single-step.
678 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
679 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
680 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
681 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
682 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
683 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
686 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
688 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
689 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
691 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
692 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
693 trace state variables.
695 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
698 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
699 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
701 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
703 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
704 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
705 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
706 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
708 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
710 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
711 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
712 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
713 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
715 set|show record full insn-number-max
716 set|show record full stop-at-limit
717 set|show record full memory-query
719 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
720 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
721 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
722 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
723 This new recording method can be enabled using:
727 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
728 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
730 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
731 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
732 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
734 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
735 instruction granularity
737 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
740 * New native configurations
742 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
743 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
744 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
745 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
749 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
750 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
751 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
752 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
753 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
755 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
756 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
757 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
758 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
759 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
760 --data-directory command-line option.
762 * New command line options:
764 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
765 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
767 * Removed command line options
769 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
772 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
775 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
779 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
781 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
783 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
785 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
787 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
788 of architecture in the Python API.
790 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
791 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
793 * New Python-based convenience functions:
795 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
796 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
798 ** $_regex(str, regex)
800 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
803 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
804 default for GCC since November 2000.
806 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
808 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
809 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
811 * New configure options
813 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
814 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
815 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
816 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
817 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
818 options allow the user to override that default.
819 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
820 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
821 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
823 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
826 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
827 conditions to be attached.
830 List the BFDs known to GDB.
832 python-interactive [command]
834 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
835 and print the result of expressions.
838 "py" is a new alias for "python".
840 enable type-printer [name]...
841 disable type-printer [name]...
842 Enable or disable type printers.
846 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
847 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
852 set print type methods (on|off)
853 show print type methods
854 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
855 The default is to show them.
857 set print type typedefs (on|off)
858 show print type typedefs
859 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
860 The default is to show them.
862 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
863 show filename-display
864 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
865 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
867 set trace-buffer-size
868 show trace-buffer-size
869 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
871 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
872 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
873 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
877 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
880 set debug coff-pe-read
881 show debug coff-pe-read
882 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
887 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
890 set debug notification
891 show debug notification
892 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
896 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
897 "=cmd-param-changed".
898 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
899 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
900 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
901 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
902 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
903 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
904 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
905 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
907 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
908 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
909 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
910 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
911 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
912 library load/unload events.
913 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
914 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
915 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
916 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
917 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
918 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
919 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
920 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
922 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
923 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
924 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
925 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
930 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
931 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
934 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
935 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
939 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
940 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
943 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
944 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
946 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
948 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
949 for more x32 ABI info.
951 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
953 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
955 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
956 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
957 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
958 "info os files" lists file descriptors
959 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
960 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
961 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
962 "info os msg" lists message queues
963 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
965 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
966 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
967 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
968 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
969 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
970 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
972 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
973 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
974 record/replay support.
976 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
980 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
983 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
985 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
986 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
988 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
990 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
991 the source at which the symbol was defined.
993 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
994 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
995 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
998 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
999 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1001 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1002 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1003 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1005 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1006 object associated with a PC value.
1008 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1009 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1011 * Go language support.
1012 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1015 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1016 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1018 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1019 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1021 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1022 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1023 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1024 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1025 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1028 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1029 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1030 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1031 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1033 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1034 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1036 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1037 since December 2007.
1039 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1040 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1041 command does. For instance:
1043 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1045 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1046 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1047 created, using the "condition" command.
1049 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1050 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1052 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1054 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1055 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1056 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1057 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1058 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1059 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1060 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1061 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1063 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1064 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1065 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1066 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1067 the .gdb_index section.
1069 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1071 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1076 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1078 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1082 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1083 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1084 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1086 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1087 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1089 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1092 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1093 C++ and Java objects.
1095 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1096 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1097 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1098 configured with '--with-python'.
1100 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1101 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1102 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1103 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1104 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1105 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1106 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1108 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1109 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1110 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1111 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1113 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1114 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1115 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1116 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1118 ** "set print symbol"
1120 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1121 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1122 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1124 * Deprecated commands
1126 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1127 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1131 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1132 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1134 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1135 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1136 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1137 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1142 set mips compression
1143 show mips compression
1144 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1145 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1148 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1150 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1151 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1152 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1153 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1155 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1159 Disable auto-loading globally.
1162 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1164 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1165 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1166 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1168 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1169 show auto-load python-scripts
1170 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1172 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1173 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1174 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1176 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1177 show auto-load libthread-db
1178 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1180 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1181 show auto-load scripts-directory
1182 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1183 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1184 of the directories listed by this option.
1185 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1187 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1188 show auto-load safe-path
1189 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1190 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1192 set debug auto-load on|off
1193 show debug auto-load
1194 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1196 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1198 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1199 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1200 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1201 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1203 set dprintf-function <expr>
1204 show dprintf-function
1205 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1206 show dprintf-channel
1207 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1208 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1210 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1211 show disconnected-dprintf
1212 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1213 after GDB disconnects.
1215 * New configure options
1217 --with-auto-load-dir
1218 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1219 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1220 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1221 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1222 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1224 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1225 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1226 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1228 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1229 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1232 * New remote packets
1234 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1236 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1237 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1238 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1239 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1243 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1244 program without GDB involvement.
1246 * New command line options
1248 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1249 before loading inferior.
1250 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1251 execute it before loading inferior.
1253 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1255 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1256 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1257 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1258 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1261 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1262 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1264 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1265 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1266 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1267 target hardware watchpoint.
1269 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1270 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1271 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1272 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1276 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1277 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1280 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1281 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1282 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1283 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1284 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1287 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1290 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1291 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1292 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1293 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1294 corresponding value.
1296 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1297 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1298 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1301 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1302 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1303 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1304 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1306 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1308 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1311 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1312 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1313 available in the CLI.
1315 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1316 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1317 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1318 "some_type.items()".
1320 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1323 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1324 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1325 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1326 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1327 any anonymous fields.
1331 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1334 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1335 "=breakpoint-modified".
1337 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1339 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1340 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1341 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1344 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1345 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1346 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1347 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1348 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1350 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1351 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1353 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1354 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1355 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1356 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1357 use this option to specify where to find it.
1359 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1360 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1361 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1362 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1363 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1364 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1365 section in the user manual for more details.
1367 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1368 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1369 become available after that.
1371 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1373 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1374 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1380 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1381 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1385 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1386 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1387 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1389 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1390 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1391 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1393 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1394 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1395 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1396 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1397 name starts with a hyphen.
1399 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1400 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1401 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1402 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1403 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1404 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1405 number of bytes that will be collected.
1408 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1409 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1410 setting the variable trace-notes.
1413 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1414 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1415 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1418 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1419 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1420 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1421 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1422 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1425 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1426 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1427 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1431 set debug dwarf2-read
1432 show debug dwarf2-read
1433 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1434 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1436 set debug symtab-create
1437 show debug symtab-create
1438 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1439 creation. The default is off.
1442 show extended-prompt
1443 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1444 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1445 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1446 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1447 prompt is displayed.
1449 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1450 show print entry-values
1451 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1452 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1453 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1455 set debug entry-values
1456 show debug entry-values
1457 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1458 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1460 set basenames-may-differ
1461 show basenames-may-differ
1462 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1463 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1464 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1465 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1466 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1467 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1468 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1469 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1475 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1476 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1477 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1478 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1480 set trace-stop-notes
1481 show trace-stop-notes
1482 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1483 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1484 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1485 started by someone else.
1487 * New remote packets
1491 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1495 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1499 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1503 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1507 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1510 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1511 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1515 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1519 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1521 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1523 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1525 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1527 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1528 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1529 matches the given regular expression.
1531 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1533 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1534 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1536 * New command line options
1538 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1539 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1541 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1542 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1544 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1545 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1546 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1548 * GDB now understands thread names.
1550 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1551 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1553 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1554 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1557 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1558 has been integrated into GDB.
1562 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1563 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1564 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1566 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1567 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1568 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1569 and allows for more dynamic content.
1571 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1572 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1573 have an is_valid method.
1575 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1576 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1577 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1579 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1581 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1582 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1583 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1584 that function like so:
1586 result = some_value (10,20)
1588 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1589 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1590 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1592 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1593 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1594 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1595 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1596 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1598 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1599 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1601 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1603 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1606 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1607 holds the thread's name.
1609 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1610 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1611 occurring in the process being debugged.
1612 The following events are currently supported:
1613 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1614 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1615 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1619 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1620 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1622 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1624 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1625 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1626 was added to GCC 4.5.
1628 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1629 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1630 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1631 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1632 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1633 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1635 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1636 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1637 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1638 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1639 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1641 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1642 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1643 execution to a label.
1645 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1646 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1647 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1648 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1650 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1651 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1652 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1655 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1657 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1658 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1659 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1660 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1661 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1662 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1665 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1667 While now you see this:
1670 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1672 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1675 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1676 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1677 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1678 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1680 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1681 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1682 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1683 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1684 section in the user manual for more details.
1686 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1688 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1689 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1691 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1693 * New native configurations
1695 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1699 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1701 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1702 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1703 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1704 in the GDB user manual.
1706 * Guile support was removed.
1708 * New features in the GNU simulator
1710 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1712 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1714 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1716 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1718 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1719 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1720 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1721 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1722 was always disabled for such configurations.
1726 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1728 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1729 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1739 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1740 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1741 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1743 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1745 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1746 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1747 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1748 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1750 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1751 mentioned flavors of operators.
1753 ** static const class members
1755 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1756 class definition has been fixed.
1758 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1760 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1761 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1762 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1763 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1764 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1765 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1767 * Static tracepoints
1769 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1770 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1771 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1772 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1773 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1774 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1775 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1776 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1777 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1778 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1779 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1780 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1781 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1782 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1783 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1784 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1785 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1786 the "New remote packets" section below.
1788 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1790 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1791 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1792 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1793 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1797 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1798 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1799 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1800 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1801 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1802 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1803 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1805 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1808 * New remote packets
1812 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1816 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1817 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1818 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1819 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1820 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1821 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1825 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1829 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1832 qXfer:statictrace:read
1834 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1835 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1836 to gdb's qSupported query.
1840 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1844 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1845 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1847 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1848 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1851 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1853 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1854 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1855 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1856 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1858 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1859 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1860 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1861 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1862 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1863 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1864 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1866 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1867 for static tracepoints support.
1869 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1871 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1872 it understands register description.
1874 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1876 * X86 general purpose registers
1878 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1879 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1880 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1881 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1882 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1884 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1885 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1886 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1887 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1888 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1889 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1891 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1892 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1893 in the specified file.
1895 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1896 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1897 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1898 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1899 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1900 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1901 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1902 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1903 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1904 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1908 eval template, expressions...
1909 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1910 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1912 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1913 show target-file-system-kind
1914 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1917 save breakpoints <filename>
1918 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1919 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1920 definitions, use the `source' command.
1922 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1925 info static-tracepoint-markers
1926 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1928 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1929 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1930 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1934 Enable and disable observer mode.
1936 set may-write-registers on|off
1937 set may-write-memory on|off
1938 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1939 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1940 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1941 set may-interrupt on|off
1942 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1943 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1944 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1945 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1946 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1947 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1948 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1950 set record memory-query on|off
1951 show record memory-query
1952 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1953 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1958 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1962 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1963 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1964 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1965 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1966 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1968 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1969 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1970 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1971 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1973 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1974 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1976 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1978 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1980 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1982 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1983 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1984 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1986 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1987 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1988 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1989 regular breakpoints.
1993 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1995 * D language support.
1996 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1999 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2000 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2001 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2002 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2003 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2005 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2006 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2007 conditions of the form:
2009 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2011 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2012 interface mentioned above.
2014 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2018 ** Namespace Support
2020 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2021 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2022 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2023 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2024 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2028 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2029 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2034 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2035 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2039 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2044 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2047 * Multi-program debugging.
2049 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2050 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2051 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2052 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2053 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2054 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2055 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2056 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2058 * New tracing features
2060 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2062 ** Trace state variables
2064 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2065 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2066 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2067 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2068 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2069 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2070 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2071 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2072 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2073 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2077 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2078 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2079 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2080 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2081 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2082 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2083 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2084 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2085 the regular trace command.
2087 ** Disconnected tracing
2089 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2090 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2091 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2092 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2093 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2097 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2098 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2099 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2100 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2101 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2102 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2105 ** Circular trace buffer
2107 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2108 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2109 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2110 not be available for all target agents.
2115 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2116 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2119 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2120 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2123 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2124 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2127 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2128 "set script-extension" (see below).
2130 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2132 record save [<FILENAME>]
2133 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2134 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2136 record restore <FILENAME>
2137 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2138 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2140 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2143 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2144 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2145 inferior has loaded.
2150 maint info program-spaces
2151 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2153 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2154 show remote interrupt-sequence
2155 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2156 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2157 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2158 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2159 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2161 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2162 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2163 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2164 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2167 set remotebreak [on | off]
2169 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2171 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2172 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2175 List trace state variables and their values.
2177 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2178 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2181 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2182 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2184 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2185 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2187 * New expression syntax
2189 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2190 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2194 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2195 show follow-exec-mode
2196 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2197 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2198 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2200 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2201 show default-collect
2202 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2203 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2204 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2206 set disconnected-tracing
2207 show disconnected-tracing
2208 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2209 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2212 set circular-trace-buffer
2213 show circular-trace-buffer
2214 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2215 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2216 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2217 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2219 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2220 show script-extension
2221 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2222 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2223 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2224 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2226 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2228 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2229 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2230 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2231 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2232 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2233 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2234 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2237 * Python API Improvements
2239 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2240 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2241 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2243 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2244 `is_base_class' attribute.
2246 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2248 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2249 evaluate an expression.
2251 * New remote packets
2254 Define a trace state variable.
2257 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2260 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2263 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2266 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2270 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2272 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2273 much more reliable. In particular:
2274 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2275 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2276 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2277 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2278 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2279 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2280 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2281 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2282 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2283 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2284 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2285 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2286 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2287 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2288 non-threaded programs.
2290 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2291 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2292 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2295 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2297 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2298 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2299 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2300 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2301 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2303 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2304 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2305 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2306 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2307 for tracepoint actions.
2309 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2310 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2311 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2313 * Process record and replay
2315 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2316 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2317 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2320 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2321 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2322 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2325 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2326 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2329 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2330 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2331 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2332 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2333 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2334 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2335 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2336 the installation instructions for more information.
2338 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2339 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2340 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2341 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2343 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2344 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2346 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2347 now complete on file names.
2349 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2350 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2351 For instance, consider:
2353 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2354 # struct example variable;
2357 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2358 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2360 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2361 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2363 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2364 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2367 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2368 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2369 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2371 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2372 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2373 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2374 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2376 * New remote packets
2379 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2382 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2383 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2384 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2387 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2388 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2391 Obtains additional operating system information
2395 Read or write additional signal information.
2397 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2399 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2400 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2401 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2403 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2404 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2406 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2407 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2408 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2410 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2411 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2413 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2415 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2417 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2418 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2420 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2421 list of section offsets.
2423 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2424 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2425 have also been fixed.
2427 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2428 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2429 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2431 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2434 template<typename T> class C { };
2437 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2439 ptype C<char const *>
2440 ptype C<char const*>
2441 ptype C<const char *>
2442 ptype C<const char*>
2444 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2446 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2447 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2449 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2450 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2451 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2453 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2454 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2456 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2459 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2460 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2462 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2463 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2468 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2469 available is determined at configure time.
2471 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2473 * Ada tasking support
2475 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2479 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2481 Print detailed information about task number N.
2483 Print the task number of the current task.
2485 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2487 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2488 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2490 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2492 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2493 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2494 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2495 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2496 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2497 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2500 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2501 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2504 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2505 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2506 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2507 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2510 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2512 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2513 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2514 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2515 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2516 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2518 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2519 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2520 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2521 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2522 --enable-targets configure option.
2524 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2526 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2527 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2528 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2529 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2530 section in the user manual for more information.
2532 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2533 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2534 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2535 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2536 extensions on linux targets.
2538 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2540 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2541 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2542 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2543 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2544 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2545 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2546 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2547 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2548 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2550 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2552 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2554 maint set python print-stack
2555 maint show python print-stack
2556 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2559 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2564 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2568 Show operating system information about processes.
2571 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2574 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2577 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2580 Kill inferior number NUM.
2584 set spu stop-on-load
2585 show spu stop-on-load
2586 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2588 set spu auto-flush-cache
2589 show spu auto-flush-cache
2590 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2591 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2593 set sh calling-convention
2594 show sh calling-convention
2595 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2598 show debug timestamp
2599 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2601 set disassemble-next-line
2602 show disassemble-next-line
2603 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2606 set remote noack-packet
2607 show remote noack-packet
2608 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2609 under "New remote packets."
2611 set remote query-attached-packet
2612 show remote query-attached-packet
2613 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2615 set remote read-siginfo-object
2616 show remote read-siginfo-object
2617 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2620 set remote write-siginfo-object
2621 show remote write-siginfo-object
2622 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2625 set remote reverse-continue
2626 show remote reverse-continue
2627 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2629 set remote reverse-step
2630 show remote reverse-step
2631 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2633 set displaced-stepping
2634 show displaced-stepping
2635 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2636 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2637 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2640 show debug displaced
2641 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2643 maint set internal-error
2644 maint show internal-error
2645 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2647 maint set internal-warning
2648 maint show internal-warning
2649 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2654 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2656 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2657 show multiple-symbols
2658 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2659 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2660 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2662 set breakpoint always-inserted
2663 show breakpoint always-inserted
2664 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2665 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2666 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2668 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2669 show arm fallback-mode
2670 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2672 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2673 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2674 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2675 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2677 set disable-randomization
2678 show disable-randomization
2679 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2680 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2681 multiple debugging sessions.
2685 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2690 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2691 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2692 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2693 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2695 set target-wide-charset
2696 show target-wide-charset
2697 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2698 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2700 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2702 set tcp connect-timeout
2703 show tcp connect-timeout
2704 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2705 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2706 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2708 set libthread-db-search-path
2709 show libthread-db-search-path
2710 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2713 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2714 show schedule-multiple
2715 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2716 the current process.
2720 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2721 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2722 affecting correctness.
2724 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2725 show interactive-mode
2726 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2727 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2728 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2729 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2730 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2735 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2736 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2737 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2741 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2742 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2743 alias for the `fork' command.
2746 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2747 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2748 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2751 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2752 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2753 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2757 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2758 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2759 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2762 * New native configurations
2764 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2766 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2770 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2771 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2772 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2775 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2776 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2782 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2784 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2786 * New native configurations
2788 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2789 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2793 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2794 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2796 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2798 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2799 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2800 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2801 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2803 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2804 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2806 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2809 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2810 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2811 and in inlined functions.
2813 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2814 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2815 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2817 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2819 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2820 registers on PowerPC targets.
2822 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2823 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2825 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2826 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2828 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2829 extended-remote mode.
2831 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2832 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2833 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2834 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2836 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2837 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2838 target architectures.
2840 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2841 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2842 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2843 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2845 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2848 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2849 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2851 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2852 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2853 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2854 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2856 - Improved command completion in Ada
2859 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2864 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2865 show print frame-arguments
2866 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2867 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2872 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2879 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2881 * New remote packets
2888 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2891 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2895 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2897 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2899 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2900 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2901 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2903 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2904 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2905 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2907 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2908 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2911 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2912 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2914 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2915 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2917 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2919 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2920 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2921 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2923 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2924 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2926 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2927 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2930 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2931 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2932 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2934 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2937 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2938 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2939 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2941 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2943 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2945 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2946 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2947 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2949 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2950 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2952 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2953 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2954 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2955 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2956 Windows and SymbianOS).
2958 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2959 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2961 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2962 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2968 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2969 when debugging using remote targets.
2971 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2972 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2973 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2974 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2975 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2976 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2977 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2979 set breakpoint auto-hw
2980 show breakpoint auto-hw
2981 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2982 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2983 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2984 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2985 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2986 including "next" and "finish".
2989 catch exception unhandled
2990 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2993 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2997 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2998 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2999 an alias to "set sysroot".
3002 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3003 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3006 * New native configurations
3008 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3011 unset tdesc filename
3013 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3014 not query the target for its built-in description.
3018 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3019 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3020 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3022 * New remote packets
3025 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3026 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3028 qXfer:features:read:
3029 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3034 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3035 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3037 qXfer:libraries:read:
3038 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3039 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3040 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3041 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3045 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3053 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3054 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3055 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3056 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3058 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3061 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3062 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3071 * Other removed features
3078 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3085 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3090 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3091 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3096 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3097 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3099 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3101 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3102 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3103 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3104 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3106 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3108 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3109 in debugging information.
3113 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3114 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3116 set mips stack-arg-size
3117 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3119 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3121 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3126 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3128 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3129 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3130 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3132 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3133 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3136 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3137 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3139 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3140 stub provides the required support.
3142 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3143 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3148 unset substitute-path
3149 show substitute-path
3150 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3151 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3152 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3153 between compilation and debugging.
3157 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3158 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3159 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3163 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3165 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3166 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3168 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3170 * New remote packets
3173 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3174 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3175 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3176 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3180 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3181 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3183 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3184 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3185 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3190 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3192 * Removed remote packets
3195 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3196 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3198 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3202 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3204 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3208 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3209 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3211 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3213 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3215 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3216 previously saved state.
3218 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3220 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3222 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3223 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3225 info forks List forks of the user program that
3226 are available to be debugged.
3228 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3229 forks of the user program that are
3230 available to be debugged.
3232 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3233 that are available to be debugged (and
3234 kill the forked process).
3236 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3237 that are available to be debugged (and
3238 allow the process to continue).
3242 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3244 * Improved Windows host support
3246 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3247 native console support, and remote communications using either
3248 network sockets or serial ports.
3250 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3252 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3253 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3254 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3255 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3256 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3257 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3261 The ARM rdi-share module.
3263 The Netware NLM debug server.
3265 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3267 * New native configurations
3269 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3270 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3274 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3276 * New command line options
3278 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3279 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3280 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3281 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3282 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3283 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3284 with the --command (-x) option.
3286 * Deprecated commands removed
3288 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3292 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3293 othernames set arm disassembler
3294 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3295 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3296 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3299 * New BSD user-level threads support
3301 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3302 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3305 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3306 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3307 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3309 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3310 are not yet supported.
3312 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3313 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3315 * REMOVED configurations and files
3317 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3318 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3319 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3321 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3323 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3324 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3327 * VAX floating point support
3329 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3331 * User-defined command support
3333 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3334 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3335 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3337 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3339 * New command line option
3341 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3344 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3346 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3347 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3348 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3349 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3350 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3352 * Internationalization
3354 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3355 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3356 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3360 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3361 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3362 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3364 * New native configurations
3366 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3370 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3371 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3373 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3375 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3376 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3377 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3380 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3381 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3382 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3392 powerpc bdm protocol
3394 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3395 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3397 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3399 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3400 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3401 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3402 permanently REMOVED.
3411 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3413 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3415 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3416 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3419 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3421 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3422 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3423 IRIX long double values).
3427 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3428 command. This problem has been fixed.
3430 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3432 * Fix for ``many threads''
3434 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3435 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3438 ptrace: No such process.
3439 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3441 This problem has been fixed.
3443 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3445 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3448 * New ``start'' command.
3450 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3452 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3454 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3455 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3456 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3458 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3459 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3460 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3461 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3462 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3463 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3464 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3465 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3466 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3468 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3470 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3471 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3472 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3473 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3474 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3476 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3477 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3478 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3480 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3482 * New native configurations
3484 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3485 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3486 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3487 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3488 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3489 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3490 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3492 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3494 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3495 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3496 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3497 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3498 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3499 work, was also included.
3501 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3502 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3512 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3513 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3515 * REMOVED configurations and files
3517 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3518 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3519 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3520 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3521 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3522 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3523 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3524 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3525 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3526 sonymips mips-sony-*
3527 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3529 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3531 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3533 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3534 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3535 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3536 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3539 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3541 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3542 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3543 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3544 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3545 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3546 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3549 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3551 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3553 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3554 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3555 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3557 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3559 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3560 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3562 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3564 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3565 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3566 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3568 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3570 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3571 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3573 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3575 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3576 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3577 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3579 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3581 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3582 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3583 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3585 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3587 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3589 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3590 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3592 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3594 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3595 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3596 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3597 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3599 * Revised SPARC target
3601 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3602 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3603 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3604 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3605 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3609 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3610 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3611 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3614 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3616 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3617 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3620 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3622 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3623 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3624 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3625 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3626 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3627 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3628 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3629 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3630 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3632 * New native configurations
3634 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3635 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3636 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3637 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3638 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3640 * New debugging protocols
3642 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3644 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3646 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3647 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3648 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3650 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3652 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3653 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3654 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3655 permanently REMOVED.
3657 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3658 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3659 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3660 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3661 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3662 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3663 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3664 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3665 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3666 sonymips mips-sony-*
3667 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3669 * REMOVED configurations and files
3671 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3672 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3673 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3674 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3675 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3676 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3677 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3678 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3679 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3680 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3681 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3682 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3683 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3684 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3685 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3686 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3687 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3689 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3693 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3694 integrated into GDB.
3696 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3698 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3699 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3700 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3703 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3704 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3705 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3709 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3710 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3711 remote protocol documentation for details.
3713 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3715 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3716 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3717 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3720 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3722 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3723 per-thread variables.
3725 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3727 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3728 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3730 * Separate debug info.
3732 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3733 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3734 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3735 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3736 and optional debug files.
3738 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3740 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3741 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3744 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3745 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3749 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3750 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3751 considered "useable".
3753 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3755 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3756 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3759 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3761 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3762 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3764 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3766 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3767 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3770 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3772 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3773 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3777 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3778 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3779 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3780 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3781 data, for more informative profiling results.
3783 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3785 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3786 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3787 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3789 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3792 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3793 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3794 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3795 in a subsequent -var-update.
3797 * New native configurations.
3799 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3801 * Multi-arched targets.
3803 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3804 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3806 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3808 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3809 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3810 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3811 permanently REMOVED.
3813 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3814 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3815 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3816 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3817 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3818 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3819 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3820 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3821 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3822 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3823 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3824 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3826 * REMOVED configurations and files
3829 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3830 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3831 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3832 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3833 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3834 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3836 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3837 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3838 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3839 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3840 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3841 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3843 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3845 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3846 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3847 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3848 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3849 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3851 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3853 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3855 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3856 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3857 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3858 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3859 shared libs like mad''.
3861 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3863 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3864 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3865 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3866 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3868 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3870 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3871 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3874 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3875 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3877 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3878 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3880 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3881 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3882 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3883 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3885 * Multi-arched targets.
3887 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3888 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3890 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3891 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3892 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3896 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3899 * New native configurations
3901 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3902 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3903 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3904 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3906 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3908 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3909 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3910 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3911 permanently REMOVED.
3913 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3914 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3915 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3916 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3917 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3918 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3919 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3920 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3921 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3922 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3924 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3925 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3927 * OBSOLETE languages
3929 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3931 * REMOVED configurations and files
3933 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3934 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3935 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3936 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3937 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3939 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3941 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3943 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3944 commands. The default is 1024.
3946 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3948 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3950 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3952 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3953 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3954 from a file into memory (restore).
3956 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3958 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3959 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3960 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3962 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3970 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3971 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3972 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3974 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3975 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3976 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3978 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3979 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3980 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3982 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3983 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3984 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3986 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3988 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3990 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3991 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3992 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3993 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3994 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3995 (notably embedded) targets.
3997 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3999 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4000 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4001 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4002 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4004 * New command line option
4006 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4008 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4010 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4011 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4012 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4013 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4014 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4015 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4016 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4017 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4018 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4019 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4021 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4023 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4024 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4026 * New native configurations
4028 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4029 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4030 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4031 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4035 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4037 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4039 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4040 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4041 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4042 permanently REMOVED.
4044 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4045 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4046 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4047 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4048 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4050 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4052 * REMOVED configurations and files
4054 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4056 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4057 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4058 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4059 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4060 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4061 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4062 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4063 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4064 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4065 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4066 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4068 * Changes to command line processing
4070 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4071 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4073 * Changes to key bindings
4075 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4077 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4079 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4081 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4084 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4086 Numerous documentation fixes.
4088 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4090 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4092 * New native configurations
4094 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4095 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4096 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4097 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4098 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4099 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4103 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4105 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4107 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4109 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4110 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4111 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4112 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4113 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4115 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4116 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4117 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4118 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4119 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4120 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4121 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4122 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4124 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4125 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4127 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4128 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4129 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4130 permanently REMOVED.
4132 * REMOVED configurations and files
4134 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4135 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4137 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4141 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4143 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4144 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4149 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4151 * The MI enabled by default.
4153 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4154 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4155 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4156 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4157 which is now deprecated.
4159 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4161 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4162 main features are supported:
4164 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4166 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4169 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4171 - a Pascal expression parser.
4173 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4175 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4177 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4179 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4180 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4182 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4184 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4186 * Changes in completion.
4188 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4189 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4190 users expect at the shell prompt.
4192 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4193 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4194 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4195 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4196 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4197 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4198 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4200 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4202 * New platform-independent commands:
4204 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4205 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4206 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4208 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4210 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4211 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4212 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4214 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4216 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4217 multi-threaded programs though.
4219 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4221 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4223 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4224 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4227 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4229 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4230 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4231 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4232 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4233 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4236 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4237 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4238 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4240 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4242 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4243 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4245 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4246 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4249 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4250 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4251 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4252 a given linear address.
4254 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4255 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4256 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4258 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4260 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4262 * Changes in documentation.
4264 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4265 Documentation License.
4267 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4270 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4272 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4275 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4276 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4277 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4279 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4281 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4282 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4283 contents of this file.
4287 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4289 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4291 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4293 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4294 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4295 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4296 greater level of detail.
4298 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4300 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4301 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4302 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4305 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4307 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4308 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4309 machines ``out of the box''.
4311 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4312 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4313 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4314 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4315 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4317 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4318 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4319 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4320 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4321 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4323 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4324 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4327 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4330 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4331 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4332 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4333 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4335 * New native configurations
4337 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4338 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4342 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4343 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4344 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4345 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4347 * OBSOLETE configurations
4349 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4350 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4352 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4355 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4356 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4357 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4358 be permanently REMOVED.
4360 * Gould support removed
4362 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4364 * New features for SVR4
4366 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4367 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4368 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4370 * Many C++ enhancements
4372 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4373 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4375 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4377 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4378 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4379 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4380 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4382 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4383 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4385 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4387 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4388 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4389 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4391 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4392 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4394 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4396 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4397 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4398 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4400 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4402 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4403 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4404 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4406 * ``apropos'' command added.
4408 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4409 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4410 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4414 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4415 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4416 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4417 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4418 enabled by configuring with:
4420 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4422 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4424 * New native configurations
4426 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4427 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4428 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4432 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4433 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4434 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4436 * OBSOLETE configurations
4438 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4440 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4441 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4442 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4443 be permanently REMOVED.
4447 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4448 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4449 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4450 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4451 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4452 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4453 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4458 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4460 * set extension-language
4462 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4463 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4464 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4465 set extension-language .c c++
4466 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4467 and their associated languages.
4469 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4471 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4472 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4473 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4477 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4478 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4480 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4481 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4483 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4484 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4485 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4486 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4487 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4488 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4489 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4490 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4492 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4493 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4494 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4495 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4499 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4500 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4501 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4502 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4503 for xdb and dbx commands.
4507 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4508 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4509 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4511 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4512 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4513 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4515 * Debugging across forks
4517 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4522 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4523 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4524 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4526 * GDB remote protocol additions
4528 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4529 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4530 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4531 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4533 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4534 full 64-bit address. The command
4536 set remoteaddresssize 32
4538 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4539 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4542 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4543 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4545 maint packet heythere
4547 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4548 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4551 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4552 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4553 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4555 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4557 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4558 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4559 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4561 * mask-address variable for Mips
4563 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4564 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4565 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4567 * Higher serial baud rates
4569 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4570 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4571 to achieve all of these rates.)
4575 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4576 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4579 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4581 * New native configurations
4583 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4584 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4585 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4586 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4587 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4588 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4589 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4593 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4594 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4595 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4596 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4597 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4598 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4599 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4600 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4601 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4602 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4603 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4605 * New debugging protocols
4607 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4608 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4609 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4610 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4611 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4612 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4616 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4617 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4622 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4623 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4625 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4627 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4628 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4629 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4631 * Live range splitting
4633 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4634 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4635 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4639 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4640 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4644 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4645 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4646 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4651 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4656 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4657 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4658 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4659 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4660 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4661 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4665 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4666 the symbol at the specified address.
4670 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4671 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4672 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4673 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4674 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4678 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4679 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4680 of most MIPS variants.
4684 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4685 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4686 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4690 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4691 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4692 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4693 the possible architectures.
4695 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4697 * New native configurations
4699 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4700 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4701 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4702 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4703 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4704 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4708 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4709 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4710 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4711 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4712 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4714 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4718 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4719 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4720 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4721 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4722 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4726 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4728 * Windows 95/NT native
4730 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4731 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4732 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4733 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4734 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4736 * dont-repeat command
4738 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4739 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4740 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4741 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4743 * Send break instead of ^C
4745 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4746 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4747 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4749 * Remote protocol timeout
4751 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4752 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4753 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4755 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4757 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4758 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4759 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4760 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4761 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4763 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4764 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4765 automatically on hpux10.
4767 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4769 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4771 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4773 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4774 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4775 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4776 every character. The default value is 1050.
4778 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4780 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4781 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4782 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4783 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4784 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4785 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4787 * Speedups for remote debugging
4789 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4790 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4791 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4793 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4795 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4796 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4798 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4800 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4802 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4803 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4805 * Remote targets use caching
4807 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4808 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4809 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4810 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4811 off' turns the the data cache off.
4813 * Remote targets may have threads
4815 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4816 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4817 gdb/remote.c for details.
4821 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4822 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4823 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4824 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4825 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4826 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4827 sequence is something like
4829 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4831 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4835 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4836 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4837 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4838 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4839 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4840 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4841 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4842 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4846 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4847 but does simplify configuration and building.
4851 GDB now supports hpux10.
4853 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4855 * New native configurations
4857 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4858 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4859 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4860 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4864 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4865 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4866 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4867 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4870 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4872 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4873 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4874 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4875 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4876 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4878 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4880 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4881 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4884 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4886 To execute the command use:
4889 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4890 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4891 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4893 * New `if' and `while' commands
4895 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4896 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4897 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4898 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4899 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4900 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4901 if the expression is zero.
4903 * Fortran source language mode
4905 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4906 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4907 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4908 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4911 * Better HPUX support
4913 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4914 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4915 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4916 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4917 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4923 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4924 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4930 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4931 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4934 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4935 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4937 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4939 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4940 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4941 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4942 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4943 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4944 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4946 * New DOS host serial code
4948 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4949 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4952 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4954 * New "complete" command
4956 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4957 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4959 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4961 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4962 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4964 * Breakpoint hit counts
4966 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4967 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4968 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4969 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4970 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4973 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4975 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4976 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4977 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4979 * Shared library breakpoints
4981 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4982 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4984 * Hardware watchpoints
4986 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4987 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4989 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4993 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4994 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4996 * Improved Irix 5 support
4998 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5000 * Improved HPPA support
5002 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5004 * New native configurations
5006 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5007 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5008 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5009 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5013 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5014 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5017 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5019 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5020 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5024 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5025 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5027 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5029 * Irix 5 is now supported
5033 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5034 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5035 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5036 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5037 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5040 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5042 * User visible changes:
5046 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5047 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5048 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5049 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5050 debugging info for the mips target).
5052 * DEC Alpha native support
5054 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5055 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5056 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5057 Alpha-specific notes.
5059 * Preliminary thread implementation
5061 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5063 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5065 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5066 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5069 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5071 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5072 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5073 call methods, ...etc.
5075 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5077 * User visible changes:
5079 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5080 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5081 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5082 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5084 Filename completion now works.
5086 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5087 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5088 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5090 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5091 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5092 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5093 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5094 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5098 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5099 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5102 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5106 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5107 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5108 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5112 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5113 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5114 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5115 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5116 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5120 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5121 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5122 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5124 * New targets supported
5126 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5127 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5128 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5129 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5130 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5132 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5133 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5134 GO32 memory extender.
5136 * New remote protocols
5138 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5140 * New source languages supported
5142 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5143 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5144 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5147 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5149 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5151 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5152 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5153 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5154 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5155 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5156 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5158 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5160 * Faster and better demangling
5162 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5163 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5164 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5165 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5166 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5167 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5170 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5171 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5172 compiler does not actually implement.
5174 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5176 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5177 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5178 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5179 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5180 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5181 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5184 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5185 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5187 * Improved configure script
5189 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5190 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5191 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5192 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5194 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5195 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5196 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5197 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5198 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5199 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5201 * Documentation improvements
5203 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5204 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5205 before submitting changes.
5207 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5208 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5209 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5210 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5211 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5213 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5214 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5215 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5216 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5217 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5218 around this problem.
5222 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5223 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5224 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5227 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5228 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5230 * New native hosts supported
5232 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5233 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5235 * New targets supported
5237 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5239 * New file formats supported
5241 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5242 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5246 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5248 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5249 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5251 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5252 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5253 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5255 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5256 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5258 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5259 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5260 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5263 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5264 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5265 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5266 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5267 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5269 * Internal improvements
5271 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5272 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5274 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5275 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5276 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5277 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5278 shared code that handles any of them.
5280 * New command line options
5282 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5286 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5287 General Public License.
5289 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5291 * Host/native/target split
5293 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5294 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5295 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5296 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5297 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5299 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5300 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5301 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5302 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5303 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5304 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5305 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5307 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5308 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5309 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5311 * New hosts supported
5313 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5314 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5315 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5317 * New targets supported
5319 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5320 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5322 * New native hosts supported
5324 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5325 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5326 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5328 * New file formats supported
5330 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5331 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5332 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5336 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5337 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5338 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5340 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5342 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5343 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5344 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5345 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5349 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5350 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5351 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5353 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5357 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5358 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5361 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5362 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5364 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5365 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5366 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5367 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5368 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5369 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5371 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5372 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5373 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5374 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5378 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5379 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5380 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5381 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5382 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5384 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5385 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5386 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5387 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5391 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5392 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5393 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5394 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5395 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5396 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5397 each instruction being stepped through.
5399 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5400 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5402 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5403 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5404 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5405 processor with a serial port.
5409 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5410 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5411 supported, and what files each one uses.
5415 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5416 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5417 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5418 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5420 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5421 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5422 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5423 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5427 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5428 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5429 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5430 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5431 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5432 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5434 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5437 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5439 * Better support for C++ function names
5441 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5442 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5443 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5444 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5445 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5447 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5448 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5449 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5450 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5451 for the list of formats.
5453 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5455 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5456 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5457 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5458 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5459 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5460 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5463 * New 'maintenance' command
5465 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5466 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5467 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5469 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5470 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5471 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5472 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5473 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5474 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5476 The following commands are new:
5478 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5479 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5480 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5482 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5484 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5485 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5486 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5487 read after argv processing.
5489 * New hosts supported
5491 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5493 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5495 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5496 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5497 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5498 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5499 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5502 * New targets supported
5504 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5506 * More smarts about finding #include files
5508 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5509 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5510 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5511 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5512 the one that contains your sources.
5514 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5515 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5516 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5518 * Interesting infernals change
5520 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5521 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5522 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5523 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5525 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5527 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5528 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5529 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5531 See the ChangeLog for details.
5533 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5535 * New machines supported (host and target)
5537 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5539 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5541 * New malloc package
5543 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5544 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5545 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5546 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5547 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5548 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5552 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5553 'help info proc' for details.
5555 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5557 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5558 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5561 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5563 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5564 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5565 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5566 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5567 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5568 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5570 * Cross byte order fixes
5572 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5573 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5575 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5577 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5578 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5579 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5580 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5581 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5582 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5583 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5584 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5585 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5586 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5588 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5589 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5590 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5591 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5593 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5594 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5595 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5598 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5600 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5601 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5602 shared across multiple host platforms.
5604 * longjmp() handling
5606 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5607 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5608 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5609 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5613 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5614 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5619 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5620 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5621 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5623 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5625 * New machines supported (host and target)
5627 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5629 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5630 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5632 * New machines supported (target)
5634 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5638 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5639 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5640 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5642 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5643 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5644 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5645 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5646 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5649 * New features for SVR4
5651 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5652 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5653 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5655 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5656 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5657 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5659 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5660 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5662 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5664 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5665 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5666 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5667 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5668 same code linked statically.
5672 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5673 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5674 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5675 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5676 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5677 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5681 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5682 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5683 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5686 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5688 * New machines supported (host and target)
5690 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5691 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5692 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5694 * Almost SCO Unix support
5696 We had hoped to support:
5697 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5698 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5699 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5700 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5702 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5704 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5705 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5706 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5707 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5712 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5713 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5714 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5718 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5719 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5720 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5722 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5724 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5725 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5726 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5728 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5729 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5730 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5731 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5734 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5735 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5736 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5737 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5740 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5741 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5744 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5745 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5746 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5749 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5751 * Improved configuration
5753 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5754 Porting BFD is simpler.
5758 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5759 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5760 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5761 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5765 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5767 * New host supported (not target)
5769 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5772 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5774 * Multiple source language support
5776 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5777 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5778 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5779 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5780 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5781 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5785 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5786 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5787 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5788 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5790 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5791 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5792 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5794 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5795 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5799 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5800 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5801 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5802 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5805 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5807 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5808 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5809 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5810 examining core files.
5814 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5817 * New machines supported (host and target)
5819 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5820 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5821 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5823 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5825 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5827 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5829 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5830 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5831 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5833 * New remote interfaces
5839 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5843 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5845 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5846 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5847 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5848 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5849 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5850 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5851 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5852 stub on the target system.
5854 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5856 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5857 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5858 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5860 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5861 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5864 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5866 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5867 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5869 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5870 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5871 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5873 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5874 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5875 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5876 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5878 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5879 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5880 it is already running. Default is ON.
5882 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5883 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5884 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5885 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5888 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5889 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5890 or the value of the environment variable
5893 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5894 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5897 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5898 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5899 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5901 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5902 history expansion will be performed on
5903 command line input. The default is OFF.
5905 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5906 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5907 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5909 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5910 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5911 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5914 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5915 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5916 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5919 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5920 ``set width'' instead.
5922 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5923 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5924 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5925 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5927 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5930 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5933 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5936 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5939 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5941 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5942 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5943 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5947 * Support for Shared Libraries
5949 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5950 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5951 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5952 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5953 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5954 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5955 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5956 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5958 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5959 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5960 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5962 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5967 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5968 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5969 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5970 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5971 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5972 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5974 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5976 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5978 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5979 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5980 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5983 * C++ multiple inheritance
5985 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5988 * C++ exception handling
5990 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5991 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5992 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5995 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5996 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5997 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5999 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6000 current stack frame.
6003 * Minor command changes
6005 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6006 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6007 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6009 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6010 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6011 frames without printing.
6013 * New directory command
6015 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6016 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6017 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6018 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6019 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6021 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6023 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6026 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6027 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6028 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6029 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob