gdb: Add $_cimag and $_creal internal functions
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
5
6 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
7 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
8 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
9 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
10 such as in system-wide init files.
11
12 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
13 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
14 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
15 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
16
17 * Support for Pointer Authentication on AArch64 Linux.
18
19 * Two new convernience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
20 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
21
22 * Python API
23
24 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
25 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
26 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
27 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
28 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
29
30 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
31
32 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
33 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
34 HTM registers.
35
36 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
37 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
38 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
39 and operators.
40
41 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
42 (the C++ plug-in).
43
44 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
45 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
46 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
47
48 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
49 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
50
51 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
52 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
53 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
54 in the GDB user manual.
55
56 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
57 executed failed.
58
59 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
60
61 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
62 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
63 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
64 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
65 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
66 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
67 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
68 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
69 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
70 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
71 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
72 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
73
74 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
75 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
76 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
77 information.
78
79 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
80 lucid.
81
82 * New commands
83
84 set debug compile-cplus-types
85 show debug compile-cplus-types
86 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
87 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
88 for other languages.
89
90 set debug skip
91 show debug skip
92 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
93 displayed.
94
95 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
96 Apply a command to some frames.
97 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
98 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
99
100 taas COMMAND
101 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
102 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
103
104 faas COMMAND
105 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
106 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
107
108 tfaas COMMAND
109 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
110 output).
111 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
112
113 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
114 maint show dwarf unwinders
115 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
116
117 info proc files
118 Display a list of open files for a process.
119
120 * Changed commands
121
122 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
123 These commands all now take a frame specification which
124 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
125 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
126 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
127 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
128 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
129
130 target remote FILENAME
131 target extended-remote FILENAME
132 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
133 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
134
135 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
136 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
137 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
138 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
139 These commands can now print only the searched entities
140 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
141 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
142 printing headers or informations messages.
143
144 info functions
145 info types
146 info variables
147 rbreak
148 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
149 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
150 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
151 the shown entities.
152
153 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
154 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
155 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
156 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
157
158 set tui tab-width NCHARS
159 show tui tab-width NCHARS
160 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
161
162 set style enabled [on|off]
163 show style enabled
164 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
165 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
166
167 set style sources [on|off]
168 show style sources
169 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
170 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
171 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
172
173 set style filename foreground COLOR
174 set style filename background COLOR
175 set style filename intensity VALUE
176 Control the styling of file names.
177
178 set style function foreground COLOR
179 set style function background COLOR
180 set style function intensity VALUE
181 Control the styling of function names.
182
183 set style variable foreground COLOR
184 set style variable background COLOR
185 set style variable intensity VALUE
186 Control the styling of variable names.
187
188 set style address foreground COLOR
189 set style address background COLOR
190 set style address intensity VALUE
191 Control the styling of addresses.
192
193 * MI changes
194
195 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
196
197 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
198 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
199 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
200 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
201 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
202
203 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
204 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
205
206 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
207 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
208 the following commands and events:
209
210 - -break-insert
211 - -break-info
212 - =breakpoint-created
213 - =breakpoint-modified
214
215 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
216 this behavior with previous MI versions.
217
218 * New native configurations
219
220 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
221 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
222
223 * New targets
224
225 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
226 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
227 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
228 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
229 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
230 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
231
232 * Removed targets
233
234 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
235 before Windows XP.
236
237 * Python API
238
239 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
240
241 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
242 space associated to that inferior.
243
244 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
245 of objfiles associated to that program space.
246
247 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
248 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
249 the gdb core.
250
251 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
252 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
253 correct and did not work properly.
254
255 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
256 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
257
258 * Configure changes
259
260 --enable-ubsan
261
262 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
263 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
264 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
265 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
266 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
267
268 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
269
270 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
271 for the MIPS target.
272
273 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
274 offset to all sections.
275
276 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
277 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
278 address of individual sections using '-s'.
279
280 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
281 (address of the text section).
282
283 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
284 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
285 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
286 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
287 default.
288
289 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
290 for the rest of the current command.
291
292 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
293 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
294
295 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
296 files created on FreeBSD systems.
297
298 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
299 alignof.
300
301 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
302 the vector length while the process is running.
303
304 * New commands
305
306 set debug fbsd-nat
307 show debug fbsd-nat
308 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
309
310 set|show varsize-limit
311 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
312 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
313 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
314
315 set|show record btrace cpu
316 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
317 branch trace decode.
318
319 maint check libthread-db
320 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
321 library
322
323 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
324 maint show check-libthread-db
325 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
326 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
327 perform such checks.
328
329 * Python API
330
331 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
332
333 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
334 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
335
336 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
337
338 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
339 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
340 of convenience variables.
341
342 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
343 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
344 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
345
346 * New targets
347
348 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
349
350 * Removed targets and native configurations
351
352 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
353 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
354 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
355 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
356
357 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
358
359 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
360 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
361 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
362 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
363 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
364 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
365 reported.
366
367 * Configure changes
368
369 --enable-codesign=CERT
370 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
371 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
372 gdb to work properly.
373
374 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
375 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
376
377 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
378
379 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
380 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
381 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
382
383 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
384 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
385
386 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
387 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
388 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
389 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
390 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
391
392 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
393 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
394 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
395 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
396
397 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
398 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
399
400 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
401 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
402 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
403
404 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
405 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
406 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
407
408 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
409 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
410 environment" command.
411
412 * Completion improvements
413
414 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
415 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
416 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
417 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
418 correctly:
419
420 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
421 (gdb) b function(int)
422
423 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
424 C++ anonymous namespaces:
425
426 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
427 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
428 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
429 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
430
431 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
432 completion support, that better understands what you're
433 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
434 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
435 setting a breakpoint.
436
437 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
438
439 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
440
441 * New command line options (gcore)
442
443 -a
444 Dump all memory mappings.
445
446 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
447
448 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
449 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
450 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
451
452 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
453
454 A::B::func()
455 B::func()
456
457 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
458 on both symbols.
459
460 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
461 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
462 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
463 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
464 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
465 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
466 a breakpoint from Python.
467
468 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
469
470 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
471 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
472 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
473
474 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
475
476 function[abi:cxx11](int)
477 ^^^^^^^^^^^
478
479 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
480 no tag, like:
481
482 (gdb) b function(int)
483
484 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
485
486 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
487
488 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
489
490 * Python Scripting
491
492 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
493 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
494 description of these.
495
496 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
497 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
498 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
499
500 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
501 manual for a further description of this feature.
502
503
504 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
505
506 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
507 specified initial working directory.
508
509 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
510 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
511
512 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
513 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
514
515 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
516 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
517
518 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
519 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
520 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
521 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
522 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
523
524 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
525 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
526 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
527
528 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
529 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
530 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
531 in the *stopped notification.
532
533 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
534 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
535
536 * New remote packets
537
538 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
539 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
540 the inferior when starting it.
541
542 QEnvironmentUnset
543 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
544 before starting the remote inferior.
545
546 QEnvironmentReset
547 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
548 user-set environment variables should be unset).
549
550 QStartupWithShell
551 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
552
553 QSetWorkingDir
554 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
555 working directory.
556
557 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
558 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
559
560 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
561 filter the tests to be run.
562
563 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
564 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
565
566 * New commands
567
568 set|show cwd
569 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
570
571 set|show compile-gcc
572 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
573 with the 'compile' commands.
574
575 set debug separate-debug-file
576 show debug separate-debug-file
577 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
578
579 set dump-excluded-mappings
580 show dump-excluded-mappings
581 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
582 dumped when generating a core file.
583
584 maint info selftests
585 List the registered selftests.
586
587 starti
588 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
589
590 set|show debug or1k
591 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
592
593 set|show print type nested-type-limit
594 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
595 type printer will show.
596
597 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
598 `o' for nexti.
599
600 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
601
602 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
603 'int'.
604
605 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
606 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
607 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
608 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
609
610 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
611 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
612 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
613 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
614 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
615 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
616
617 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
618 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
619 unless you tell it the variable's type:
620
621 (gdb) p var
622 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
623 (gdb) p (float) var
624 $3 = 3.14
625
626 * New native configurations
627
628 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
629 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
630
631 * New targets
632
633 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
634 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
635 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
636
637 * Removed targets and native configurations
638
639 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
640
641 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
642
643 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
644 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
645 available in future Intel CPUs.
646
647 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
648
649 * Python Scripting
650
651 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
652 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
653
654 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
655 instructions.
656
657 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
658
659 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
660
661 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
662 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
663 removed.
664
665 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
666
667 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
668 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
669
670 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
671
672 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
673 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
674 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
675 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
676 features.
677
678 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
679
680 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
681 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
682 debugger.
683
684 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
685
686 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
687 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
688
689 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
690
691 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
692
693 define mycommand
694 set $i = 0
695 while $i < $argc
696 eval "print $arg%d", $i
697 set $i = $i + 1
698 end
699 end
700
701 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
702
703 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
704 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
705
706 * New native configurations
707
708 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
709
710 * New targets
711
712 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
713 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
714
715 * Removed targets and native configurations
716
717 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
718 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
719
720 * New commands
721
722 flash-erase
723 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
724
725 maint print arc arc-instruction address
726 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
727
728 * New options
729
730 set disassembler-options
731 show disassembler-options
732 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
733 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
734 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
735 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
736 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
737
738 * New MI commands
739
740 -target-flash-erase
741 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
742 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
743
744 -file-list-shared-libraries
745 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
746 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
747
748 -catch-handlers
749 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
750 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
751
752 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
753
754 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
755
756 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
757 default. One must now explicitly configure with
758 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
759 option will be removed in a future release.
760
761 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
762 GDB connection.
763
764 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
765 memory backward from the given address. For example:
766
767 (gdb) bt
768 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
769 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
770 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
771 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
772 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
773 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
774 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
775 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
776 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
777
778 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
779 arrays of dynamic types.
780
781 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
782 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
783 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
784 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
785 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
786 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
787
788 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
789 descriptions.
790
791 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
792 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
793 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
794
795 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
796
797 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
798 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
799 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
800 signal received and code location.
801
802 For example:
803
804 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
805 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
806 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
807 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
808
809 * Rust language support.
810 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
811 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
812 Rust.
813
814 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
815
816 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
817 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
818 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
819 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
820 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
821 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
822 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
823 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
824 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
825 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
826 line.
827
828 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
829
830 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
831 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
832
833 * New commands
834
835 skip -file file
836 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
837 skip -function function
838 skip -rfunction regular-expression
839 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
840 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
841 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
842
843 maint info line-table REGEXP
844 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
845
846 maint selftest
847 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
848
849 new-ui INTERP TTY
850 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
851 using the TTY file for input/output.
852
853 * Python Scripting
854
855 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
856 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
857 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
858 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
859 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
860
861 signal-event EVENTID
862 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
863 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
864 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
865 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
866 signalling an event.
867
868 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
869 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
870 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
871
872 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
873 been removed:
874
875 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
876 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
877 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
878 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
879 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
880 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
881
882 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
883 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
884 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
885 bytecode into native code.
886
887 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
888 recording. For example:
889
890 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
891
892 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
893
894 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
895
896 * New targets
897
898 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
899
900 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
901
902 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
903
904 * Per-inferior thread numbers
905
906 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
907 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
908 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
909
910 (gdb) info threads
911 Id Target Id Frame
912 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
913 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
914 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
915 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
916
917 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
918 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
919 are no longer unique between inferiors.
920
921 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
922 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
923 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
924
925 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
926 IDs.
927
928 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
929 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
930
931 (gdb) thread 2.1
932 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
933 (gdb)
934
935 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
936 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
937 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
938 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
939 threads 2.*".
940
941 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
942 all threads.
943
944 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
945 the current thread.
946
947 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
948 current inferior.
949
950 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
951 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
952 example:
953
954 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
955 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
956
957 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
958
959 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
960
961 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
962 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
963
964 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
965 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
966 clients.
967
968 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
969 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
970 at the same time.
971
972 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
973 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
974 into native code.
975
976 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
977
978 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
979 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
980 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
981
982 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
983 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
984
985 * New commands
986
987 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
988 maint show target-non-stop
989 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
990 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
991 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
992
993 maint set bfd-sharing
994 maint show bfd-sharing
995 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
996
997 set debug bfd-cache
998 show debug bfd-cache
999 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1000
1001 set debug fbsd-lwp
1002 show debug fbsd-lwp
1003 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1004
1005 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1006 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1007 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1008
1009 set remote thread-events
1010 show remote thread-events
1011 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1012
1013 set ada print-signatures on|off
1014 show ada print-signatures"
1015 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1016 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1017
1018 set max-value-size
1019 show max-value-size
1020 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1021 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1022 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1023
1024 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1025 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1026 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1027 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1028 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1029 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1030
1031 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1032 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1033
1034 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1035 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1036
1037 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1038
1039 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1040 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1041 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1042 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1043 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1044 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1045
1046 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1047 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1048
1049 catch handlers
1050 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1051
1052 * New remote packets
1053
1054 exec stop reason
1055 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1056
1057 exec-events feature in qSupported
1058 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1059 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1060 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1061 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1062
1063 vCtrlC
1064 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1065 non-stop mode.
1066
1067 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1068 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1069
1070 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1071 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1072
1073 QThreadEvents
1074 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1075 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1076 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1077 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1078 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1079 stop for that same thread.
1080
1081 N stop reply
1082 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1083 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1084 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1085
1086 QCatchSyscalls
1087 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1088 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1089
1090 syscall_entry stop reason
1091 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1092
1093 syscall_return stop reason
1094 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1095
1096 * Extended-remote exec events
1097
1098 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1099 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1100 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1101
1102 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1103 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1104 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1105
1106 * Thread names in remote protocol
1107
1108 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1109 thread.
1110
1111 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1112
1113 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1114 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1115 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1116 fork and exec catchpoints.
1117
1118 * Remote syscall events
1119
1120 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1121 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1122
1123 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1124 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1125 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1126
1127 * MI changes
1128
1129 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1130 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1131 left.
1132
1133 * Python Scripting
1134
1135 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1136 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1137 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1138 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1139 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1140 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1141
1142 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1143
1144 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1145 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1146 including advance SIMD instructions.
1147
1148 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1149
1150 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1151 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1152 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1153 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1154 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1155 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1156 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1157
1158 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1159 cpu information :
1160 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1161
1162 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1163 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1164 remote serial I/O.
1165
1166 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1167 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1168 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1169
1170 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1171 is now available on all platforms.
1172
1173 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1174 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1175 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1176 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1177 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1178 backward compatibility.
1179
1180 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1181 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1182 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1183 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1184
1185 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1186 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1187 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1188 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1189 packets" below.
1190
1191 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1192
1193 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1194
1195 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1196 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1197 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1198 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1199 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1200 See "New remote packets" below.
1201
1202 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1203 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1204
1205 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1206 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1207 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1208 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1209 are ignored.
1210
1211 * Guile Scripting
1212
1213 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1214
1215 * Python Scripting
1216
1217 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1218 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1219 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1220 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1221 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1222 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1223 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1224 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1225 "const" version of the value respectively.
1226
1227 * New commands
1228
1229 maint print symbol-cache
1230 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1231
1232 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1233 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1234
1235 maint flush-symbol-cache
1236 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1237
1238 record btrace bts
1239 record bts
1240 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1241
1242 compile print
1243 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1244
1245 tui enable
1246 tui disable
1247 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1248
1249 show mpx bound
1250 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1251 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1252
1253 record btrace pt
1254 record pt
1255 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1256
1257 maint info btrace
1258 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1259
1260 maint btrace packet-history
1261 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1262
1263 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1264 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1265
1266 maint btrace clear
1267 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1268 anew by the next "record" command.
1269
1270 * New options
1271
1272 set debug dwarf-die
1273 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1274 show debug dwarf-die
1275 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1276
1277 set debug dwarf-read
1278 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1279 show debug dwarf-read
1280 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1281
1282 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1283 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1284 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1285 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1286
1287 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1288 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1289 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1290 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1291
1292 set debug dwarf-line
1293 show debug dwarf-line
1294 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1295
1296 set max-completions
1297 show max-completions
1298 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1299 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1300 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1301 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1302
1303 set history remove-duplicates
1304 show history remove-duplicates
1305 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1306
1307 maint set symbol-cache-size
1308 maint show symbol-cache-size
1309 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1310
1311 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1312 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1313 BTS format.
1314 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1315 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1316
1317 set debug linux-namespaces
1318 show debug linux-namespaces
1319 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1320
1321 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1322 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1323 Intel Processor Trace format.
1324 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1325 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1326
1327 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1328 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1329 packet history.
1330
1331 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1332 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1333
1334 * Python/Guile scripting
1335
1336 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1337 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1338
1339 * New remote packets
1340
1341 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1342 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1343
1344 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1345 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1346
1347 Qbtrace:pt
1348 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1349 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1350 qSupported query.
1351
1352 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1353 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1354 Trace format.
1355
1356 swbreak stop reason
1357 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1358 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1359 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1360 mode operation.
1361
1362 hwbreak stop reason
1363 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1364 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1365
1366 vFile:fstat:
1367 Return information about files on the remote system.
1368
1369 qXfer:exec-file:read
1370 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1371 create a process running on the remote system.
1372
1373 vFile:setfs:
1374 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1375 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1376 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1377 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1378
1379 fork stop reason
1380 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1381
1382 vfork stop reason
1383 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1384
1385 vforkdone stop reason
1386 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1387 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1388
1389 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1390 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1391 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1392 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1393 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1394 whether these features are enabled.
1395
1396 * Extended-remote fork events
1397
1398 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1399 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1400 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1401 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1402
1403 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1404 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1405 the btrace record target.
1406 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1407
1408 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1409 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1410
1411 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1412 targets.
1413
1414 * Removed command line options
1415
1416 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1417
1418 * Removed targets and native configurations
1419
1420 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1421 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1422
1423 * New configure options
1424
1425 --with-intel-pt
1426 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1427 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1428
1429 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1430 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1431 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1432 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1433
1434 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1435
1436 * Python Scripting
1437
1438 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1439
1440 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1441
1442 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1443
1444 * Python Scripting
1445
1446 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1447 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1448 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1449 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1450 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1451 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1452 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1453 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1454 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1455 selecting a new file to debug.
1456 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1457 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1458
1459 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1460 inferior.
1461
1462 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1463 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1464 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1465 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1466
1467 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1468
1469 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1470 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1471 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1472 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1473
1474 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1475 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1476 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1477 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1478 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1479 interface with this new feature are:
1480
1481 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1482 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1483
1484 * New commands
1485
1486 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1487 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1488 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1489 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1490 as "maint demangler-warning".
1491
1492 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1493 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1494
1495 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1496 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1497 scripts.
1498
1499 maint print user-registers
1500 List all currently available "user" registers.
1501
1502 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1503 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1504 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1505
1506 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1507 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1508 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1509 provided.
1510
1511 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1512 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1513 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1514 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1515 at resume time.
1516
1517 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1518 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1519 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1520 switched threads meanwhile.
1521
1522 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1523
1524 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1525 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1526 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1527 is now the default mode.
1528
1529 * New options
1530
1531 set debug symbol-lookup
1532 show debug symbol-lookup
1533 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1534
1535 * MI changes
1536
1537 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1538 inferiors that have exited.
1539
1540 * New targets
1541
1542 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1543
1544 * Removed targets
1545
1546 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1547
1548 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1549 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1550 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1551 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1552 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1553
1554 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1555 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1556 its alias "share", instead.
1557
1558 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1559
1560 * New command line options
1561
1562 -D data-directory
1563 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1564
1565 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1566 as specified in ISO C99.
1567
1568 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1569 with or without disassembly.
1570
1571 * Guile scripting
1572
1573 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1574 available is determined at configure time.
1575 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1576 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1577
1578 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1579
1580 guile [code]
1581 gu [code]
1582 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1583
1584 guile-repl
1585 gr
1586 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1587
1588 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1589 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1590
1591 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1592 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1593
1594 * New options
1595
1596 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1597 show print symbol-loading
1598 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1599 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1600 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1601 becomes less useful.
1602
1603 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1604 show guile print-stack
1605 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1606
1607 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1608 show auto-load guile-scripts
1609 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1610
1611 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1612 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1613 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1614 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1615 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1616 usage of this option.
1617
1618 set auto-connect-native-target
1619
1620 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1621 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1622 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1623
1624 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1625 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1626 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1627
1628 maint set target-async (on|off)
1629 maint show target-async
1630 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1631 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1632 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1633 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1634
1635 set mi-async (on|off)
1636 show mi-async
1637 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1638 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1639
1640 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1641 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1642
1643 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1644 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1645 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1646 "set target-async on" command.
1647
1648 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1649
1650 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1651 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1652 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1653 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1654 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1655
1656 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1657 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1658 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1659
1660 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1661 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1662 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1663 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1664 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1665 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1666 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1667
1668 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1669 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1670
1671 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1672 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1673 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1674
1675 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1676 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1677 memory or registers.
1678
1679 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1680
1681 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1682 remote. It now works with all targets.
1683
1684 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1685 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1686 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1687 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1688 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1689 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1690 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1691 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1692 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1693 target-stack".
1694
1695 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1696 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1697 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1698
1699 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1700
1701 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1702 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1703 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1704
1705 * New remote packets
1706
1707 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1708 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1709 branch trace incrementally.
1710
1711 * Python Scripting
1712
1713 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1714 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1715 available.
1716 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1717 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1718 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1719 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1720 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1721
1722 * New targets
1723 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1724
1725 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1726 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1727 its alias "share", instead.
1728
1729 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1730 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1731 instead.
1732
1733 * MI changes
1734
1735 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1736 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1737 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1738 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1739 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1740 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1741 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1742 commands and CLI execution commands.
1743
1744 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1745
1746 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1747 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1748 recording has been added.
1749
1750 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1751
1752 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1753 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1754
1755 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1756 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1757 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1758 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1759 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1760 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1761 "void".
1762
1763 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1764
1765 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1766
1767 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1768 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1769 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1770 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1771
1772 (gdb) p $rax
1773 $1 = <not saved>
1774
1775 (gdb) info registers rax
1776 rax <not saved>
1777
1778 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1779 "*value not available*".
1780
1781 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1782 to binaries.
1783
1784 * Python scripting
1785
1786 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1787 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1788 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1789 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1790 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1791 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1792
1793 * New targets
1794
1795 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1796 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1797 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1798
1799 * Removed native configurations
1800
1801 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1802 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1803
1804 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1805 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1806 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1807 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1808 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1809 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1810 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1811
1812 * New commands:
1813 catch rethrow
1814 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1815 maint check-psymtabs
1816 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1817 maint check-symtabs
1818 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1819 maint expand-symtabs
1820 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1821
1822 show configuration
1823 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1824
1825 maint set|show per-command
1826 maint set|show per-command space
1827 maint set|show per-command time
1828 maint set|show per-command symtab
1829 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1830
1831 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1832 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1833 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1834 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1835 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1836
1837 info exceptions
1838 info exceptions REGEXP
1839 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1840 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1841 are listed.
1842
1843 * New options
1844
1845 set debug symfile off|on
1846 show debug symfile
1847 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1848 symbol tables within those files
1849
1850 set print raw frame-arguments
1851 show print raw frame-arguments
1852 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1853 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1854
1855 set remote trace-status-packet
1856 show remote trace-status-packet
1857 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1858
1859 set debug nios2
1860 show debug nios2
1861 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1862
1863 set range-stepping
1864 show range-stepping
1865 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1866
1867 set startup-with-shell
1868 show startup-with-shell
1869 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1870 directly.
1871
1872 set code-cache
1873 show code-cache
1874 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1875 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1876
1877 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1878 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1879 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1880 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1881 "set height 0".
1882
1883 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1884 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1885 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1886
1887 * New command-line options
1888 --configuration
1889 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1890
1891 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1892 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1893
1894 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1895 GDB command gcore.
1896
1897 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1898
1899 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1900 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1901
1902 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1903 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1904
1905 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1906 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1907 due to an uncaught signal.
1908
1909 * MI changes
1910
1911 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1912 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1913 command, which should contain "language-option".
1914
1915 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1916 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1917
1918 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1919 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1920 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1921 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1922 "undefined-command-error-code".
1923
1924 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1925 Trace Format now.
1926
1927 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1928
1929 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1930 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1931 are displayed.
1932
1933 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1934 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1935
1936 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1937 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1938 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1939
1940 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1941 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1942 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1943 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1944 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1945 "exec-run-start-option".
1946
1947 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1948 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1949
1950 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1951 the new "info exceptions" command.
1952
1953 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1954 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1955 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1956 ** ElinOS
1957 ** Wind River Linux
1958
1959 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1960 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1961 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1962 below.
1963
1964 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1965 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1966
1967 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1968 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1969 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1970
1971 * New remote packets
1972
1973 vCont;r
1974
1975 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1976 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1977 involvemement at each single-step.
1978
1979 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1980 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1981 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1982 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1983 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1984 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1985 speedup.
1986
1987 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1988
1989 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1990 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1991
1992 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1993 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1994 trace state variables.
1995
1996 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1997 target.
1998
1999 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2000 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2001
2002 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2003
2004 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2005 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2006 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2007 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2008
2009 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2010
2011 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2012 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2013 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2014 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2015
2016 set|show record full insn-number-max
2017 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2018 set|show record full memory-query
2019
2020 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2021 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2022 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2023 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2024 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2025
2026 record btrace
2027
2028 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2029 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2030
2031 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2032 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2033 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2034
2035 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2036 instruction granularity
2037
2038 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2039 function granularity
2040
2041 * New native configurations
2042
2043 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2044 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2045 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2046 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2047
2048 * New targets
2049
2050 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2051 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2052 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2053 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2054 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2055
2056 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2057 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2058 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2059 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2060 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2061 --data-directory command-line option.
2062
2063 * New command line options:
2064
2065 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2066 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2067
2068 * Removed command line options
2069
2070 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2071 Emacs.
2072
2073 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2074 type formatting.
2075
2076 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2077
2078 * Python scripting
2079
2080 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2081
2082 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2083
2084 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2085
2086 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2087
2088 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2089 of architecture in the Python API.
2090
2091 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2092 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2093
2094 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2095
2096 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2097 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2098 ** $_strlen(str)
2099 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2100
2101 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2102 given an argument.
2103
2104 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2105 default for GCC since November 2000.
2106
2107 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2108
2109 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2110 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2111
2112 * New configure options
2113
2114 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2115 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2116 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2117 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2118 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2119 options allow the user to override that default.
2120 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2121 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2122 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2123
2124 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2125
2126 catch signal
2127 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2128 conditions to be attached.
2129
2130 maint info bfds
2131 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2132
2133 python-interactive [command]
2134 pi [command]
2135 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2136 and print the result of expressions.
2137
2138 py [command]
2139 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2140
2141 enable type-printer [name]...
2142 disable type-printer [name]...
2143 Enable or disable type printers.
2144
2145 * Removed commands
2146
2147 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2148 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2149 instead.
2150
2151 * New options
2152
2153 set print type methods (on|off)
2154 show print type methods
2155 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2156 The default is to show them.
2157
2158 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2159 show print type typedefs
2160 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2161 The default is to show them.
2162
2163 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2164 show filename-display
2165 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2166 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2167
2168 set trace-buffer-size
2169 show trace-buffer-size
2170 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2171
2172 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2173 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2174 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2175
2176 set debug aarch64
2177 show debug aarch64
2178 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2179 The default is off.
2180
2181 set debug coff-pe-read
2182 show debug coff-pe-read
2183 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2184 exported symbols.
2185
2186 set debug mach-o
2187 show debug mach-o
2188 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2189 processing.
2190
2191 set debug notification
2192 show debug notification
2193 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2194
2195 * MI changes
2196
2197 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2198 "=cmd-param-changed".
2199 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2200 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2201 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2202 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2203 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2204 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2205 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2206 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2207 "=memory-changed".
2208 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2209 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2210 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2211 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2212 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2213 library load/unload events.
2214 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2215 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2216 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2217 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2218 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2219 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2220 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2221 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2222
2223 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2224 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2225 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2226 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2227
2228 * New remote packets
2229
2230 QTBuffer:size
2231 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2232 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2233
2234 Qbtrace:bts
2235 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2236 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2237 qSupported query.
2238
2239 Qbtrace:off
2240 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2241 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2242
2243 qXfer:btrace:read
2244 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2245 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2246
2247 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2248
2249 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2250 for more x32 ABI info.
2251
2252 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2253
2254 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2255
2256 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2257 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2258 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2259 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2260 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2261 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2262 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2263 "info os msg" lists message queues
2264 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2265
2266 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2267 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2268 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2269 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2270 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2271 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2272
2273 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2274 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2275 record/replay support.
2276
2277 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2278
2279 * Python scripting
2280
2281 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2282 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
2283
2284 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2285
2286 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2287 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2288
2289 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2290
2291 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2292 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2293
2294 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2295 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2296 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2297 symbol's value.
2298
2299 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2300 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2301
2302 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2303 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2304 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2305
2306 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2307 object associated with a PC value.
2308
2309 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2310 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2311
2312 * Go language support.
2313 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2314 language.
2315
2316 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2317 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2318
2319 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2320 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2321
2322 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2323 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2324 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2325 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2326 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2327 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
2328
2329 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2330 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2331 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2332 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2333
2334 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2335 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2336
2337 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2338 since December 2007.
2339
2340 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2341 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2342 command does. For instance:
2343
2344 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2345
2346 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2347 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2348 created, using the "condition" command.
2349
2350 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2351 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2352
2353 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2354
2355 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2356 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2357 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2358 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2359 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2360 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2361 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2362 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2363
2364 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2365 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2366 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2367 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2368 the .gdb_index section.
2369
2370 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2371
2372 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2373 target.
2374
2375 * MI changes
2376
2377 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2378
2379 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2380
2381 * New commands
2382
2383 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2384 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2385 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2386
2387 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2388 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2389
2390 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2391 several hits.
2392
2393 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2394 C++ and Java objects.
2395
2396 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2397 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2398 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2399 configured with '--with-python'.
2400
2401 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2402 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2403 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2404 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2405 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2406 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2407 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2408
2409 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2410 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2411 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2412 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2413
2414 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2415 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2416 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2417 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2418
2419 ** "set print symbol"
2420 "show print symbol"
2421 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2422 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2423 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2424
2425 * Deprecated commands
2426
2427 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2428 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2429
2430 * New targets
2431
2432 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2433 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2434
2435 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2436 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2437 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2438 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2439 evaluates to true.
2440
2441 * New options
2442
2443 set mips compression
2444 show mips compression
2445 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2446 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2447 mips16
2448 micromips
2449 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2450
2451 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2452 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2453 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2454 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2455 available mode.
2456 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2457 target.
2458
2459 set auto-load off
2460 Disable auto-loading globally.
2461
2462 show auto-load
2463 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2464
2465 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2466 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2467 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2468
2469 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2470 show auto-load python-scripts
2471 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2472
2473 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2474 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2475 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2476
2477 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2478 show auto-load libthread-db
2479 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2480
2481 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2482 show auto-load scripts-directory
2483 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2484 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2485 of the directories listed by this option.
2486 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2487
2488 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2489 show auto-load safe-path
2490 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2491 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2492
2493 set debug auto-load on|off
2494 show debug auto-load
2495 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2496
2497 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2498 show dprintf-style
2499 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2500 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2501 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2502 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2503
2504 set dprintf-function <expr>
2505 show dprintf-function
2506 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2507 show dprintf-channel
2508 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2509 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2510
2511 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2512 show disconnected-dprintf
2513 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2514 after GDB disconnects.
2515
2516 * New configure options
2517
2518 --with-auto-load-dir
2519 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2520 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2521 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2522 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2523 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2524
2525 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2526 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2527 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2528
2529 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2530 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2531 security feature.
2532
2533 * New remote packets
2534
2535 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2536
2537 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2538 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2539 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2540 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2541
2542 QProgramSignals:
2543
2544 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2545 program without GDB involvement.
2546
2547 * New command line options
2548
2549 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2550 before loading inferior.
2551 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2552 execute it before loading inferior.
2553
2554 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2555
2556 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2557 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2558 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2559 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2560 inferior changes.
2561
2562 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2563 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2564
2565 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2566 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2567 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2568 target hardware watchpoint.
2569
2570 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2571 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2572 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2573 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2574
2575 * Python scripting
2576
2577 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2578 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2579 existing one.
2580
2581 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2582 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2583 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2584 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2585 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2586 the stack trace.
2587
2588 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2589 Python API.
2590
2591 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2592 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2593 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2594 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2595 corresponding value.
2596
2597 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2598 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2599 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2600 on GDB start-up.
2601
2602 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2603 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2604 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2605 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2606
2607 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2608
2609 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2610 "gdb.breakpoints".
2611
2612 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2613 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2614 available in the CLI.
2615
2616 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2617 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2618 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2619 "some_type.items()".
2620
2621 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2622 new object file.
2623
2624 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2625 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2626 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2627 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2628 any anonymous fields.
2629
2630 * MI changes
2631
2632 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2633 "solib-event".
2634
2635 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2636 "=breakpoint-modified".
2637
2638 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2639
2640 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2641 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2642 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2643 lives.
2644
2645 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2646 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2647 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2648 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2649 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2650
2651 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2652 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2653
2654 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2655 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2656 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2657 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2658 use this option to specify where to find it.
2659
2660 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2661 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2662 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2663 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2664 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2665 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2666 section in the user manual for more details.
2667
2668 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2669 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2670 become available after that.
2671
2672 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2673
2674 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2675 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2676 gcc version 4.7.
2677
2678 * New commands
2679
2680 !SHELL COMMAND
2681 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2682 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2683
2684 * Changed commands
2685
2686 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2687 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2688 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2689
2690 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2691 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2692 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2693
2694 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2695 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2696 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2697 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2698 name starts with a hyphen.
2699
2700 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2701 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2702 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2703 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2704 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2705 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2706 number of bytes that will be collected.
2707
2708 tstart [NOTES]
2709 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2710 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2711 setting the variable trace-notes.
2712
2713 tstop [NOTES]
2714 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2715 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2716 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2717 trace-stop-notes.
2718
2719 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2720 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2721 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2722 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2723 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2724 is running.
2725
2726 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2727 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2728 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2729
2730 * New options
2731
2732 set debug dwarf2-read
2733 show debug dwarf2-read
2734 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2735 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2736
2737 set debug symtab-create
2738 show debug symtab-create
2739 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2740 creation. The default is off.
2741
2742 set extended-prompt
2743 show extended-prompt
2744 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2745 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2746 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2747 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2748 prompt is displayed.
2749
2750 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2751 show print entry-values
2752 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2753 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2754 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2755
2756 set debug entry-values
2757 show debug entry-values
2758 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2759 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2760
2761 set basenames-may-differ
2762 show basenames-may-differ
2763 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2764 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2765 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2766 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2767 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2768 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2769 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2770 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2771
2772 set trace-user
2773 show trace-user
2774 set trace-notes
2775 show trace-notes
2776 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2777 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2778 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2779 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2780
2781 set trace-stop-notes
2782 show trace-stop-notes
2783 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2784 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2785 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2786 started by someone else.
2787
2788 * New remote packets
2789
2790 QTEnable
2791
2792 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2793
2794 QTDisable
2795
2796 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2797
2798 QTNotes
2799
2800 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2801
2802 qTP
2803
2804 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2805
2806 qTMinFTPILen
2807
2808 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2809 be placed.
2810
2811 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2812 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2813
2814 * New targets
2815
2816 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2817
2818 * New Simulators
2819
2820 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2821
2822 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2823
2824 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2825
2826 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2827
2828 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2829 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2830 matches the given regular expression.
2831
2832 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2833
2834 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2835 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2836
2837 * New command line options
2838
2839 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2840 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2841
2842 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2843 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2844
2845 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2846 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2847 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2848
2849 * GDB now understands thread names.
2850
2851 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2852 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2853
2854 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2855 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2856
2857 * OpenCL C
2858 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2859 has been integrated into GDB.
2860
2861 * Python scripting
2862
2863 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2864 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2865 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2866
2867 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2868 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2869 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2870 and allows for more dynamic content.
2871
2872 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2873 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2874 have an is_valid method.
2875
2876 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2877 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2878 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2879
2880 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2881
2882 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2883 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2884 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2885 that function like so:
2886
2887 result = some_value (10,20)
2888
2889 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2890 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2891 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2892
2893 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2894 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2895 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2896 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2897 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2898
2899 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2900 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2901
2902 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2903
2904 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2905 selected thread.
2906
2907 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2908 holds the thread's name.
2909
2910 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2911 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2912 occurring in the process being debugged.
2913 The following events are currently supported:
2914 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2915 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2916 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2917
2918 * C++ Improvements:
2919
2920 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2921 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2922
2923 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2924
2925 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2926 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2927 was added to GCC 4.5.
2928
2929 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2930 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2931 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2932 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2933 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2934 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2935
2936 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2937 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2938 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2939 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2940 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2941
2942 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2943 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2944 execution to a label.
2945
2946 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2947 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2948 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2949 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2950
2951 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2952 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2953 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2954 of scope.
2955
2956 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2957
2958 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2959 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2960 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2961 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2962 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2963 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2964
2965 (gdb) info threads
2966 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2967
2968 While now you see this:
2969
2970 (gdb) info threads
2971 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2972
2973 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2974 dumps.
2975
2976 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2977 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2978 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2979 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2980
2981 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2982 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2983 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2984 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2985 section in the user manual for more details.
2986
2987 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2988
2989 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2990 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2991
2992 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2993
2994 * New native configurations
2995
2996 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2997
2998 * New targets:
2999
3000 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3001
3002 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3003 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3004 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3005 in the GDB user manual.
3006
3007 * Guile support was removed.
3008
3009 * New features in the GNU simulator
3010
3011 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3012
3013 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3014
3015 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3016
3017 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3018
3019 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3020 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3021 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3022 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3023 was always disabled for such configurations.
3024
3025 * C++ Improvements:
3026
3027 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3028
3029 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3030 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3031 For example:
3032 namespace A
3033 {
3034 class B { };
3035 void foo (B) { }
3036 }
3037 ...
3038 A::B b
3039 foo(b)
3040 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3041 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3042 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3043
3044 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3045
3046 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3047 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3048 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3049 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3050 entry.
3051 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3052 mentioned flavors of operators.
3053
3054 ** static const class members
3055
3056 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3057 class definition has been fixed.
3058
3059 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3060
3061 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3062 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3063 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3064 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3065 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3066 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3067
3068 * Static tracepoints
3069
3070 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3071 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3072 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3073 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3074 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3075 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3076 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3077 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3078 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3079 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3080 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3081 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3082 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3083 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3084 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3085 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3086 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3087 the "New remote packets" section below.
3088
3089 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3090
3091 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3092 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3093 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3094 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3095
3096 * Observer mode
3097
3098 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3099 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3100 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3101 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3102 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3103 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3104 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3105
3106 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3107 current thread.
3108
3109 * New remote packets
3110
3111 qGetTIBAddr
3112
3113 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3114
3115 qRelocInsn
3116
3117 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3118 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3119 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3120 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3121 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3122 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3123
3124 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3125
3126 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3127
3128 qTSTMat
3129
3130 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3131 program.
3132
3133 qXfer:statictrace:read
3134
3135 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3136 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3137 to gdb's qSupported query.
3138
3139 QAllow
3140
3141 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3142
3143 QTDPsrc
3144
3145 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3146 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3147
3148 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3149 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3150 a directory.
3151
3152 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3153
3154 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3155 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3156 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3157 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3158
3159 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3160 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3161 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3162 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3163 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3164 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3165 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3166
3167 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3168 for static tracepoints support.
3169
3170 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3171
3172 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3173 it understands register description.
3174
3175 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3176
3177 * X86 general purpose registers
3178
3179 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3180 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3181 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3182 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3183 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3184
3185 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3186 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3187 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3188 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3189 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3190 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3191
3192 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3193 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3194 in the specified file.
3195
3196 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3197 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3198 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3199 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3200 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3201 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3202 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3203 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3204 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3205 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3206
3207 * New commands
3208
3209 eval template, expressions...
3210 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3211 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3212
3213 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3214 show target-file-system-kind
3215 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3216 names.
3217
3218 save breakpoints <filename>
3219 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3220 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3221 definitions, use the `source' command.
3222
3223 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3224 is now deprecated.
3225
3226 info static-tracepoint-markers
3227 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3228
3229 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3230 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3231 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3232
3233 set observer on|off
3234 show observer
3235 Enable and disable observer mode.
3236
3237 set may-write-registers on|off
3238 set may-write-memory on|off
3239 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3240 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3241 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3242 set may-interrupt on|off
3243 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3244 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3245 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3246 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3247 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3248 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3249 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3250
3251 set record memory-query on|off
3252 show record memory-query
3253 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3254 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3255
3256 * Changed commands
3257
3258 disassemble
3259 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3260
3261 * Python scripting
3262
3263 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3264 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3265 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3266 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3267 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3268
3269 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3270 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3271 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3272 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3273
3274 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3275 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3276
3277 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3278
3279 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3280
3281 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3282
3283 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3284 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3285 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3286
3287 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3288 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3289 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3290 regular breakpoints.
3291
3292 * New targets
3293
3294 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3295
3296 * D language support.
3297 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3298 language.
3299
3300 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3301 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3302 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3303 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3304 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3305
3306 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3307 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3308 conditions of the form:
3309
3310 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3311
3312 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3313 interface mentioned above.
3314
3315 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3316
3317 * C++ Improvements
3318
3319 ** Namespace Support
3320
3321 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3322 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3323 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3324 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3325 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3326
3327 ** Bug Fixes
3328
3329 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3330 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3331 qualified name.
3332
3333 ** Cast Operators
3334
3335 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3336 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3337
3338 * New targets
3339
3340 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3341 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
3342
3343 * New Simulators
3344
3345 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3346 Renesas RX rx
3347
3348 * Multi-program debugging.
3349
3350 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3351 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3352 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3353 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3354 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3355 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3356 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3357 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3358
3359 * New tracing features
3360
3361 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3362
3363 ** Trace state variables
3364
3365 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3366 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3367 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3368 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3369 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3370 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3371 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3372 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3373 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3374 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3375
3376 ** Fast tracepoints
3377
3378 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3379 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3380 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3381 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3382 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3383 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3384 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3385 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3386 the regular trace command.
3387
3388 ** Disconnected tracing
3389
3390 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3391 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3392 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3393 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3394 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3395
3396 ** Trace files
3397
3398 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3399 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3400 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3401 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3402 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3403 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3404 <name>".
3405
3406 ** Circular trace buffer
3407
3408 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3409 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3410 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3411 not be available for all target agents.
3412
3413 * Changed commands
3414
3415 disassemble
3416 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3417 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3418
3419 info variables
3420 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3421 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3422
3423 source
3424 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3425 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3426 support.
3427
3428 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3429 "set script-extension" (see below).
3430
3431 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3432
3433 record save [<FILENAME>]
3434 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3435 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3436
3437 record restore <FILENAME>
3438 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3439 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3440
3441 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3442 Add a new inferior.
3443
3444 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3445 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3446 inferior has loaded.
3447
3448 remove-inferior ID
3449 Remove an inferior.
3450
3451 maint info program-spaces
3452 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3453
3454 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3455 show remote interrupt-sequence
3456 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3457 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3458 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3459 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3460 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3461
3462 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3463 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3464 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3465 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3466 Linux kernel.
3467
3468 set remotebreak [on | off]
3469 show remotebreak
3470 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3471
3472 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3473 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3474
3475 info tvariables
3476 List trace state variables and their values.
3477
3478 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3479 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3480
3481 teval EXPR, ...
3482 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3483 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3484
3485 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3486 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3487
3488 * New expression syntax
3489
3490 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3491 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3492
3493 * New options
3494
3495 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3496 show follow-exec-mode
3497 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3498 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3499 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3500
3501 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3502 show default-collect
3503 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3504 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3505 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3506
3507 set disconnected-tracing
3508 show disconnected-tracing
3509 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3510 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3511 upon disconnection.
3512
3513 set circular-trace-buffer
3514 show circular-trace-buffer
3515 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3516 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3517 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3518 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3519
3520 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3521 show script-extension
3522 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3523 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3524 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3525 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3526 evaluation failed.
3527 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3528
3529 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3530 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3531 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3532 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3533 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3534 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3535 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3536 is on.
3537
3538 * Python API Improvements
3539
3540 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3541 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3542 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3543
3544 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3545 `is_base_class' attribute.
3546
3547 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3548
3549 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3550 evaluate an expression.
3551
3552 * New remote packets
3553
3554 QTDV
3555 Define a trace state variable.
3556
3557 qTV
3558 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3559
3560 QTDisconnected
3561 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3562
3563 QTBuffer:circular
3564 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3565
3566 qTfP, qTsP
3567 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3568
3569 * Bug fixes
3570
3571 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3572
3573 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3574 much more reliable. In particular:
3575 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3576 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3577 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3578 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3579 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3580 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3581 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3582 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3583 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3584 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3585 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3586 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3587 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3588 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3589 non-threaded programs.
3590
3591 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3592 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3593 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3594 executable program.
3595
3596 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3597
3598 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3599 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3600 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3601 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3602 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3603
3604 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3605 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3606 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3607 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3608 for tracepoint actions.
3609
3610 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3611 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3612 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3613
3614 * Process record and replay
3615
3616 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3617 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3618 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3619 execute commands.
3620
3621 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3622 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3623 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3624 reverse execution.
3625
3626 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3627 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3628 2.6.28 or later.
3629
3630 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3631 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3632 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3633 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3634 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3635 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3636 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3637 the installation instructions for more information.
3638
3639 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3640 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3641 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3642 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3643
3644 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3645 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3646
3647 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3648 now complete on file names.
3649
3650 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3651 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3652 For instance, consider:
3653
3654 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3655 # struct example variable;
3656 (gdb) p variable.
3657
3658 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3659 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3660
3661 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3662 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3663
3664 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3665 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3666 macros.
3667
3668 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3669 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3670 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3671
3672 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3673 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3674 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3675 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3676
3677 * New remote packets
3678
3679 qSearch:memory:
3680 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3681
3682 QStartNoAckMode
3683 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3684 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3685 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3686
3687 vKill
3688 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3689 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3690
3691 qXfer:osdata:read
3692 Obtains additional operating system information
3693
3694 qXfer:siginfo:read
3695 qXfer:siginfo:write
3696 Read or write additional signal information.
3697
3698 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3699
3700 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3701 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3702 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3703
3704 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3705 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3706
3707 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3708 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3709 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3710
3711 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3712 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3713
3714 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3715
3716 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3717
3718 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3719 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3720
3721 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3722 list of section offsets.
3723
3724 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3725 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3726 have also been fixed.
3727
3728 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3729 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3730 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3731
3732 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3733 example, given:
3734
3735 template<typename T> class C { };
3736 C<char const *> c;
3737
3738 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3739
3740 ptype C<char const *>
3741 ptype C<char const*>
3742 ptype C<const char *>
3743 ptype C<const char*>
3744
3745 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3746
3747 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3748 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3749
3750 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3751 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3752 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3753
3754 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3755 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3756
3757 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3758 gdbserver.
3759
3760 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3761 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3762
3763 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3764 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3765 as appropriate.
3766
3767 * Python scripting
3768
3769 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3770 available is determined at configure time.
3771
3772 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3773
3774 * Ada tasking support
3775
3776 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3777 been introduced:
3778
3779 info tasks
3780 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3781 info task N
3782 Print detailed information about task number N.
3783 task
3784 Print the task number of the current task.
3785 task N
3786 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3787
3788 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3789 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3790
3791 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3792
3793 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3794 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3795 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3796 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3797 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3798 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3799 below.
3800
3801 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3802 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3803 information.
3804
3805 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3806 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3807 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3808 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3809 more information.
3810
3811 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3812
3813 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3814 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3815 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3816 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3817 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3818
3819 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3820 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3821 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3822 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3823 --enable-targets configure option.
3824
3825 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3826
3827 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3828 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3829 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3830 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3831 section in the user manual for more information.
3832
3833 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3834 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3835 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3836 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3837 extensions on linux targets.
3838
3839 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3840
3841 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3842 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3843 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3844 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3845 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3846 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3847 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3848 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3849 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3850
3851 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3852 val1 [, val2, ...]
3853 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3854
3855 maint set python print-stack
3856 maint show python print-stack
3857 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3858
3859 python [CODE]
3860 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3861
3862 macro define
3863 macro list
3864 macro undef
3865 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3866 interactively.
3867
3868 info os processes
3869 Show operating system information about processes.
3870
3871 info inferiors
3872 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3873
3874 inferior NUM
3875 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3876
3877 detach inferior NUM
3878 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3879
3880 kill inferior NUM
3881 Kill inferior number NUM.
3882
3883 * New options
3884
3885 set spu stop-on-load
3886 show spu stop-on-load
3887 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3888
3889 set spu auto-flush-cache
3890 show spu auto-flush-cache
3891 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3892 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3893
3894 set sh calling-convention
3895 show sh calling-convention
3896 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3897
3898 set debug timestamp
3899 show debug timestamp
3900 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3901
3902 set disassemble-next-line
3903 show disassemble-next-line
3904 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3905 the debuggee stops.
3906
3907 set remote noack-packet
3908 show remote noack-packet
3909 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3910 under "New remote packets."
3911
3912 set remote query-attached-packet
3913 show remote query-attached-packet
3914 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3915
3916 set remote read-siginfo-object
3917 show remote read-siginfo-object
3918 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3919 packet.
3920
3921 set remote write-siginfo-object
3922 show remote write-siginfo-object
3923 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3924 packet.
3925
3926 set remote reverse-continue
3927 show remote reverse-continue
3928 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3929
3930 set remote reverse-step
3931 show remote reverse-step
3932 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3933
3934 set displaced-stepping
3935 show displaced-stepping
3936 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3937 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3938 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3939
3940 set debug displaced
3941 show debug displaced
3942 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3943
3944 maint set internal-error
3945 maint show internal-error
3946 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3947
3948 maint set internal-warning
3949 maint show internal-warning
3950 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3951
3952 set exec-wrapper
3953 show exec-wrapper
3954 unset exec-wrapper
3955 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3956
3957 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3958 show multiple-symbols
3959 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3960 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3961 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3962
3963 set breakpoint always-inserted
3964 show breakpoint always-inserted
3965 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3966 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3967 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3968
3969 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3970 show arm fallback-mode
3971 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3972 show arm force-mode
3973 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3974 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3975 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3976 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3977
3978 set disable-randomization
3979 show disable-randomization
3980 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3981 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3982 multiple debugging sessions.
3983
3984 set non-stop
3985 show non-stop
3986 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3987 a breakpoint.
3988
3989 set target-async
3990 show target-async
3991 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3992 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3993 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3994 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3995
3996 set target-wide-charset
3997 show target-wide-charset
3998 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3999 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4000
4001 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4002 show tcp auto-retry
4003 set tcp connect-timeout
4004 show tcp connect-timeout
4005 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4006 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4007 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4008
4009 set libthread-db-search-path
4010 show libthread-db-search-path
4011 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4012 libthread_db.
4013
4014 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4015 show schedule-multiple
4016 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4017 the current process.
4018
4019 set stack-cache
4020 show stack-cache
4021 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4022 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4023 affecting correctness.
4024
4025 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4026 show interactive-mode
4027 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4028 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4029 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4030 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4031 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4032
4033 * Removed commands
4034
4035 info forks
4036 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4037 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4038 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4039 command.
4040
4041 fork NUM
4042 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4043 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4044 alias for the `fork' command.
4045
4046 process PID
4047 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4048 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4049 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4050
4051 delete fork NUM
4052 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4053 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4054 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4055 fork' command.
4056
4057 detach fork NUM
4058 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4059 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4060 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4061 fork' command.
4062
4063 * New native configurations
4064
4065 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4066
4067 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4068
4069 * New targets
4070
4071 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4072 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4073 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4074 S+core 3 score-*-*
4075
4076 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4077 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4078
4079 * Removed commands
4080
4081 catch load
4082 catch unload
4083 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4084
4085 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4086
4087 * New native configurations
4088
4089 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4090 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4091
4092 * New targets
4093
4094 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4095 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4096
4097 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4098
4099 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4100 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4101 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4102 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4103
4104 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4105 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4106
4107 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4108 is resolved.
4109
4110 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4111 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4112 and in inlined functions.
4113
4114 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4115 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4116 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4117
4118 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4119
4120 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4121 registers on PowerPC targets.
4122
4123 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4124 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4125
4126 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4127 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4128
4129 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4130 extended-remote mode.
4131
4132 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4133 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4134 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4135 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4136
4137 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4138 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4139 target architectures.
4140
4141 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4142 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4143 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4144 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4145
4146 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4147 breakpoints now.
4148
4149 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4150 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4151 include:
4152 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4153 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4154 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4155 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4156 of an assignment
4157 - Improved command completion in Ada
4158 - Several bug fixes
4159
4160 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4161 process.
4162
4163 * New commands
4164
4165 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4166 show print frame-arguments
4167 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4168 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4169
4170 remote put
4171 remote get
4172 remote delete
4173 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4174
4175 * New MI commands
4176
4177 -target-file-put
4178 -target-file-get
4179 -target-file-delete
4180 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4181
4182 * New remote packets
4183
4184 vFile:open:
4185 vFile:close:
4186 vFile:pread:
4187 vFile:pwrite:
4188 vFile:unlink:
4189 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4190
4191 vAttach
4192 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4193 mode.
4194
4195 vRun
4196 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4197
4198 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4199
4200 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4201 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4202 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4203
4204 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4205 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4206 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4207
4208 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4209 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4210 is not supported.
4211
4212 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4213 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4214
4215 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4216 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4217
4218 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4219
4220 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4221 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4222 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4223
4224 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4225 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4226
4227 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4228 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4229 as strings.
4230
4231 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4232 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4233 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4234
4235 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4236 iWMMXt coprocessor.
4237
4238 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4239 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4240 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4241
4242 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4243
4244 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4245
4246 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4247 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4248 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4249
4250 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4251 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4252
4253 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4254 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4255 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4256 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4257 Windows and SymbianOS).
4258
4259 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4260 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4261
4262 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4263 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4264
4265 * New commands
4266
4267 set remoteflow
4268 show remoteflow
4269 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4270 when debugging using remote targets.
4271
4272 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4273 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4274 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4275 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4276 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4277 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4278 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4279
4280 set breakpoint auto-hw
4281 show breakpoint auto-hw
4282 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4283 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4284 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4285 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4286 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4287 including "next" and "finish".
4288
4289 catch exception
4290 catch exception unhandled
4291 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4292
4293 catch assert
4294 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4295
4296 set sysroot
4297 show sysroot
4298 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4299 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4300 an alias to "set sysroot".
4301
4302 info spu
4303 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4304 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4305 architecture.
4306
4307 * New native configurations
4308
4309 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4310
4311 set tdesc filename
4312 unset tdesc filename
4313 show tdesc filename
4314 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4315 not query the target for its built-in description.
4316
4317 * New targets
4318
4319 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4320 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4321 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4322
4323 * New remote packets
4324
4325 QPassSignals:
4326 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4327 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4328
4329 qXfer:features:read:
4330 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4331 features.
4332
4333 qXfer:spu:read:
4334 qXfer:spu:write:
4335 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4336 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4337
4338 qXfer:libraries:read:
4339 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4340 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4341 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4342 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4343
4344 * Removed targets
4345
4346 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4347
4348 alpha*-*-osf1*
4349 alpha*-*-osf2*
4350 d10v-*-*
4351 hppa*-*-hiux*
4352 i[34567]86-ncr-*
4353 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
4354 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4355 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4356 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4357 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4358 i[34567]86-*-sco*
4359 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4360 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
4361 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
4362 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4363 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4364 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
4365 i[34567]86-*-isc*
4366 m68*-cisco*-*
4367 m68*-tandem-*
4368 mips*-*-pe
4369 rs6000-*-lynxos*
4370 sh*-*-pe
4371
4372 * Other removed features
4373
4374 target abug
4375 target cpu32bug
4376 target est
4377 target rom68k
4378
4379 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4380
4381 target hms
4382 target e7000
4383 target sh3
4384 target sh3e
4385
4386 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4387 H8/300.
4388
4389 target ocd
4390
4391 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4392 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4393 interfaces.
4394
4395 DWARF 1 support
4396
4397 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4398 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4399
4400 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4401
4402 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4403 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4404 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4405 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4406
4407 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4408
4409 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4410 in debugging information.
4411
4412 Scheme support
4413
4414 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4415 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4416
4417 set mips stack-arg-size
4418 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4419
4420 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4421
4422 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4423
4424 * New targets
4425
4426 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4427 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4428
4429 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4430 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4431 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4432
4433 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4434 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4435 supported.
4436
4437 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4438 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4439
4440 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4441 stub provides the required support.
4442
4443 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4444 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4445
4446 * New commands
4447
4448 set substitute-path
4449 unset substitute-path
4450 show substitute-path
4451 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4452 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4453 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4454 between compilation and debugging.
4455
4456 set trace-commands
4457 show trace-commands
4458 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4459 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4460 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4461
4462 * REMOVED features
4463
4464 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4465
4466 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4467 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4468
4469 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4470
4471 * New remote packets
4472
4473 qSupported:
4474 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4475 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4476 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4477 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4478 target.
4479
4480 qXfer:auxv:read:
4481 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4482 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4483
4484 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4485 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4486 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4487
4488 vFlashErase:
4489 vFlashWrite:
4490 vFlashDone:
4491 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4492
4493 * Removed remote packets
4494
4495 qPart:auxv:read:
4496 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4497 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4498
4499 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4500
4501 * New targets
4502
4503 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4504
4505 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4506
4507 * New commands
4508
4509 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4510 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4511
4512 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4513
4514 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4515
4516 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4517 previously saved state.
4518
4519 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4520
4521 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4522
4523 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4524 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4525
4526 info forks List forks of the user program that
4527 are available to be debugged.
4528
4529 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4530 forks of the user program that are
4531 available to be debugged.
4532
4533 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4534 that are available to be debugged (and
4535 kill the forked process).
4536
4537 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4538 that are available to be debugged (and
4539 allow the process to continue).
4540
4541 * New architecture
4542
4543 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4544
4545 * Improved Windows host support
4546
4547 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4548 native console support, and remote communications using either
4549 network sockets or serial ports.
4550
4551 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4552
4553 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4554 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4555 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4556 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4557 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4558 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4559
4560 * REMOVED features
4561
4562 The ARM rdi-share module.
4563
4564 The Netware NLM debug server.
4565
4566 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4567
4568 * New native configurations
4569
4570 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4571 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4572
4573 * New targets
4574
4575 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4576
4577 * New command line options
4578
4579 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4580 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4581 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4582 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4583 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4584 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4585 with the --command (-x) option.
4586
4587 * Deprecated commands removed
4588
4589 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4590 removed:
4591
4592 Command Replacement
4593 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4594 othernames set arm disassembler
4595 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4596 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4597 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4598 regs info registers
4599
4600 * New BSD user-level threads support
4601
4602 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4603 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4604 configurations are:
4605
4606 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4607 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4608 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4609
4610 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4611 are not yet supported.
4612
4613 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4614 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4615
4616 * REMOVED configurations and files
4617
4618 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4619 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4620 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4621
4622 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4623
4624 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4625 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4626 behavior.
4627
4628 * VAX floating point support
4629
4630 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4631
4632 * User-defined command support
4633
4634 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4635 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4636 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4637
4638 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4639
4640 * New command line option
4641
4642 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4643 debugging.
4644
4645 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4646
4647 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4648 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4649 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4650 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4651 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4652
4653 * Internationalization
4654
4655 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4656 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4657 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4658
4659 * Ada
4660
4661 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4662 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4663 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4664
4665 * New native configurations
4666
4667 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4668
4669 * Remote 'p' packet
4670
4671 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4672 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4673
4674 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4675
4676 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4677 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4678 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4679 i386 application).
4680
4681 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4682 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4683 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4684 configurations:
4685
4686 hppa-*-hpux
4687 ia64-*-aix
4688 mips-*-irix*
4689 *-*-lynx
4690 mips-*-linux-gnu
4691 sds protocol
4692 xdr protocol
4693 powerpc bdm protocol
4694
4695 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4696 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4697
4698 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4699
4700 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4701 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4702 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4703 permanently REMOVED.
4704
4705 h8300-*-*
4706 mcore-*-*
4707 mn10300-*-*
4708 ns32k-*-*
4709 sh64-*-*
4710 v850-*-*
4711
4712 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4713
4714 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4715
4716 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4717 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4718 been fixed.
4719
4720 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4721
4722 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4723 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4724 IRIX long double values).
4725
4726 * VAX and "next"
4727
4728 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4729 command. This problem has been fixed.
4730
4731 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4732
4733 * Fix for ``many threads''
4734
4735 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4736 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4737 error message:
4738
4739 ptrace: No such process.
4740 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4741
4742 This problem has been fixed.
4743
4744 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4745
4746 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4747 GDB to dump core).
4748
4749 * New ``start'' command.
4750
4751 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4752
4753 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4754
4755 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4756 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4757 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4758
4759 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4760 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4761 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4762 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4763 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4764 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4765 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4766 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4767 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4768
4769 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4770
4771 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4772 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4773 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4774 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4775 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4776
4777 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4778 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4779 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4780
4781 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4782
4783 * New native configurations
4784
4785 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4786 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4787 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4788 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4789 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4790 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4791 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4792
4793 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4794
4795 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4796 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4797 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4798 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4799 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4800 work, was also included.
4801
4802 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4803 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4804
4805 h8300-*-*
4806 mcore-*-*
4807 mn10300-*-*
4808 ns32k-*-*
4809 sh64-*-*
4810 v850-*-*
4811 xstormy16-*-*
4812
4813 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4814 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4815
4816 * REMOVED configurations and files
4817
4818 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4819 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4820 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4821 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4822 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4823 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4824 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4825 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4826 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4827 sonymips mips-sony-*
4828 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4829
4830 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4831
4832 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4833
4834 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4835 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4836 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4837 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4838 with GDB".
4839
4840 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4841
4842 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4843 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4844 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4845 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4846 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4847 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4848 are created.
4849
4850 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4851
4852 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4853
4854 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4855 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4856 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4857
4858 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4859
4860 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4861 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4862
4863 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4864
4865 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4866 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4867 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4868
4869 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4870
4871 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4872 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4873
4874 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4875
4876 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4877 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4878 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4879
4880 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4881
4882 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4883 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4884 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4885
4886 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4887
4888 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4889
4890 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4891 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4892
4893 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4894
4895 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4896 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4897 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4898 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4899
4900 * Revised SPARC target
4901
4902 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4903 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4904 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4905 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4906 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4907
4908 * New C++ demangler
4909
4910 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4911 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4912 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4913 programs.
4914
4915 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4916
4917 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4918 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4919 encountered these.
4920
4921 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4922
4923 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4924 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4925 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4926 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4927 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4928 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4929 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4930 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4931 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4932
4933 * New native configurations
4934
4935 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4936 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4937 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4938 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4939 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4940
4941 * New debugging protocols
4942
4943 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4944
4945 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4946
4947 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4948 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4949 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4950
4951 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4952
4953 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4954 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4955 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4956 permanently REMOVED.
4957
4958 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4959 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4960 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4961 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4962 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4963 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4964 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4965 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4966 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4967 sonymips mips-sony-*
4968 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4969
4970 * REMOVED configurations and files
4971
4972 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4973 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4974 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4975 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4976 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4977 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4978 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4979 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4980 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4981 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4982 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4983 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4984 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4985 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4986 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4987 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4988 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4989
4990 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4991
4992 * Objective-C
4993
4994 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4995 integrated into GDB.
4996
4997 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4998
4999 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5000 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5001 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5002 backtraces.
5003
5004 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5005 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5006 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5007
5008 * Hosted file I/O.
5009
5010 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5011 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5012 remote protocol documentation for details.
5013
5014 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5015
5016 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5017 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5018 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5019 ppc32 on ppc64).
5020
5021 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5022
5023 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5024 per-thread variables.
5025
5026 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5027
5028 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5029 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5030
5031 * Separate debug info.
5032
5033 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5034 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5035 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5036 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5037 and optional debug files.
5038
5039 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5040
5041 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5042 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5043 debugger.
5044
5045 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5046 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5047
5048 * Java
5049
5050 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5051 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5052 considered "useable".
5053
5054 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5055
5056 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5057 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5058 kernel.
5059
5060 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5061
5062 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5063 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5064
5065 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5066
5067 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5068 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5069 command.
5070
5071 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5072
5073 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5074 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5075
5076 * Profiling support
5077
5078 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5079 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5080 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5081 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5082 data, for more informative profiling results.
5083
5084 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5085
5086 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5087 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5088 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5089
5090 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5091 removed.
5092
5093 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5094 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5095 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5096 in a subsequent -var-update.
5097
5098 * New native configurations.
5099
5100 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5101
5102 * Multi-arched targets.
5103
5104 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5105 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5106
5107 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5108
5109 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5110 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5111 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5112 permanently REMOVED.
5113
5114 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5115 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5116 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5117 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5118 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5119 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5120 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5121 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5122 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5123 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5124 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5125 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5126
5127 * REMOVED configurations and files
5128
5129 V850EA ISA
5130 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5131 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5132 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5133 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5134 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5135 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5136 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5137 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5138 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5139 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5140 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5141 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5142 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5143
5144 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5145
5146 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5147 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5148 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5149 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5150 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5151
5152 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5153
5154 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5155
5156 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5157 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5158 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5159 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5160 shared libs like mad''.
5161
5162 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5163
5164 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5165 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5166 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5167 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5168
5169 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5170
5171 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5172 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5173 they expand.
5174
5175 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5176 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5177
5178 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5179 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5180
5181 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5182 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5183 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5184 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5185
5186 * Multi-arched targets.
5187
5188 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5189 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5190 NEC V850 v850-*-*
5191 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5192 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5193 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5194
5195 * New targets.
5196
5197 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5198
5199
5200 * New native configurations
5201
5202 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5203 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5204 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5205 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5206
5207 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5208
5209 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5210 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5211 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5212 permanently REMOVED.
5213
5214 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5215 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5216 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5217 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5218 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5219 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5220 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5221 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5222 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5223 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5224 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5225 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5226 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5227
5228 * OBSOLETE languages
5229
5230 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5231
5232 * REMOVED configurations and files
5233
5234 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5235 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5236 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5237 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5238 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5239
5240 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5241
5242 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5243
5244 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5245 commands. The default is 1024.
5246
5247 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5248
5249 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5250
5251 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5252
5253 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5254 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5255 from a file into memory (restore).
5256
5257 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5258
5259 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5260 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5261 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5262
5263 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5264
5265 * New targets.
5266
5267 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
5268
5269 * Bug fixes
5270
5271 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5272 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5273 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5274
5275 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5276 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5277 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5278
5279 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5280 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5281 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5282
5283 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5284 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5285 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5286
5287 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5288
5289 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5290
5291 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5292 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5293 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5294 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5295 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5296 (notably embedded) targets.
5297
5298 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5299
5300 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5301 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5302 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5303 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5304
5305 * New command line option
5306
5307 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5308
5309 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5310
5311 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5312 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5313 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5314 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5315 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5316 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5317 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5318 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5319 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5320 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5321
5322 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5323
5324 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5325 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5326
5327 * New native configurations
5328
5329 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5330 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5331 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5332 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5333
5334 * New targets
5335
5336 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5337
5338 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5339
5340 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5341 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5342 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5343 permanently REMOVED.
5344
5345 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5346 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5347 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5348 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5349 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5350
5351 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5352
5353 * REMOVED configurations and files
5354
5355 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5356 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5357 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5358 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5359 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5360 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5361 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5362 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5363 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5364 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5365 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5366 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5367 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5368
5369 * Changes to command line processing
5370
5371 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5372 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5373
5374 * Changes to key bindings
5375
5376 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5377
5378 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5379
5380 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5381
5382 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5383 corrupted.
5384
5385 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5386
5387 Numerous documentation fixes.
5388
5389 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5390
5391 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5392
5393 * New native configurations
5394
5395 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5396 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5397 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5398 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5399 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5400 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5401
5402 * New targets
5403
5404 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5405 CRIS cris-axis
5406 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5407
5408 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5409
5410 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5411 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5412 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5413 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5414 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5415 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5416 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5417 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5418 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5419 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5420 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5421 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5422 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5423 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5424
5425 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5426 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5427
5428 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5429 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5430 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5431 permanently REMOVED.
5432
5433 * REMOVED configurations and files
5434
5435 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5436 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5437 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5438 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5439 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5440 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5441
5442 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5443
5444 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5445 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5446 present.
5447
5448 * Other news:
5449
5450 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5451
5452 * The MI enabled by default.
5453
5454 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5455 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5456 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5457 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5458 which is now deprecated.
5459
5460 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5461
5462 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5463 main features are supported:
5464
5465 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5466
5467 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5468 extension;
5469
5470 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5471
5472 - a Pascal expression parser.
5473
5474 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5475
5476 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5477
5478 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5479
5480 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5481 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5482
5483 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5484
5485 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5486
5487 * Changes in completion.
5488
5489 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5490 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5491 users expect at the shell prompt.
5492
5493 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5494 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5495 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5496 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5497 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5498 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5499 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5500
5501 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5502
5503 * New platform-independent commands:
5504
5505 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5506 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5507 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5508
5509 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5510
5511 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5512 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5513 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5514
5515 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5516
5517 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5518 multi-threaded programs though.
5519
5520 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5521
5522 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5523
5524 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5525 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5526 supported.)
5527
5528 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5529
5530 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5531 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5532 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5533 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5534 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5535 registers.
5536
5537 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5538 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5539 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5540
5541 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5542
5543 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5544 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5545
5546 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5547 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5548 IDT.
5549
5550 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5551 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5552 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5553 a given linear address.
5554
5555 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5556 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5557 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5558
5559 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5560
5561 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5562
5563 * Changes in documentation.
5564
5565 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5566 Documentation License.
5567
5568 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5569 manual.
5570
5571 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5572
5573 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5574 manual.
5575
5576 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5577 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5578 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5579
5580 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5581
5582 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5583 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5584 contents of this file.
5585
5586 * gdba.el deleted
5587
5588 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5589
5590 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5591
5592 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5593
5594 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5595 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5596 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5597 greater level of detail.
5598
5599 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5600
5601 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5602 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5603 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5604 written.
5605
5606 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5607
5608 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5609 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5610 machines ``out of the box''.
5611
5612 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5613 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5614 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5615 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5616 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5617
5618 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5619 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5620 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5621 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5622 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5623
5624 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5625 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5626 also works.
5627
5628 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5629 GDB.
5630
5631 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5632 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5633 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5634 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5635
5636 * New native configurations
5637
5638 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5639 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5640
5641 * New targets
5642
5643 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5644 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5645 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5646 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5647
5648 * OBSOLETE configurations
5649
5650 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5651 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5652 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5653 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5654 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5655
5656 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5657 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5658 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5659 be permanently REMOVED.
5660
5661 * Gould support removed
5662
5663 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5664
5665 * New features for SVR4
5666
5667 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5668 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5669 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5670
5671 * Many C++ enhancements
5672
5673 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5674 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5675
5676 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5677
5678 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5679 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5680 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5681 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5682
5683 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5684 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5685
5686 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5687
5688 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5689 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5690 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5691
5692 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5693 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5694
5695 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5696
5697 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5698 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5699 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5700
5701 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5702
5703 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5704 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5705 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5706
5707 * ``apropos'' command added.
5708
5709 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5710 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5711 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5712
5713 * New MI interface
5714
5715 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5716 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5717 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5718 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5719 enabled by configuring with:
5720
5721 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5722
5723 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5724
5725 * New native configurations
5726
5727 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5728 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5729 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5730
5731 * New targets
5732
5733 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5734 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5735 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5736
5737 * OBSOLETE configurations
5738
5739 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5740
5741 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5742 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5743 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5744 be permanently REMOVED.
5745
5746 * ANSI/ISO C
5747
5748 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5749 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5750 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5751 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5752 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5753 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5754 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5755 already.
5756
5757 * Readline 2.2
5758
5759 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5760
5761 * set extension-language
5762
5763 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5764 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5765 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5766 set extension-language .c c++
5767 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5768 and their associated languages.
5769
5770 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5771
5772 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5773 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5774 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5775
5776 set processor NAME
5777
5778 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5779 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5780
5781 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5782 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5783 403 IBM PowerPC 403
5784 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5785 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5786 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5787 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5788 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5789 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5790 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5791 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5792
5793 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5794 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5795 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5796 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5797
5798 * HP-UX support
5799
5800 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5801 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5802 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5803 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5804 for xdb and dbx commands.
5805
5806 * Catchpoints
5807
5808 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5809 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5810 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5811
5812 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5813 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5814 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5815
5816 * Debugging across forks
5817
5818 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5819 in the inferior.
5820
5821 * TUI
5822
5823 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5824 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5825 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5826
5827 * GDB remote protocol additions
5828
5829 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5830 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5831 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5832 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5833
5834 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5835 full 64-bit address. The command
5836
5837 set remoteaddresssize 32
5838
5839 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5840 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5841 will be discarded.
5842
5843 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5844 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5845
5846 maint packet heythere
5847
5848 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5849 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5850 time.
5851
5852 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5853 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5854 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5855
5856 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5857
5858 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5859 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5860 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5861
5862 * mask-address variable for Mips
5863
5864 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5865 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5866 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5867
5868 * Higher serial baud rates
5869
5870 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5871 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5872 to achieve all of these rates.)
5873
5874 * i960 simulator
5875
5876 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5877 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5878
5879
5880 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5881
5882 * New native configurations
5883
5884 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5885 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5886 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5887 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5888 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5889 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5890 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5891
5892 * New targets
5893
5894 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5895 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5896 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5897 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5898 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5899 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5900 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5901 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5902 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5903 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5904 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5905
5906 * New debugging protocols
5907
5908 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5909 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5910 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5911 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5912 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5913 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5914
5915 * DWARF 2
5916
5917 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5918 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5919 information.
5920
5921 * Java frontend
5922
5923 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5924 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5925
5926 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5927
5928 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5929 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5930 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5931
5932 * Live range splitting
5933
5934 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5935 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5936 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5937
5938 * Hurd support
5939
5940 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5941 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5942
5943 * ARM Thumb support
5944
5945 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5946 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5947 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5948 accordingly.
5949
5950 * MIPS16 support
5951
5952 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5953 instruction set.
5954
5955 * Overlay support
5956
5957 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5958 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5959 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5960 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5961 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5962 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5963
5964 * info symbol
5965
5966 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5967 the symbol at the specified address.
5968
5969 * Trace support
5970
5971 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5972 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5973 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5974 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5975 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5976
5977 * MIPS simulator
5978
5979 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5980 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5981 of most MIPS variants.
5982
5983 * Sparc simulator
5984
5985 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5986 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5987 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5988
5989 * set architecture
5990
5991 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5992 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5993 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5994 the possible architectures.
5995
5996 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5997
5998 * New native configurations
5999
6000 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6001 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6002 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6003 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6004 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6005 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6006
6007 * New targets
6008
6009 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6010 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6011 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6012 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6013 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6014 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6015 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6016
6017 * PowerPC simulator
6018
6019 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6020 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6021 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6022 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6023 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6024
6025 * Solaris 2.5
6026
6027 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6028
6029 * Windows 95/NT native
6030
6031 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6032 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6033 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6034 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6035 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6036
6037 * dont-repeat command
6038
6039 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6040 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6041 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6042 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6043
6044 * Send break instead of ^C
6045
6046 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6047 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6048 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6049
6050 * Remote protocol timeout
6051
6052 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6053 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6054 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6055
6056 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6057
6058 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6059 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6060 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6061 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6062 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6063
6064 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6065 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6066 automatically on hpux10.
6067
6068 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6069
6070 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6071
6072 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6073
6074 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6075 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6076 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6077 every character. The default value is 1050.
6078
6079 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6080
6081 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6082 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6083 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6084 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6085 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6086 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6087
6088 * Speedups for remote debugging
6089
6090 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6091 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6092 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6093
6094 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6095
6096 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6097 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6098
6099 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6100
6101 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6102
6103 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6104 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6105
6106 * Remote targets use caching
6107
6108 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6109 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6110 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6111 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6112 off' turns the the data cache off.
6113
6114 * Remote targets may have threads
6115
6116 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6117 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6118 gdb/remote.c for details.
6119
6120 * NetROM support
6121
6122 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6123 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6124 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6125 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6126 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6127 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6128 sequence is something like
6129
6130 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6131 load <prog>
6132 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6133
6134 * Macintosh host
6135
6136 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6137 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6138 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6139 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6140 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6141 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6142 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6143 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6144
6145 * Autoconf
6146
6147 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6148 but does simplify configuration and building.
6149
6150 * hpux10
6151
6152 GDB now supports hpux10.
6153
6154 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6155
6156 * New native configurations
6157
6158 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6159 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6160 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6161 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6162
6163 * New targets
6164
6165 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6166 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6167 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6168 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6169 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6170
6171 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6172
6173 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6174 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6175 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6176 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6177 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6178
6179 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6180
6181 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6182 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6183 trivial example:
6184 define adder
6185 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6186
6187 To execute the command use:
6188 adder 1 2 3
6189
6190 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6191 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6192 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6193
6194 * New `if' and `while' commands
6195
6196 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6197 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6198 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6199 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6200 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6201 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6202 if the expression is zero.
6203
6204 * Fortran source language mode
6205
6206 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6207 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6208 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6209 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6210 Fortran compilers.
6211
6212 * Better HPUX support
6213
6214 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6215 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6216 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6217 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6218 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6219
6220 adb -w a.out
6221 __dld_flags?W 0x5
6222 control-d
6223
6224 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6225 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6226
6227 adb -w a.out
6228 __dld_flags?W 0x4
6229 control-d
6230
6231 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6232 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6233 external linkage.
6234
6235 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6236 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6237
6238 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6239
6240 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6241 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6242 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6243 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6244 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6245 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6246
6247 * New DOS host serial code
6248
6249 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6250 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6251 a PC's serial port.
6252
6253 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6254
6255 * New "complete" command
6256
6257 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6258 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6259
6260 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6261
6262 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6263 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6264
6265 * Breakpoint hit counts
6266
6267 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6268 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6269 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6270 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6271 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6272 that breakpoint.
6273
6274 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6275
6276 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6277 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6278 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6279
6280 * Shared library breakpoints
6281
6282 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6283 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6284
6285 * Hardware watchpoints
6286
6287 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6288 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6289
6290 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6291
6292 * Annotations
6293
6294 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6295 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6296
6297 * Improved Irix 5 support
6298
6299 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6300
6301 * Improved HPPA support
6302
6303 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6304
6305 * New native configurations
6306
6307 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6308 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6309 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6310 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6311
6312 * New targets
6313
6314 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6315 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6316 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
6317
6318 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6319
6320 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6321 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6322
6323 * Fixes
6324
6325 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6326 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6327
6328 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6329
6330 * Irix 5 is now supported
6331
6332 * HPPA support
6333
6334 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6335 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6336 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6337 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6338 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6339
6340
6341 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6342
6343 * User visible changes:
6344
6345 * Remote Debugging
6346
6347 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6348 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6349 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6350 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6351 debugging info for the mips target).
6352
6353 * DEC Alpha native support
6354
6355 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6356 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6357 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6358 Alpha-specific notes.
6359
6360 * Preliminary thread implementation
6361
6362 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6363
6364 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6365
6366 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6367 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6368 for details).
6369
6370 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6371
6372 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6373 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6374 call methods, ...etc.
6375
6376 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6377
6378 * User visible changes:
6379
6380 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6381 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6382 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6383 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6384
6385 Filename completion now works.
6386
6387 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6388 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6389 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6390
6391 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6392 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6393 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6394 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6395 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6396
6397 * DEC alpha support
6398
6399 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6400 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6401
6402
6403 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6404
6405 * Testsuite
6406
6407 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6408 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6409 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6410
6411 * C++ demangling
6412
6413 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6414 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6415 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6416 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6417 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6418
6419 * Simulators
6420
6421 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6422 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6423 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6424
6425 * New targets supported
6426
6427 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6428 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6429 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6430 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6431 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6432
6433 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6434 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6435 GO32 memory extender.
6436
6437 * New remote protocols
6438
6439 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6440
6441 * New source languages supported
6442
6443 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6444 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6445 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6446
6447
6448 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6449
6450 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6451
6452 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6453 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6454 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6455 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6456 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6457 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6458
6459 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6460
6461 * Faster and better demangling
6462
6463 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6464 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6465 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6466 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6467 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6468 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6469 symbol lookups.
6470
6471 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6472 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6473 compiler does not actually implement.
6474
6475 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6476
6477 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6478 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6479 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6480 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6481 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6482 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6483 fix.
6484
6485 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6486 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6487
6488 * Improved configure script
6489
6490 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6491 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6492 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6493 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6494
6495 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6496 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6497 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6498 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6499 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6500 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6501
6502 * Documentation improvements
6503
6504 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6505 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6506 before submitting changes.
6507
6508 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6509 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6510 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6511 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6512 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6513
6514 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6515 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6516 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6517 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6518 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6519 around this problem.
6520
6521 * New features
6522
6523 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6524 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6525 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6526 the target program.
6527
6528 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6529 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6530
6531 * New native hosts supported
6532
6533 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6534 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6535
6536 * New targets supported
6537
6538 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6539
6540 * New file formats supported
6541
6542 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6543 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6544
6545 * Major bug fixes
6546
6547 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6548
6549 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6550 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6551
6552 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6553 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6554 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6555
6556 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6557 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6558
6559 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6560 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6561 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6562 libraries.
6563
6564 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6565 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6566 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6567 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6568 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6569
6570 * Internal improvements
6571
6572 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6573 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6574
6575 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6576 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6577 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6578 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6579 shared code that handles any of them.
6580
6581 * New command line options
6582
6583 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6584
6585 * Mmalloc licensing
6586
6587 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6588 General Public License.
6589
6590 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6591
6592 * Host/native/target split
6593
6594 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6595 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6596 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6597 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6598 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6599
6600 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6601 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6602 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6603 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6604 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6605 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6606 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6607
6608 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6609 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6610 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6611
6612 * New hosts supported
6613
6614 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6615 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6616 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6617
6618 * New targets supported
6619
6620 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6621 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6622
6623 * New native hosts supported
6624
6625 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6626 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6627 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6628
6629 * New file formats supported
6630
6631 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6632 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6633 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6634
6635 * New commands
6636
6637 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6638 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6639 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6640
6641 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6642
6643 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6644 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6645 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6646 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6647
6648 * C++ improvements
6649
6650 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6651 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6652 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6653
6654 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6655
6656 * Major bug fixes
6657
6658 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6659 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6660 by the compiler.
6661
6662 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6663 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6664
6665 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6666 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6667 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6668 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6669 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6670 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6671
6672 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6673 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6674 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6675 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6676
6677 * AMD 29k support
6678
6679 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6680 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6681 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6682 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6683 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6684
6685 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6686 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6687 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6688 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6689
6690 * Remote interfaces
6691
6692 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6693 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6694 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6695 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6696 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6697 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6698 each instruction being stepped through.
6699
6700 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6701 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6702
6703 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6704 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6705 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6706 processor with a serial port.
6707
6708 * Configuration
6709
6710 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6711 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6712 supported, and what files each one uses.
6713
6714 * Library changes
6715
6716 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6717 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6718 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6719 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6720
6721 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6722 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6723 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6724 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6725
6726 * Documentation
6727
6728 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6729 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6730 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6731 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6732 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6733 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6734
6735 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6736
6737
6738 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6739
6740 * Better support for C++ function names
6741
6742 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6743 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6744 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6745 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6746 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6747
6748 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6749 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6750 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6751 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6752 for the list of formats.
6753
6754 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6755
6756 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6757 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6758 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6759 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6760 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6761 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6762 this problem.)
6763
6764 * New 'maintenance' command
6765
6766 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6767 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6768 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6769
6770 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6771 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6772 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6773 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6774 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6775 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6776
6777 The following commands are new:
6778
6779 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6780 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6781 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6782
6783 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6784
6785 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6786 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6787 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6788 read after argv processing.
6789
6790 * New hosts supported
6791
6792 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6793
6794 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6795
6796 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6797 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6798 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6799 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6800 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6801 It costs extra.
6802
6803 * New targets supported
6804
6805 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6806
6807 * More smarts about finding #include files
6808
6809 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6810 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6811 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6812 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6813 the one that contains your sources.
6814
6815 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6816 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6817 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6818
6819 * Interesting infernals change
6820
6821 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6822 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6823 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6824 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6825
6826 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6827
6828 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6829 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6830 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6831
6832 See the ChangeLog for details.
6833
6834 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6835
6836 * New machines supported (host and target)
6837
6838 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6839
6840 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6841
6842 * New malloc package
6843
6844 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6845 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6846 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6847 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6848 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6849 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6850
6851 * info proc
6852
6853 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6854 'help info proc' for details.
6855
6856 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6857
6858 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6859 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6860 possible.
6861
6862 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6863
6864 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6865 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6866 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6867 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6868 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6869 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6870
6871 * Cross byte order fixes
6872
6873 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6874 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6875
6876 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6877
6878 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6879 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6880 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6881 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6882 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6883 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6884 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6885 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6886 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6887 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6888
6889 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6890 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6891 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6892 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6893
6894 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6895 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6896 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6897 use is:
6898
6899 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6900
6901 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6902 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6903 shared across multiple host platforms.
6904
6905 * longjmp() handling
6906
6907 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6908 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6909 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6910 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6911
6912 * Solaris 2.0
6913
6914 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6915 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6916 reading symbols.
6917
6918 * Bug fixes
6919
6920 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6921 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6922 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6923
6924 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6925
6926 * New machines supported (host and target)
6927
6928 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6929 (except core files)
6930 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6931 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6932
6933 * New machines supported (target)
6934
6935 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6936
6937 * C++ support
6938
6939 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6940 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6941 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6942
6943 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6944 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6945 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6946 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6947 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6948 released.
6949
6950 * New features for SVR4
6951
6952 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6953 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6954 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6955
6956 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6957 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6958 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6959
6960 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6961 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6962
6963 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6964
6965 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6966 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6967 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6968 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6969 same code linked statically.
6970
6971 * New Getopt
6972
6973 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6974 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6975 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6976 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6977 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6978 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6979
6980 * Bugs fixed
6981
6982 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6983 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6984 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6985
6986
6987 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6988
6989 * New machines supported (host and target)
6990
6991 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6992 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6993 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6994
6995 * Almost SCO Unix support
6996
6997 We had hoped to support:
6998 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6999 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7000 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7001 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7002
7003 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7004
7005 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7006 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7007 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7008 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7009 reqired (if any).
7010
7011 * New Readline
7012
7013 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7014 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7015 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7016
7017 * Bugs fixed
7018
7019 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7020 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7021 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7022
7023 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7024
7025 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7026 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7027 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7028
7029 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7030 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7031 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7032 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7033 version 2.
7034
7035 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7036 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7037 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7038 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7039 situation somewhat.
7040
7041 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7042 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7043 methods.
7044
7045 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7046 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7047 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7048
7049
7050 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7051
7052 * Improved configuration
7053
7054 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7055 Porting BFD is simpler.
7056
7057 * Stepping improved
7058
7059 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7060 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7061 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7062 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7063
7064 * Bug fixing
7065
7066 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7067
7068 * New host supported (not target)
7069
7070 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7071
7072
7073 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7074
7075 * Multiple source language support
7076
7077 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7078 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7079 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7080 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7081 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7082 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7083
7084 * GDB and Modula-2
7085
7086 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7087 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7088 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7089 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7090
7091 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7092 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7093 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7094
7095 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7096 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7097
7098 * set write on/off
7099
7100 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7101 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7102 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7103 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7104 effect immediately.
7105
7106 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7107
7108 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7109 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7110 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7111 examining core files.
7112
7113 * set listsize
7114
7115 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7116 The default is 10.
7117
7118 * New machines supported (host and target)
7119
7120 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7121 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7122 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7123
7124 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7125
7126 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7127
7128 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7129
7130 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7131 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7132 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7133
7134 * New remote interfaces
7135
7136 AMD 29000 Adapt
7137 AMD 29000 Minimon
7138
7139
7140 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7141
7142 * New Facilities
7143
7144 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7145
7146 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7147 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7148 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7149 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7150 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7151 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7152 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7153 stub on the target system.
7154
7155 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7156
7157 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7158 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7159 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7160
7161 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7162 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7163
7164
7165 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7166
7167 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7168 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7169
7170 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7171 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7172 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7173
7174 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7175 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7176 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7177 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7178
7179 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7180 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7181 it is already running. Default is ON.
7182
7183 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7184 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7185 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7186 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7187 Default is ON.
7188
7189 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7190 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7191 or the value of the environment variable
7192 GDBHISTFILE.
7193
7194 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7195 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7196 HISTSIZE.
7197
7198 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7199 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7200 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7201
7202 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7203 history expansion will be performed on
7204 command line input. The default is OFF.
7205
7206 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7207 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7208 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7209
7210 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7211 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7212 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7213 variable TERM.
7214
7215 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7216 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7217 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7218 variable TERM.
7219
7220 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7221 ``set width'' instead.
7222
7223 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7224 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7225 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7226 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7227
7228 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7229 is OFF.
7230
7231 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7232 "raw" form if off.
7233
7234 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7235 like instructions.
7236
7237 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7238
7239
7240 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7241
7242 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7243 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7244 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7245 window.
7246
7247
7248 * Support for Shared Libraries
7249
7250 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7251 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7252 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7253 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7254 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7255 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7256 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7257 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7258
7259 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7260 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7261 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7262
7263 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7264
7265
7266 * Watchpoints
7267
7268 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7269 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7270 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7271 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7272 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7273 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7274
7275 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7276
7277 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7278
7279 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7280 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7281 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7282
7283
7284 * C++ multiple inheritance
7285
7286 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7287 for C++ programs.
7288
7289 * C++ exception handling
7290
7291 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7292 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7293 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7294 handler's context).
7295
7296 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7297 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7298 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7299
7300 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7301 current stack frame.
7302
7303
7304 * Minor command changes
7305
7306 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7307 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7308 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7309
7310 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7311 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7312 frames without printing.
7313
7314 * New directory command
7315
7316 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7317 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7318 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7319 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7320 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7321
7322 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7323
7324 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7325 for more details.
7326
7327 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7328 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7329 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7330 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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