Add a NEWS entry for multithreaded symbol loading
[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 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
7
8 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
9 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
10 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
11 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
12 such as in system-wide init files.
13
14 * New built-in convenience functions $_gdb_setting, $_gdb_setting_str,
15 $_gdb_maint_setting and $_gdb_maint_setting_str provide access to values
16 of the GDB settings and the GDB maintenance settings. They are handy
17 for changing the logic of user defined commands depending on the
18 current GDB settings.
19
20 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
21 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
22 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
23 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
24
25 * Support for Pointer Authentication (PAC) on AArch64 Linux. Return
26 addresses that required unmasking are shown in the backtrace with the
27 postfix [PAC].
28
29 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
30 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
31
32 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
33 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
34 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
35
36 * The RX port now supports XML target descriptions.
37
38 * GDB now shows the Ada task names at more places, e.g. in task switching
39 messages.
40
41 * GDB can now be compiled with Python 3 on Windows.
42
43 * New convenience variable $_ada_exception holds the address of the
44 Ada exception being thrown. This is set by Ada-related catchpoints.
45
46 * GDB can now place breakpoints on nested functions and subroutines in
47 Fortran code. The '::' operator can be used between parent and
48 child scopes when placing breakpoints, for example:
49
50 (gdb) break outer_function::inner_function
51
52 The 'outer_function::' prefix is only needed if 'inner_function' is
53 not visible in the current scope.
54
55 * In addition to the system-wide gdbinit file, if configured with
56 --with-system-gdbinit-dir, GDB will now also load files in that directory
57 as system gdbinit files, unless the -nx or -n flag is provided. Files
58 with extensions .gdb, .py and .scm are supported as long as GDB was
59 compiled with support for that language.
60
61 * GDB now supports multithreaded symbol loading for higher performance.
62 This feature is still in testing, so it is disabled by default. You
63 can turn it on using 'maint set worker-threads unlimited'.
64
65 * Python API
66
67 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
68 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
69 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
70 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
71 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
72
73 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
74 type was defined in.
75
76 ** The frame information printed by the python frame filtering code
77 is now consistent with what the 'backtrace' command prints when
78 there are no filters, or when the 'backtrace' '-no-filters' option
79 is given.
80
81 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbol can be used to look up
82 symbols with static linkage.
83
84 ** The new function gdb.lookup_static_symbols can be used to look up
85 all static symbols with static linkage.
86
87 ** gdb.Objfile has new methods 'lookup_global_symbol' and
88 'lookup_static_symbol' to lookup a symbol from this objfile only.
89
90 ** gdb.Block now supports the dictionary syntax for accessing symbols in
91 this block (e.g. block['local_variable']).
92
93 * New commands
94
95 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
96 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
97 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
98 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
99 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
100 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
101 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
102
103 with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
104 w SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
105 Temporarily set SETTING, run COMMAND, and restore SETTING.
106 Usage: with SETTING -- COMMAND
107 With no COMMAND, repeats the last executed command.
108 SETTING is any GDB setting you can change with the "set"
109 subcommands. For example, 'with language c -- print someobj'
110 temporarily switches to the C language in order to print someobj.
111 Settings can be combined: 'w lang c -- w print elements unlimited --
112 usercmd' switches to the C language and runs usercmd with no limit
113 of array elements to print.
114
115 maint with SETTING [VALUE] [-- COMMAND]
116 Like "with", but works with "maintenance set" settings.
117
118 set may-call-functions [on|off]
119 show may-call-functions
120 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
121 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
122 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
123 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
124 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
125 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
126 in the program.
127
128 set print finish [on|off]
129 show print finish
130 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
131 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
132 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
133 default is `on'.
134
135 set print max-depth
136 show print max-depth
137 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
138 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
139 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
140 the old behavior back.
141
142 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
143 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
144 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
145
146 set style title foreground COLOR
147 set style title background COLOR
148 set style title intensity VALUE
149 Control the styling of titles.
150
151 set style highlight foreground COLOR
152 set style highlight background COLOR
153 set style highlight intensity VALUE
154 Control the styling of highlightings.
155
156 maint set worker-threads
157 maint show worker-threads
158 Control the number of worker threads that can be used by GDB. The
159 default is 0. "unlimited" lets GDB choose a number that is
160 reasonable. Currently worker threads are only used when demangling
161 the names of linker symbols.
162
163 maint set test-settings KIND
164 maint show test-settings KIND
165 A set of commands used by the testsuite for exercising the settings
166 infrastructure.
167
168 maint set tui-resize-message [on|off]
169 maint show tui-resize-message
170 Control whether GDB prints a message each time the terminal is
171 resized when in TUI mode. This is primarily useful for testing the
172 TUI.
173
174 set print frame-info [short-location|location|location-and-address
175 |source-and-location|source-line|auto]
176 show print frame-info
177 This controls what frame information is printed by the commands printing
178 a frame. This setting will e.g. influence the behaviour of 'backtrace',
179 'frame', 'stepi'. The python frame filtering also respect this setting.
180 The 'backtrace' '-frame-info' option can override this global setting.
181
182 info modules [-q] [REGEXP]
183 Return a list of Fortran modules matching REGEXP, or all modules if
184 no REGEXP is given.
185
186 info module functions [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
187 Return a list of functions within all modules, grouped by module.
188 The list of functions can be restricted with the optional regular
189 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
190 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the function type signature, and REGEXP
191 matches against the function name.
192
193 info module variables [-q] [-m MODULE_REGEXP] [-t TYPE_REGEXP] [REGEXP]
194 Return a list of variables within all modules, grouped by module.
195 The list of variables can be restricted with the optional regular
196 expressions. MODULE_REGEXP matches against the module name,
197 TYPE_REGEXP matches against the variable type, and REGEXP matches
198 against the variable name.
199
200 set debug remote-packet-max-chars
201 show debug remote-packet-max-chars
202 Controls the number of characters to output in a remote packet when using
203 "set debug remote".
204 The default is 512 bytes.
205
206 * Changed commands
207
208 help
209 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
210 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
211 command names.
212
213 apropos [-v] REGEXP
214 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
215 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
216 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
217 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
218 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
219
220 printf
221 eval
222 The GDB printf and eval commands can now print C-style and Ada-style
223 string convenience variables without calling functions in the program.
224 This allows to do formatted printing of strings without having
225 a running inferior, or when debugging a core dump.
226
227 info sources [-dirname | -basename] [--] [REGEXP]
228 This command has now optional arguments to only print the files
229 whose names match REGEXP. The arguments -dirname and -basename
230 allow to restrict matching respectively to the dirname and basename
231 parts of the files.
232
233 show style
234 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
235 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
236 the user visualize the different styles.
237
238 set print frame-arguments
239 The new value 'presence' indicates to only indicate the presence of
240 arguments using ..., instead of printing argument names and values.
241
242 set print raw-frame-arguments
243 show print raw-frame-arguments
244
245 These commands replace the similarly-named "set/show print raw
246 frame-arguments" commands (now with a dash instead of a space). The
247 old commands are now deprecated and may be removed in a future
248 release.
249
250 maint test-options require-delimiter
251 maint test-options unknown-is-error
252 maint test-options unknown-is-operand
253 maint show test-options-completion-result
254 Commands used by the testsuite to validate the command options
255 framework.
256
257 focus, winheight, +, -, >, <
258 These commands are now case-sensitive.
259
260 * New command options, command completion
261
262 GDB now has a standard infrastructure to support dash-style command
263 options ('-OPT'). One benefit is that commands that use it can
264 easily support completion of command line arguments. Try "CMD
265 -[TAB]" or "help CMD" to find options supported by a command. Over
266 time, we intend to migrate most commands to this infrastructure. A
267 number of commands got support for new command options in this
268 release:
269
270 ** The "print" and "compile print" commands now support a number of
271 options that allow overriding relevant global print settings as
272 set by "set print" subcommands:
273
274 -address [on|off]
275 -array [on|off]
276 -array-indexes [on|off]
277 -elements NUMBER|unlimited
278 -null-stop [on|off]
279 -object [on|off]
280 -pretty [on|off]
281 -repeats NUMBER|unlimited
282 -static-members [on|off]
283 -symbol [on|off]
284 -union [on|off]
285 -vtbl [on|off]
286
287 Note that because the "print"/"compile print" commands accept
288 arbitrary expressions which may look like options (including
289 abbreviations), if you specify any command option, then you must
290 use a double dash ("--") to mark the end of argument processing.
291
292 ** The "backtrace" command now supports a number of options that
293 allow overriding relevant global print settings as set by "set
294 backtrace" and "set print" subcommands:
295
296 -entry-values no|only|preferred|if-needed|both|compact|default
297 -frame-arguments all|scalars|none
298 -raw-frame-arguments [on|off]
299 -frame-info auto|source-line|location|source-and-location
300 |location-and-address|short-location
301 -past-main [on|off]
302 -past-entry [on|off]
303
304 In addition, the full/no-filters/hide qualifiers are now also
305 exposed as command options too:
306
307 -full
308 -no-filters
309 -hide
310
311 ** The "frame apply", "tfaas" and "faas" commands similarly now
312 support the following options:
313
314 -past-main [on|off]
315 -past-entry [on|off]
316
317 ** The new "info sources" options -dirname and -basename options
318 are using the standard '-OPT' infrastructure.
319
320 All options above can also be abbreviated. The argument of boolean
321 (on/off) options can be 0/1 too, and also the argument is assumed
322 "on" if omitted. This allows writing compact command invocations,
323 like for example:
324
325 (gdb) p -r -p -o 0 -- *myptr
326
327 The above is equivalent to:
328
329 (gdb) print -raw -pretty -object off -- *myptr
330
331 ** The "info types" command now supports the '-q' flag to disable
332 printing of some header information in a similar fashion to "info
333 variables" and "info functions".
334
335 ** The "info variables", "info functions", and "whereis" commands
336 now take a '-n' flag that excludes non-debug symbols (symbols
337 from the symbol table, not from the debug info such as DWARF)
338 from the results.
339
340 * Completion improvements
341
342 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "thread apply all" and
343 "taas" commands, and their "-ascending" option can now be
344 abbreviated.
345
346 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "info threads", "info
347 functions", "info variables", "info locals", and "info args"
348 commands.
349
350 ** GDB can now complete the options of the "compile file" and
351 "compile code" commands. The "compile file" command now
352 completes on filenames.
353
354 ** GDB can now complete the backtrace command's
355 "full/no-filters/hide" qualifiers.
356
357 * In settings, you can now abbreviate "unlimited".
358
359 E.g., "set print elements u" is now equivalent to "set print
360 elements unlimited".
361
362 * New MI commands
363
364 -complete
365 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
366 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
367 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
368
369 -catch-throw, -catch-rethrow, and -catch-catch
370 These can be used to catch C++ exceptions in a similar fashion to
371 the CLI commands 'catch throw', 'catch rethrow', and 'catch catch'.
372
373 -symbol-info-functions, -symbol-info-types, and -symbol-info-variables
374 These commands are the MI equivalent of the CLI commands 'info
375 functions', 'info types', and 'info variables' respectively.
376
377 -symbol-info-modules, this is the MI equivalent of the CLI 'info
378 modules' command.
379
380 * Other MI changes
381
382 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
383
384 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
385 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
386 the following commands and events:
387
388 - -break-insert
389 - -break-info
390 - =breakpoint-created
391 - =breakpoint-modified
392
393 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
394 this behavior with previous MI versions.
395
396 ** Backtraces and frames include a new optional field addr_flags which is
397 given after the addr field. On AArch64 this contains PAC if the address
398 has been masked in the frame. On all other targets the field is not
399 present.
400
401 * Testsuite
402
403 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
404 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
405 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
406 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
407
408 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.82.
409
410 Using another implementation of the make program or an earlier version of
411 GNU make to build GDB or GDBserver is not supported.
412
413 * Building GDB now requires GNU readline >= 7.0.
414
415 GDB now bundles GNU readline 8.0, but if you choose to use
416 --with-system-readline, only readline >= 7.0 can be used.
417
418 * The TUI SingleKey keymap is now named "SingleKey". This can be used
419 from .inputrc to bind keys in this keymap. This feature is only
420 available when gdb is built against GNU readline 8.0 or later.
421
422 * Removed targets and native configurations
423
424 GDB no longer supports debugging the Cell Broadband Engine. This includes
425 both debugging standalone Cell/B.E. SPU applications and integrated debugging
426 of Cell/B.E. applications that use both the PPU and SPU architectures.
427
428 * New Simulators
429
430 TI PRU pru-*-elf
431
432 * Removed targets and native configurations
433
434 Solaris 10 i?86-*-solaris2.10, x86_64-*-solaris2.10,
435 sparc*-*-solaris2.10
436
437 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
438
439 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
440 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
441 HTM registers.
442
443 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
444 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
445 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
446 and operators.
447
448 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
449 (the C++ plug-in).
450
451 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
452 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
453 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
454
455 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
456 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
457
458 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
459 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
460 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
461 in the GDB user manual.
462
463 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
464 executed failed.
465
466 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
467
468 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
469 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
470 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
471 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
472 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
473 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
474 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
475 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
476 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
477 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
478 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
479 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
480
481 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
482 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
483 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
484 information.
485
486 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
487 lucid.
488
489 * New commands
490
491 set debug compile-cplus-types
492 show debug compile-cplus-types
493 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
494 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
495 for other languages.
496
497 set debug skip
498 show debug skip
499 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
500 displayed.
501
502 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
503 Apply a command to some frames.
504 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
505 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
506
507 taas COMMAND
508 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
509 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
510
511 faas COMMAND
512 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
513 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
514
515 tfaas COMMAND
516 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
517 output).
518 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
519
520 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
521 maint show dwarf unwinders
522 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
523
524 info proc files
525 Display a list of open files for a process.
526
527 * Changed commands
528
529 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
530 These commands all now take a frame specification which
531 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
532 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
533 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
534 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
535 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
536
537 target remote FILENAME
538 target extended-remote FILENAME
539 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
540 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
541
542 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
543 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
544 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
545 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
546 These commands can now print only the searched entities
547 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
548 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
549 printing headers or informations messages.
550
551 info functions
552 info types
553 info variables
554 rbreak
555 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
556 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
557 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
558 the shown entities.
559
560 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
561 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
562 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
563 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
564
565 set tui tab-width NCHARS
566 show tui tab-width NCHARS
567 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
568
569 set style enabled [on|off]
570 show style enabled
571 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
572 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
573
574 set style sources [on|off]
575 show style sources
576 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
577 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
578 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
579
580 set style filename foreground COLOR
581 set style filename background COLOR
582 set style filename intensity VALUE
583 Control the styling of file names.
584
585 set style function foreground COLOR
586 set style function background COLOR
587 set style function intensity VALUE
588 Control the styling of function names.
589
590 set style variable foreground COLOR
591 set style variable background COLOR
592 set style variable intensity VALUE
593 Control the styling of variable names.
594
595 set style address foreground COLOR
596 set style address background COLOR
597 set style address intensity VALUE
598 Control the styling of addresses.
599
600 * MI changes
601
602 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
603 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
604 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
605 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
606 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
607
608 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
609 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
610
611 * New native configurations
612
613 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
614 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
615
616 * New targets
617
618 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
619 CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
620 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
621 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
622 NXP S12Z s12z-*-elf
623 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
624
625 * Removed targets
626
627 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
628 before Windows XP.
629
630 * Python API
631
632 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
633
634 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
635 space associated to that inferior.
636
637 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
638 of objfiles associated to that program space.
639
640 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
641 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
642 the gdb core.
643
644 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
645 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
646 correct and did not work properly.
647
648 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
649 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
650
651 * Configure changes
652
653 --enable-ubsan
654
655 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
656 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
657 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
658 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
659 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
660
661 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
662
663 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
664 for the MIPS target.
665
666 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
667 offset to all sections.
668
669 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
670 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
671 address of individual sections using '-s'.
672
673 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
674 (address of the text section).
675
676 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
677 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
678 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
679 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
680 default.
681
682 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
683 for the rest of the current command.
684
685 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
686 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
687
688 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
689 files created on FreeBSD systems.
690
691 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
692 alignof.
693
694 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
695 the vector length while the process is running.
696
697 * New commands
698
699 set debug fbsd-nat
700 show debug fbsd-nat
701 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
702
703 set|show varsize-limit
704 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
705 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
706 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
707
708 set|show record btrace cpu
709 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
710 branch trace decode.
711
712 maint check libthread-db
713 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
714 library
715
716 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
717 maint show check-libthread-db
718 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
719 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
720 perform such checks.
721
722 * Python API
723
724 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
725
726 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
727 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
728
729 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
730
731 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
732 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
733 of convenience variables.
734
735 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
736 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
737 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
738
739 * New targets
740
741 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
742
743 * Removed targets and native configurations
744
745 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
746 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
747 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
748 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
749
750 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
751
752 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
753 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
754 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
755 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
756 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
757 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
758 reported.
759
760 * Configure changes
761
762 --enable-codesign=CERT
763 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
764 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
765 gdb to work properly.
766
767 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
768 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
769
770 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
771
772 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
773 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
774 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
775
776 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
777 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
778
779 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
780 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
781 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
782 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
783 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
784
785 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
786 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
787 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
788 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
789
790 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
791 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
792
793 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
794 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
795 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
796
797 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
798 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
799 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
800
801 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
802 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
803 environment" command.
804
805 * Completion improvements
806
807 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
808 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
809 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
810 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
811 correctly:
812
813 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
814 (gdb) b function(int)
815
816 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
817 C++ anonymous namespaces:
818
819 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
820 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
821 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
822 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
823
824 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
825 completion support, that better understands what you're
826 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
827 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
828 setting a breakpoint.
829
830 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
831
832 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
833
834 * New command line options (gcore)
835
836 -a
837 Dump all memory mappings.
838
839 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
840
841 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
842 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
843 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
844
845 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
846
847 A::B::func()
848 B::func()
849
850 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
851 on both symbols.
852
853 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
854 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
855 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
856 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
857 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
858 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
859 a breakpoint from Python.
860
861 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
862
863 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
864 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
865 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
866
867 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
868
869 function[abi:cxx11](int)
870 ^^^^^^^^^^^
871
872 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
873 no tag, like:
874
875 (gdb) b function(int)
876
877 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
878
879 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
880
881 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
882
883 * Python Scripting
884
885 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
886 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
887 description of these.
888
889 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
890 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
891 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
892
893 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
894 manual for a further description of this feature.
895
896
897 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
898
899 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
900 specified initial working directory.
901
902 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
903 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
904
905 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
906 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
907
908 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
909 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
910
911 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
912 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
913 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
914 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
915 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
916
917 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
918 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
919 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
920
921 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
922 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
923 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
924 in the *stopped notification.
925
926 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
927 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
928
929 * New remote packets
930
931 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
932 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
933 the inferior when starting it.
934
935 QEnvironmentUnset
936 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
937 before starting the remote inferior.
938
939 QEnvironmentReset
940 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
941 user-set environment variables should be unset).
942
943 QStartupWithShell
944 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
945
946 QSetWorkingDir
947 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
948 working directory.
949
950 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
951 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
952
953 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
954 filter the tests to be run.
955
956 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
957 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
958
959 * New commands
960
961 set|show cwd
962 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
963
964 set|show compile-gcc
965 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
966 with the 'compile' commands.
967
968 set debug separate-debug-file
969 show debug separate-debug-file
970 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
971
972 set dump-excluded-mappings
973 show dump-excluded-mappings
974 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
975 dumped when generating a core file.
976
977 maint info selftests
978 List the registered selftests.
979
980 starti
981 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
982
983 set|show debug or1k
984 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
985
986 set|show print type nested-type-limit
987 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
988 type printer will show.
989
990 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
991 `o' for nexti.
992
993 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
994
995 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
996 'int'.
997
998 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
999 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
1000 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
1001 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
1002
1003 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
1004 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
1005 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
1006 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1007 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
1008 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
1009
1010 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
1011 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
1012 unless you tell it the variable's type:
1013
1014 (gdb) p var
1015 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
1016 (gdb) p (float) var
1017 $3 = 3.14
1018
1019 * New native configurations
1020
1021 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1022 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1023
1024 * New targets
1025
1026 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
1027 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
1028 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
1029
1030 * Removed targets and native configurations
1031
1032 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
1033
1034 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
1035
1036 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
1037 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
1038 available in future Intel CPUs.
1039
1040 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
1041
1042 * Python Scripting
1043
1044 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
1045 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
1046
1047 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
1048 instructions.
1049
1050 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
1051
1052 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
1053
1054 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
1055 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
1056 removed.
1057
1058 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
1059
1060 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
1061 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
1062
1063 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
1064
1065 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
1066 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
1067 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
1068 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
1069 features.
1070
1071 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
1072
1073 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
1074 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
1075 debugger.
1076
1077 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
1078
1079 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
1080 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
1081
1082 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
1083
1084 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
1085
1086 define mycommand
1087 set $i = 0
1088 while $i < $argc
1089 eval "print $arg%d", $i
1090 set $i = $i + 1
1091 end
1092 end
1093
1094 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
1095
1096 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
1097 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
1098
1099 * New native configurations
1100
1101 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1102
1103 * New targets
1104
1105 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
1106 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
1107
1108 * Removed targets and native configurations
1109
1110 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1111 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
1112
1113 * New commands
1114
1115 flash-erase
1116 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
1117
1118 maint print arc arc-instruction address
1119 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
1120
1121 * New options
1122
1123 set disassembler-options
1124 show disassembler-options
1125 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
1126 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
1127 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
1128 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
1129 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
1130
1131 * New MI commands
1132
1133 -target-flash-erase
1134 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
1135 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
1136
1137 -file-list-shared-libraries
1138 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
1139 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
1140
1141 -catch-handlers
1142 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
1143 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
1144
1145 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
1146
1147 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
1148
1149 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
1150 default. One must now explicitly configure with
1151 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
1152 option will be removed in a future release.
1153
1154 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
1155 GDB connection.
1156
1157 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
1158 memory backward from the given address. For example:
1159
1160 (gdb) bt
1161 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
1162 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
1163 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
1164 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
1165 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
1166 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
1167 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
1168 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
1169 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
1170
1171 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
1172 arrays of dynamic types.
1173
1174 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
1175 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1176 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1177 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
1178 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
1179 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
1180
1181 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
1182 descriptions.
1183
1184 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
1185 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
1186 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
1187
1188 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
1189
1190 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
1191 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
1192 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
1193 signal received and code location.
1194
1195 For example:
1196
1197 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
1198 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
1199 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
1200 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
1201
1202 * Rust language support.
1203 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
1204 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
1205 Rust.
1206
1207 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
1208
1209 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
1210 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
1211 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
1212 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
1213 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
1214 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
1215 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
1216 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
1217 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
1218 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
1219 line.
1220
1221 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
1222
1223 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
1224 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
1225
1226 * New commands
1227
1228 skip -file file
1229 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
1230 skip -function function
1231 skip -rfunction regular-expression
1232 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
1233 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
1234 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
1235
1236 maint info line-table REGEXP
1237 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
1238
1239 maint selftest
1240 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
1241
1242 new-ui INTERP TTY
1243 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
1244 using the TTY file for input/output.
1245
1246 * Python Scripting
1247
1248 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
1249 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
1250 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
1251 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
1252 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
1253
1254 signal-event EVENTID
1255 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
1256 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
1257 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
1258 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
1259 signalling an event.
1260
1261 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
1262 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
1263 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
1264
1265 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
1266 been removed:
1267
1268 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
1269 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
1270 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
1271 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
1272 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
1273 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
1274
1275 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
1276 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
1277 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
1278 bytecode into native code.
1279
1280 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
1281 recording. For example:
1282
1283 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
1284
1285 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
1286
1287 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
1288
1289 * New targets
1290
1291 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
1292
1293 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
1294
1295 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
1296
1297 * Per-inferior thread numbers
1298
1299 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
1300 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
1301 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1302
1303 (gdb) info threads
1304 Id Target Id Frame
1305 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1306 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1307 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1308 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1309
1310 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1311 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1312 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1313
1314 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1315 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1316 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1317
1318 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1319 IDs.
1320
1321 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1322 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1323
1324 (gdb) thread 2.1
1325 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1326 (gdb)
1327
1328 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1329 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1330 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1331 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1332 threads 2.*".
1333
1334 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1335 all threads.
1336
1337 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1338 the current thread.
1339
1340 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1341 current inferior.
1342
1343 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1344 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1345 example:
1346
1347 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1348 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1349
1350 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1351
1352 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1353
1354 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1355 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1356
1357 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1358 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1359 clients.
1360
1361 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1362 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1363 at the same time.
1364
1365 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1366 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1367 into native code.
1368
1369 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1370
1371 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1372 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1373 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1374
1375 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1376 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1377
1378 * New commands
1379
1380 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1381 maint show target-non-stop
1382 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1383 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1384 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1385
1386 maint set bfd-sharing
1387 maint show bfd-sharing
1388 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1389
1390 set debug bfd-cache
1391 show debug bfd-cache
1392 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1393
1394 set debug fbsd-lwp
1395 show debug fbsd-lwp
1396 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1397
1398 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1399 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1400 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1401
1402 set remote thread-events
1403 show remote thread-events
1404 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1405
1406 set ada print-signatures on|off
1407 show ada print-signatures"
1408 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1409 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1410
1411 set max-value-size
1412 show max-value-size
1413 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1414 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1415 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1416
1417 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1418 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1419 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1420 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1421 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1422 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1423
1424 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1425 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1426
1427 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1428 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1429
1430 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1431
1432 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1433 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1434 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1435 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1436 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1437 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1438
1439 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1440 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1441
1442 catch handlers
1443 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1444
1445 * New remote packets
1446
1447 exec stop reason
1448 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1449
1450 exec-events feature in qSupported
1451 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1452 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1453 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1454 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1455
1456 vCtrlC
1457 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1458 non-stop mode.
1459
1460 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1461 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1462
1463 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1464 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1465
1466 QThreadEvents
1467 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1468 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1469 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1470 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1471 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1472 stop for that same thread.
1473
1474 N stop reply
1475 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1476 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1477 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1478
1479 QCatchSyscalls
1480 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1481 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1482
1483 syscall_entry stop reason
1484 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1485
1486 syscall_return stop reason
1487 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1488
1489 * Extended-remote exec events
1490
1491 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1492 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1493 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1494
1495 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1496 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1497 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1498
1499 * Thread names in remote protocol
1500
1501 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1502 thread.
1503
1504 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1505
1506 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1507 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1508 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1509 fork and exec catchpoints.
1510
1511 * Remote syscall events
1512
1513 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1514 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1515
1516 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1517 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1518 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1519
1520 * MI changes
1521
1522 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1523 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1524 left.
1525
1526 * Python Scripting
1527
1528 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1529 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1530 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1531 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1532 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1533 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1534
1535 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1536
1537 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1538 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1539 including advance SIMD instructions.
1540
1541 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1542
1543 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1544 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1545 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1546 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1547 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1548 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1549 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1550
1551 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1552 cpu information :
1553 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1554
1555 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1556 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1557 remote serial I/O.
1558
1559 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1560 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1561 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1562
1563 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1564 is now available on all platforms.
1565
1566 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1567 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1568 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1569 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1570 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1571 backward compatibility.
1572
1573 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1574 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1575 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1576 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1577
1578 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1579 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1580 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1581 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1582 packets" below.
1583
1584 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1585
1586 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1587
1588 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1589 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1590 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1591 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1592 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1593 See "New remote packets" below.
1594
1595 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1596 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1597
1598 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1599 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1600 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1601 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1602 are ignored.
1603
1604 * Guile Scripting
1605
1606 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1607
1608 * Python Scripting
1609
1610 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1611 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1612 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1613 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1614 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1615 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1616 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1617 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1618 "const" version of the value respectively.
1619
1620 * New commands
1621
1622 maint print symbol-cache
1623 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1624
1625 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1626 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1627
1628 maint flush-symbol-cache
1629 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1630
1631 record btrace bts
1632 record bts
1633 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1634
1635 compile print
1636 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1637
1638 tui enable
1639 tui disable
1640 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1641
1642 show mpx bound
1643 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1644 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1645
1646 record btrace pt
1647 record pt
1648 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1649
1650 maint info btrace
1651 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1652
1653 maint btrace packet-history
1654 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1655
1656 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1657 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1658
1659 maint btrace clear
1660 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1661 anew by the next "record" command.
1662
1663 * New options
1664
1665 set debug dwarf-die
1666 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1667 show debug dwarf-die
1668 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1669
1670 set debug dwarf-read
1671 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1672 show debug dwarf-read
1673 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1674
1675 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1676 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1677 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1678 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1679
1680 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1681 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1682 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1683 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1684
1685 set debug dwarf-line
1686 show debug dwarf-line
1687 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1688
1689 set max-completions
1690 show max-completions
1691 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1692 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1693 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1694 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1695
1696 set history remove-duplicates
1697 show history remove-duplicates
1698 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1699
1700 maint set symbol-cache-size
1701 maint show symbol-cache-size
1702 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1703
1704 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1705 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1706 BTS format.
1707 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1708 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1709
1710 set debug linux-namespaces
1711 show debug linux-namespaces
1712 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1713
1714 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1715 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1716 Intel Processor Trace format.
1717 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1718 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1719
1720 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1721 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1722 packet history.
1723
1724 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1725 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1726
1727 * Python/Guile scripting
1728
1729 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1730 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1731
1732 * New remote packets
1733
1734 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1735 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1736
1737 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1738 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1739
1740 Qbtrace:pt
1741 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1742 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1743 qSupported query.
1744
1745 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1746 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1747 Trace format.
1748
1749 swbreak stop reason
1750 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1751 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1752 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1753 mode operation.
1754
1755 hwbreak stop reason
1756 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1757 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1758
1759 vFile:fstat:
1760 Return information about files on the remote system.
1761
1762 qXfer:exec-file:read
1763 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1764 create a process running on the remote system.
1765
1766 vFile:setfs:
1767 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1768 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1769 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1770 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1771
1772 fork stop reason
1773 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1774
1775 vfork stop reason
1776 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1777
1778 vforkdone stop reason
1779 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1780 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1781
1782 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1783 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1784 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1785 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1786 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1787 whether these features are enabled.
1788
1789 * Extended-remote fork events
1790
1791 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1792 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1793 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1794 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1795
1796 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1797 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1798 the btrace record target.
1799 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1800
1801 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1802 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1803
1804 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1805 targets.
1806
1807 * Removed command line options
1808
1809 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1810
1811 * Removed targets and native configurations
1812
1813 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1814 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1815
1816 * New configure options
1817
1818 --with-intel-pt
1819 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1820 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1821
1822 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1823 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1824 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1825 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1826
1827 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1828
1829 * Python Scripting
1830
1831 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1832
1833 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1834
1835 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1836
1837 * Python Scripting
1838
1839 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1840 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1841 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1842 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1843 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1844 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1845 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1846 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1847 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1848 selecting a new file to debug.
1849 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1850 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1851
1852 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1853 inferior.
1854
1855 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1856 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1857 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1858 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1859
1860 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1861
1862 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1863 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1864 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1865 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1866
1867 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1868 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1869 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1870 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1871 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1872 interface with this new feature are:
1873
1874 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1875 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1876
1877 * New commands
1878
1879 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1880 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1881 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1882 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1883 as "maint demangler-warning".
1884
1885 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1886 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1887
1888 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1889 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1890 scripts.
1891
1892 maint print user-registers
1893 List all currently available "user" registers.
1894
1895 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1896 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1897 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1898
1899 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1900 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1901 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1902 provided.
1903
1904 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1905 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1906 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1907 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1908 at resume time.
1909
1910 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1911 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1912 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1913 switched threads meanwhile.
1914
1915 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1916
1917 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1918 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1919 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1920 is now the default mode.
1921
1922 * New options
1923
1924 set debug symbol-lookup
1925 show debug symbol-lookup
1926 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1927
1928 * MI changes
1929
1930 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1931 inferiors that have exited.
1932
1933 * New targets
1934
1935 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1936
1937 * Removed targets
1938
1939 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1940
1941 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1942 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1943 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1944 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1945 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1946
1947 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1948 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1949 its alias "share", instead.
1950
1951 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1952
1953 * New command line options
1954
1955 -D data-directory
1956 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1957
1958 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1959 as specified in ISO C99.
1960
1961 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1962 with or without disassembly.
1963
1964 * Guile scripting
1965
1966 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1967 available is determined at configure time.
1968 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1969 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1970
1971 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1972
1973 guile [code]
1974 gu [code]
1975 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1976
1977 guile-repl
1978 gr
1979 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1980
1981 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1982 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1983
1984 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1985 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1986
1987 * New options
1988
1989 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1990 show print symbol-loading
1991 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1992 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1993 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1994 becomes less useful.
1995
1996 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1997 show guile print-stack
1998 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1999
2000 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
2001 show auto-load guile-scripts
2002 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
2003
2004 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
2005 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
2006 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
2007 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
2008 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
2009 usage of this option.
2010
2011 set auto-connect-native-target
2012
2013 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
2014 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
2015 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
2016
2017 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
2018 show record btrace replay-memory-access
2019 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
2020
2021 maint set target-async (on|off)
2022 maint show target-async
2023 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
2024 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
2025 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
2026 occurring only in synchronous mode.
2027
2028 set mi-async (on|off)
2029 show mi-async
2030 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
2031 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
2032
2033 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
2034 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
2035
2036 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
2037 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
2038 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
2039 "set target-async on" command.
2040
2041 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2042
2043 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
2044 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
2045 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
2046 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
2047 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
2048
2049 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
2050 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
2051 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
2052
2053 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
2054 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
2055 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
2056 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
2057 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
2058 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
2059 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
2060
2061 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
2062 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
2063
2064 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
2065 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
2066 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
2067
2068 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
2069 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
2070 memory or registers.
2071
2072 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
2073
2074 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
2075 remote. It now works with all targets.
2076
2077 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
2078 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
2079 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
2080 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
2081 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
2082 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
2083 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
2084 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
2085 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
2086 target-stack".
2087
2088 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
2089 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
2090 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
2091
2092 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
2093
2094 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
2095 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
2096 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
2097
2098 * New remote packets
2099
2100 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
2101 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
2102 branch trace incrementally.
2103
2104 * Python Scripting
2105
2106 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
2107 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
2108 available.
2109 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
2110 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
2111 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
2112 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
2113 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
2114
2115 * New targets
2116 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
2117
2118 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
2119 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
2120 its alias "share", instead.
2121
2122 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
2123 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
2124 instead.
2125
2126 * MI changes
2127
2128 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
2129 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
2130 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
2131 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
2132 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
2133 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
2134 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
2135 commands and CLI execution commands.
2136
2137 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
2138
2139 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
2140 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
2141 recording has been added.
2142
2143 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
2144
2145 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
2146 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
2147
2148 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
2149 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
2150 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
2151 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
2152 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
2153 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
2154 "void".
2155
2156 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
2157
2158 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
2159
2160 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
2161 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
2162 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
2163 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
2164
2165 (gdb) p $rax
2166 $1 = <not saved>
2167
2168 (gdb) info registers rax
2169 rax <not saved>
2170
2171 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
2172 "*value not available*".
2173
2174 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
2175 to binaries.
2176
2177 * Python scripting
2178
2179 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
2180 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
2181 ** Line tables representation has been added.
2182 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
2183 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
2184 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
2185
2186 * New targets
2187
2188 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
2189 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
2190 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
2191
2192 * Removed native configurations
2193
2194 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
2195 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
2196
2197 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2198 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2199 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
2200 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
2201 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2202 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2203 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
2204
2205 * New commands:
2206 catch rethrow
2207 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
2208 maint check-psymtabs
2209 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
2210 maint check-symtabs
2211 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
2212 maint expand-symtabs
2213 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
2214
2215 show configuration
2216 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2217
2218 maint set|show per-command
2219 maint set|show per-command space
2220 maint set|show per-command time
2221 maint set|show per-command symtab
2222 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
2223
2224 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
2225 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
2226 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
2227 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
2228 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
2229
2230 info exceptions
2231 info exceptions REGEXP
2232 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
2233 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
2234 are listed.
2235
2236 * New options
2237
2238 set debug symfile off|on
2239 show debug symfile
2240 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
2241 symbol tables within those files
2242
2243 set print raw frame-arguments
2244 show print raw frame-arguments
2245 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
2246 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
2247
2248 set remote trace-status-packet
2249 show remote trace-status-packet
2250 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
2251
2252 set debug nios2
2253 show debug nios2
2254 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
2255
2256 set range-stepping
2257 show range-stepping
2258 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
2259
2260 set startup-with-shell
2261 show startup-with-shell
2262 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
2263 directly.
2264
2265 set code-cache
2266 show code-cache
2267 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
2268 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
2269
2270 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
2271 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
2272 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
2273 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
2274 "set height 0".
2275
2276 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
2277 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
2278 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
2279
2280 * New command-line options
2281 --configuration
2282 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
2283
2284 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
2285 buffer in Common Trace Format.
2286
2287 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
2288 GDB command gcore.
2289
2290 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
2291
2292 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
2293 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
2294
2295 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
2296 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
2297
2298 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
2299 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
2300 due to an uncaught signal.
2301
2302 * MI changes
2303
2304 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2305 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2306 command, which should contain "language-option".
2307
2308 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2309 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2310
2311 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2312 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2313 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2314 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2315 "undefined-command-error-code".
2316
2317 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2318 Trace Format now.
2319
2320 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2321
2322 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2323 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2324 are displayed.
2325
2326 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2327 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2328
2329 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2330 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2331 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2332
2333 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2334 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2335 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2336 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2337 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2338 "exec-run-start-option".
2339
2340 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2341 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2342
2343 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2344 the new "info exceptions" command.
2345
2346 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2347 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2348 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2349 ** ElinOS
2350 ** Wind River Linux
2351
2352 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2353 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2354 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2355 below.
2356
2357 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2358 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2359
2360 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2361 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2362 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2363
2364 * New remote packets
2365
2366 vCont;r
2367
2368 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2369 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2370 involvemement at each single-step.
2371
2372 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2373 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2374 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2375 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2376 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2377 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2378 speedup.
2379
2380 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2381
2382 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2383 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2384
2385 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2386 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2387 trace state variables.
2388
2389 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2390 target.
2391
2392 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2393 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2394
2395 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2396
2397 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2398 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2399 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2400 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2401
2402 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2403
2404 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2405 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2406 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2407 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2408
2409 set|show record full insn-number-max
2410 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2411 set|show record full memory-query
2412
2413 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2414 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2415 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2416 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2417 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2418
2419 record btrace
2420
2421 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2422 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2423
2424 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2425 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2426 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2427
2428 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2429 instruction granularity
2430
2431 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2432 function granularity
2433
2434 * New native configurations
2435
2436 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2437 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2438 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2439 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2440
2441 * New targets
2442
2443 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2444 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2445 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2446 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2447 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2448
2449 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2450 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2451 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2452 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2453 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2454 --data-directory command-line option.
2455
2456 * New command line options:
2457
2458 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2459 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2460
2461 * Removed command line options
2462
2463 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2464 Emacs.
2465
2466 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2467 type formatting.
2468
2469 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2470
2471 * Python scripting
2472
2473 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2474
2475 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2476
2477 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2478
2479 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2480
2481 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2482 of architecture in the Python API.
2483
2484 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2485 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2486
2487 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2488
2489 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2490 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2491 ** $_strlen(str)
2492 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2493
2494 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2495 given an argument.
2496
2497 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2498 default for GCC since November 2000.
2499
2500 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2501
2502 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2503 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2504
2505 * New configure options
2506
2507 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2508 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2509 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2510 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2511 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2512 options allow the user to override that default.
2513 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2514 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2515 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2516
2517 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2518
2519 catch signal
2520 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2521 conditions to be attached.
2522
2523 maint info bfds
2524 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2525
2526 python-interactive [command]
2527 pi [command]
2528 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2529 and print the result of expressions.
2530
2531 py [command]
2532 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2533
2534 enable type-printer [name]...
2535 disable type-printer [name]...
2536 Enable or disable type printers.
2537
2538 * Removed commands
2539
2540 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2541 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2542 instead.
2543
2544 * New options
2545
2546 set print type methods (on|off)
2547 show print type methods
2548 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2549 The default is to show them.
2550
2551 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2552 show print type typedefs
2553 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2554 The default is to show them.
2555
2556 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2557 show filename-display
2558 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2559 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2560
2561 set trace-buffer-size
2562 show trace-buffer-size
2563 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2564
2565 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2566 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2567 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2568
2569 set debug aarch64
2570 show debug aarch64
2571 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2572 The default is off.
2573
2574 set debug coff-pe-read
2575 show debug coff-pe-read
2576 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2577 exported symbols.
2578
2579 set debug mach-o
2580 show debug mach-o
2581 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2582 processing.
2583
2584 set debug notification
2585 show debug notification
2586 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2587
2588 * MI changes
2589
2590 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2591 "=cmd-param-changed".
2592 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2593 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2594 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2595 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2596 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2597 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2598 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2599 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2600 "=memory-changed".
2601 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2602 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2603 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2604 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2605 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2606 library load/unload events.
2607 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2608 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2609 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2610 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2611 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2612 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2613 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2614 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2615
2616 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2617 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2618 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2619 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2620
2621 * New remote packets
2622
2623 QTBuffer:size
2624 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2625 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2626
2627 Qbtrace:bts
2628 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2629 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2630 qSupported query.
2631
2632 Qbtrace:off
2633 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2634 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2635
2636 qXfer:btrace:read
2637 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2638 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2639
2640 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2641
2642 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2643 for more x32 ABI info.
2644
2645 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2646
2647 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2648
2649 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2650 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2651 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2652 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2653 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2654 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2655 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2656 "info os msg" lists message queues
2657 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2658
2659 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2660 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2661 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2662 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2663 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2664 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2665
2666 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2667 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2668 record/replay support.
2669
2670 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2671
2672 * Python scripting
2673
2674 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2675 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
2676
2677 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2678
2679 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2680 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2681
2682 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2683
2684 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2685 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2686
2687 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2688 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2689 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2690 symbol's value.
2691
2692 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2693 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2694
2695 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2696 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2697 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2698
2699 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2700 object associated with a PC value.
2701
2702 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2703 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2704
2705 * Go language support.
2706 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2707 language.
2708
2709 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2710 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2711
2712 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2713 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2714
2715 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2716 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2717 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2718 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2719 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2720 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
2721
2722 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2723 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2724 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2725 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2726
2727 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2728 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2729
2730 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2731 since December 2007.
2732
2733 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2734 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2735 command does. For instance:
2736
2737 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2738
2739 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2740 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2741 created, using the "condition" command.
2742
2743 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2744 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2745
2746 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2747
2748 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2749 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2750 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2751 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2752 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2753 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2754 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2755 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2756
2757 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2758 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2759 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2760 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2761 the .gdb_index section.
2762
2763 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2764
2765 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2766 target.
2767
2768 * MI changes
2769
2770 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2771
2772 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2773
2774 * New commands
2775
2776 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2777 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2778 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2779
2780 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2781 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2782
2783 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2784 several hits.
2785
2786 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2787 C++ and Java objects.
2788
2789 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2790 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2791 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2792 configured with '--with-python'.
2793
2794 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2795 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2796 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2797 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2798 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2799 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2800 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2801
2802 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2803 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2804 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2805 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2806
2807 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2808 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2809 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2810 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2811
2812 ** "set print symbol"
2813 "show print symbol"
2814 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2815 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2816 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2817
2818 * Deprecated commands
2819
2820 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2821 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2822
2823 * New targets
2824
2825 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2826 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2827
2828 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2829 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2830 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2831 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2832 evaluates to true.
2833
2834 * New options
2835
2836 set mips compression
2837 show mips compression
2838 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2839 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2840 mips16
2841 micromips
2842 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2843
2844 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2845 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2846 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2847 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2848 available mode.
2849 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2850 target.
2851
2852 set auto-load off
2853 Disable auto-loading globally.
2854
2855 show auto-load
2856 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2857
2858 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2859 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2860 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2861
2862 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2863 show auto-load python-scripts
2864 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2865
2866 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2867 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2868 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2869
2870 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2871 show auto-load libthread-db
2872 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2873
2874 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2875 show auto-load scripts-directory
2876 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2877 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2878 of the directories listed by this option.
2879 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2880
2881 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2882 show auto-load safe-path
2883 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2884 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2885
2886 set debug auto-load on|off
2887 show debug auto-load
2888 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2889
2890 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2891 show dprintf-style
2892 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2893 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2894 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2895 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2896
2897 set dprintf-function <expr>
2898 show dprintf-function
2899 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2900 show dprintf-channel
2901 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2902 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2903
2904 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2905 show disconnected-dprintf
2906 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2907 after GDB disconnects.
2908
2909 * New configure options
2910
2911 --with-auto-load-dir
2912 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2913 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2914 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2915 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2916 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2917
2918 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2919 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2920 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2921
2922 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2923 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2924 security feature.
2925
2926 * New remote packets
2927
2928 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2929
2930 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2931 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2932 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2933 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2934
2935 QProgramSignals:
2936
2937 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2938 program without GDB involvement.
2939
2940 * New command line options
2941
2942 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2943 before loading inferior.
2944 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2945 execute it before loading inferior.
2946
2947 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2948
2949 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2950 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2951 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2952 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2953 inferior changes.
2954
2955 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2956 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2957
2958 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2959 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2960 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2961 target hardware watchpoint.
2962
2963 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2964 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2965 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2966 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2967
2968 * Python scripting
2969
2970 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2971 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2972 existing one.
2973
2974 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2975 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2976 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2977 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2978 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2979 the stack trace.
2980
2981 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2982 Python API.
2983
2984 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2985 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2986 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2987 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2988 corresponding value.
2989
2990 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2991 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2992 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2993 on GDB start-up.
2994
2995 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2996 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2997 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2998 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2999
3000 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
3001
3002 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
3003 "gdb.breakpoints".
3004
3005 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
3006 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
3007 available in the CLI.
3008
3009 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
3010 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
3011 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
3012 "some_type.items()".
3013
3014 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
3015 new object file.
3016
3017 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
3018 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
3019 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
3020 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
3021 any anonymous fields.
3022
3023 * MI changes
3024
3025 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
3026 "solib-event".
3027
3028 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
3029 "=breakpoint-modified".
3030
3031 ** New command -ada-task-info.
3032
3033 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
3034 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
3035 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
3036 lives.
3037
3038 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
3039 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
3040 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
3041 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
3042 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
3043
3044 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
3045 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
3046
3047 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
3048 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
3049 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
3050 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
3051 use this option to specify where to find it.
3052
3053 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3054 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
3055 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
3056 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
3057 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
3058 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3059 section in the user manual for more details.
3060
3061 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
3062 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
3063 become available after that.
3064
3065 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
3066
3067 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
3068 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
3069 gcc version 4.7.
3070
3071 * New commands
3072
3073 !SHELL COMMAND
3074 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
3075 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
3076
3077 * Changed commands
3078
3079 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
3080 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
3081 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
3082
3083 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
3084 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
3085 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
3086
3087 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
3088 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
3089 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
3090 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
3091 name starts with a hyphen.
3092
3093 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
3094 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
3095 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
3096 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
3097 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
3098 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
3099 number of bytes that will be collected.
3100
3101 tstart [NOTES]
3102 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
3103 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
3104 setting the variable trace-notes.
3105
3106 tstop [NOTES]
3107 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
3108 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
3109 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
3110 trace-stop-notes.
3111
3112 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
3113 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
3114 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
3115 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
3116 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
3117 is running.
3118
3119 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
3120 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
3121 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
3122
3123 * New options
3124
3125 set debug dwarf2-read
3126 show debug dwarf2-read
3127 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
3128 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
3129
3130 set debug symtab-create
3131 show debug symtab-create
3132 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
3133 creation. The default is off.
3134
3135 set extended-prompt
3136 show extended-prompt
3137 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
3138 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
3139 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
3140 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
3141 prompt is displayed.
3142
3143 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
3144 show print entry-values
3145 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
3146 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
3147 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
3148
3149 set debug entry-values
3150 show debug entry-values
3151 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
3152 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
3153
3154 set basenames-may-differ
3155 show basenames-may-differ
3156 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
3157 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
3158 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
3159 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
3160 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
3161 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
3162 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
3163 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
3164
3165 set trace-user
3166 show trace-user
3167 set trace-notes
3168 show trace-notes
3169 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
3170 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
3171 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
3172 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
3173
3174 set trace-stop-notes
3175 show trace-stop-notes
3176 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
3177 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
3178 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
3179 started by someone else.
3180
3181 * New remote packets
3182
3183 QTEnable
3184
3185 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3186
3187 QTDisable
3188
3189 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
3190
3191 QTNotes
3192
3193 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
3194
3195 qTP
3196
3197 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
3198
3199 qTMinFTPILen
3200
3201 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
3202 be placed.
3203
3204 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
3205 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
3206
3207 * New targets
3208
3209 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
3210
3211 * New Simulators
3212
3213 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
3214
3215 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
3216
3217 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
3218
3219 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
3220
3221 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
3222 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
3223 matches the given regular expression.
3224
3225 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
3226
3227 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
3228 dumping the instruction opcodes.
3229
3230 * New command line options
3231
3232 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
3233 This is mostly for testing purposes.
3234
3235 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
3236 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
3237
3238 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
3239 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
3240 source path list instead of augmenting it.
3241
3242 * GDB now understands thread names.
3243
3244 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
3245 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
3246
3247 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
3248 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
3249
3250 * OpenCL C
3251 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
3252 has been integrated into GDB.
3253
3254 * Python scripting
3255
3256 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
3257 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
3258 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
3259
3260 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3261 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
3262 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
3263 and allows for more dynamic content.
3264
3265 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
3266 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
3267 have an is_valid method.
3268
3269 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
3270 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
3271 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
3272
3273 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
3274
3275 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
3276 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
3277 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
3278 that function like so:
3279
3280 result = some_value (10,20)
3281
3282 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
3283 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
3284 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
3285
3286 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
3287 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
3288 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
3289 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
3290 New function: register_pretty_printer.
3291
3292 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
3293 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
3294
3295 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
3296
3297 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
3298 selected thread.
3299
3300 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
3301 holds the thread's name.
3302
3303 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3304 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3305 occurring in the process being debugged.
3306 The following events are currently supported:
3307 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3308 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3309 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3310
3311 * C++ Improvements:
3312
3313 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3314 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3315
3316 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3317
3318 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3319 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3320 was added to GCC 4.5.
3321
3322 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3323 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3324 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3325 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3326 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3327 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3328
3329 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3330 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3331 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3332 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3333 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3334
3335 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3336 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3337 execution to a label.
3338
3339 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3340 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3341 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3342 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3343
3344 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3345 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3346 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3347 of scope.
3348
3349 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3350
3351 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3352 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3353 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3354 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3355 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3356 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3357
3358 (gdb) info threads
3359 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3360
3361 While now you see this:
3362
3363 (gdb) info threads
3364 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3365
3366 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3367 dumps.
3368
3369 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3370 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3371 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3372 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3373
3374 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3375 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3376 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3377 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3378 section in the user manual for more details.
3379
3380 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3381
3382 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3383 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3384
3385 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3386
3387 * New native configurations
3388
3389 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3390
3391 * New targets:
3392
3393 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3394
3395 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3396 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3397 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3398 in the GDB user manual.
3399
3400 * Guile support was removed.
3401
3402 * New features in the GNU simulator
3403
3404 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3405
3406 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3407
3408 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3409
3410 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3411
3412 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3413 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3414 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3415 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3416 was always disabled for such configurations.
3417
3418 * C++ Improvements:
3419
3420 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3421
3422 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3423 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3424 For example:
3425 namespace A
3426 {
3427 class B { };
3428 void foo (B) { }
3429 }
3430 ...
3431 A::B b
3432 foo(b)
3433 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3434 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3435 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3436
3437 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3438
3439 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3440 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3441 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3442 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3443 entry.
3444 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3445 mentioned flavors of operators.
3446
3447 ** static const class members
3448
3449 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3450 class definition has been fixed.
3451
3452 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3453
3454 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3455 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3456 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3457 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3458 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3459 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3460
3461 * Static tracepoints
3462
3463 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3464 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3465 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3466 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3467 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3468 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3469 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3470 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3471 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3472 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3473 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3474 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3475 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3476 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3477 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3478 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3479 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3480 the "New remote packets" section below.
3481
3482 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3483
3484 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3485 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3486 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3487 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3488
3489 * Observer mode
3490
3491 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3492 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3493 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3494 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3495 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3496 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3497 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3498
3499 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3500 current thread.
3501
3502 * New remote packets
3503
3504 qGetTIBAddr
3505
3506 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3507
3508 qRelocInsn
3509
3510 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3511 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3512 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3513 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3514 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3515 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3516
3517 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
3518
3519 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3520
3521 qTSTMat
3522
3523 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3524 program.
3525
3526 qXfer:statictrace:read
3527
3528 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3529 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3530 to gdb's qSupported query.
3531
3532 QAllow
3533
3534 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3535
3536 QTDPsrc
3537
3538 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3539 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3540
3541 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3542 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3543 a directory.
3544
3545 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3546
3547 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3548 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3549 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3550 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3551
3552 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3553 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3554 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3555 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3556 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3557 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3558 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3559
3560 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3561 for static tracepoints support.
3562
3563 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3564
3565 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3566 it understands register description.
3567
3568 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3569
3570 * X86 general purpose registers
3571
3572 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3573 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3574 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3575 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3576 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3577
3578 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3579 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3580 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3581 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3582 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3583 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3584
3585 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3586 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3587 in the specified file.
3588
3589 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3590 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3591 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3592 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3593 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3594 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3595 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3596 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3597 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3598 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3599
3600 * New commands
3601
3602 eval template, expressions...
3603 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3604 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3605
3606 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3607 show target-file-system-kind
3608 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3609 names.
3610
3611 save breakpoints <filename>
3612 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3613 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3614 definitions, use the `source' command.
3615
3616 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3617 is now deprecated.
3618
3619 info static-tracepoint-markers
3620 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3621
3622 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3623 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3624 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3625
3626 set observer on|off
3627 show observer
3628 Enable and disable observer mode.
3629
3630 set may-write-registers on|off
3631 set may-write-memory on|off
3632 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3633 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3634 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3635 set may-interrupt on|off
3636 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3637 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3638 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3639 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3640 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3641 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3642 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3643
3644 set record memory-query on|off
3645 show record memory-query
3646 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3647 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3648
3649 * Changed commands
3650
3651 disassemble
3652 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3653
3654 * Python scripting
3655
3656 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3657 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3658 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3659 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3660 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3661
3662 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3663 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3664 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3665 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3666
3667 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3668 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3669
3670 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3671
3672 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3673
3674 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3675
3676 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3677 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3678 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3679
3680 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3681 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3682 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3683 regular breakpoints.
3684
3685 * New targets
3686
3687 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3688
3689 * D language support.
3690 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3691 language.
3692
3693 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3694 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3695 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3696 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3697 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3698
3699 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3700 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3701 conditions of the form:
3702
3703 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3704
3705 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3706 interface mentioned above.
3707
3708 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3709
3710 * C++ Improvements
3711
3712 ** Namespace Support
3713
3714 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3715 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3716 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3717 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3718 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3719
3720 ** Bug Fixes
3721
3722 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3723 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3724 qualified name.
3725
3726 ** Cast Operators
3727
3728 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3729 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3730
3731 * New targets
3732
3733 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3734 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
3735
3736 * New Simulators
3737
3738 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3739 Renesas RX rx
3740
3741 * Multi-program debugging.
3742
3743 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3744 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3745 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3746 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3747 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3748 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3749 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3750 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3751
3752 * New tracing features
3753
3754 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3755
3756 ** Trace state variables
3757
3758 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3759 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3760 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3761 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3762 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3763 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3764 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3765 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3766 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3767 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3768
3769 ** Fast tracepoints
3770
3771 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3772 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3773 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3774 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3775 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3776 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3777 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3778 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3779 the regular trace command.
3780
3781 ** Disconnected tracing
3782
3783 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3784 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3785 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3786 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3787 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3788
3789 ** Trace files
3790
3791 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3792 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3793 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3794 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3795 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3796 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3797 <name>".
3798
3799 ** Circular trace buffer
3800
3801 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3802 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3803 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3804 not be available for all target agents.
3805
3806 * Changed commands
3807
3808 disassemble
3809 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3810 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3811
3812 info variables
3813 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3814 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3815
3816 source
3817 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3818 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3819 support.
3820
3821 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3822 "set script-extension" (see below).
3823
3824 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3825
3826 record save [<FILENAME>]
3827 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3828 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3829
3830 record restore <FILENAME>
3831 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3832 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3833
3834 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3835 Add a new inferior.
3836
3837 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3838 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3839 inferior has loaded.
3840
3841 remove-inferior ID
3842 Remove an inferior.
3843
3844 maint info program-spaces
3845 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3846
3847 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3848 show remote interrupt-sequence
3849 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3850 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3851 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3852 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3853 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3854
3855 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3856 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3857 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3858 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3859 Linux kernel.
3860
3861 set remotebreak [on | off]
3862 show remotebreak
3863 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3864
3865 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3866 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3867
3868 info tvariables
3869 List trace state variables and their values.
3870
3871 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3872 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3873
3874 teval EXPR, ...
3875 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3876 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3877
3878 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3879 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3880
3881 * New expression syntax
3882
3883 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3884 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3885
3886 * New options
3887
3888 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3889 show follow-exec-mode
3890 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3891 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3892 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3893
3894 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3895 show default-collect
3896 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3897 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3898 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3899
3900 set disconnected-tracing
3901 show disconnected-tracing
3902 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3903 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3904 upon disconnection.
3905
3906 set circular-trace-buffer
3907 show circular-trace-buffer
3908 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3909 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3910 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3911 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3912
3913 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3914 show script-extension
3915 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3916 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3917 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3918 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3919 evaluation failed.
3920 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3921
3922 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3923 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3924 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3925 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3926 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3927 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3928 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3929 is on.
3930
3931 * Python API Improvements
3932
3933 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3934 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3935 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3936
3937 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3938 `is_base_class' attribute.
3939
3940 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3941
3942 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3943 evaluate an expression.
3944
3945 * New remote packets
3946
3947 QTDV
3948 Define a trace state variable.
3949
3950 qTV
3951 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3952
3953 QTDisconnected
3954 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3955
3956 QTBuffer:circular
3957 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3958
3959 qTfP, qTsP
3960 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3961
3962 * Bug fixes
3963
3964 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3965
3966 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3967 much more reliable. In particular:
3968 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3969 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3970 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3971 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3972 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3973 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3974 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3975 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3976 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3977 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3978 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3979 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3980 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3981 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3982 non-threaded programs.
3983
3984 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3985 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3986 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3987 executable program.
3988
3989 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3990
3991 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3992 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3993 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3994 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3995 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3996
3997 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3998 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3999 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
4000 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
4001 for tracepoint actions.
4002
4003 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
4004 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
4005 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
4006
4007 * Process record and replay
4008
4009 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
4010 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
4011 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
4012 execute commands.
4013
4014 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
4015 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
4016 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
4017 reverse execution.
4018
4019 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
4020 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
4021 2.6.28 or later.
4022
4023 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
4024 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
4025 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
4026 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
4027 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
4028 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
4029 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
4030 the installation instructions for more information.
4031
4032 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
4033 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
4034 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
4035 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
4036
4037 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
4038 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
4039
4040 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
4041 now complete on file names.
4042
4043 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
4044 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
4045 For instance, consider:
4046
4047 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
4048 # struct example variable;
4049 (gdb) p variable.
4050
4051 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
4052 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
4053
4054 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
4055 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
4056
4057 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
4058 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
4059 macros.
4060
4061 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
4062 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
4063 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
4064
4065 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
4066 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
4067 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
4068 and simulator targets may also provide them.
4069
4070 * New remote packets
4071
4072 qSearch:memory:
4073 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4074
4075 QStartNoAckMode
4076 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
4077 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
4078 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
4079
4080 vKill
4081 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
4082 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
4083
4084 qXfer:osdata:read
4085 Obtains additional operating system information
4086
4087 qXfer:siginfo:read
4088 qXfer:siginfo:write
4089 Read or write additional signal information.
4090
4091 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
4092
4093 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
4094 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
4095 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
4096
4097 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
4098 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
4099
4100 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
4101 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
4102 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
4103
4104 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
4105 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
4106
4107 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
4108
4109 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
4110
4111 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
4112 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
4113
4114 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
4115 list of section offsets.
4116
4117 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
4118 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
4119 have also been fixed.
4120
4121 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
4122 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
4123 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
4124
4125 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
4126 example, given:
4127
4128 template<typename T> class C { };
4129 C<char const *> c;
4130
4131 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
4132
4133 ptype C<char const *>
4134 ptype C<char const*>
4135 ptype C<const char *>
4136 ptype C<const char*>
4137
4138 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
4139
4140 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
4141 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4142
4143 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
4144 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4145 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
4146
4147 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
4148 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
4149
4150 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
4151 gdbserver.
4152
4153 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
4154 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
4155
4156 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
4157 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
4158 as appropriate.
4159
4160 * Python scripting
4161
4162 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
4163 available is determined at configure time.
4164
4165 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
4166
4167 * Ada tasking support
4168
4169 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
4170 been introduced:
4171
4172 info tasks
4173 Print the list of Ada tasks.
4174 info task N
4175 Print detailed information about task number N.
4176 task
4177 Print the task number of the current task.
4178 task N
4179 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
4180
4181 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
4182 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
4183
4184 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
4185
4186 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
4187 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
4188 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
4189 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
4190 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
4191 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
4192 below.
4193
4194 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
4195 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
4196 information.
4197
4198 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
4199 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
4200 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
4201 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
4202 more information.
4203
4204 * Multi-architecture debugging.
4205
4206 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
4207 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
4208 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
4209 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
4210 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
4211
4212 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
4213 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
4214 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
4215 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
4216 --enable-targets configure option.
4217
4218 * Non-stop mode debugging.
4219
4220 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
4221 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
4222 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
4223 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
4224 section in the user manual for more information.
4225
4226 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
4227 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
4228 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
4229 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
4230 extensions on linux targets.
4231
4232 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
4233
4234 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
4235 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
4236 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
4237 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
4238 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
4239 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
4240 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
4241 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
4242 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
4243
4244 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
4245 val1 [, val2, ...]
4246 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
4247
4248 maint set python print-stack
4249 maint show python print-stack
4250 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
4251
4252 python [CODE]
4253 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
4254
4255 macro define
4256 macro list
4257 macro undef
4258 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
4259 interactively.
4260
4261 info os processes
4262 Show operating system information about processes.
4263
4264 info inferiors
4265 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
4266
4267 inferior NUM
4268 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
4269
4270 detach inferior NUM
4271 Detach from inferior number NUM.
4272
4273 kill inferior NUM
4274 Kill inferior number NUM.
4275
4276 * New options
4277
4278 set spu stop-on-load
4279 show spu stop-on-load
4280 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4281
4282 set spu auto-flush-cache
4283 show spu auto-flush-cache
4284 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
4285 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
4286
4287 set sh calling-convention
4288 show sh calling-convention
4289 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
4290
4291 set debug timestamp
4292 show debug timestamp
4293 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
4294
4295 set disassemble-next-line
4296 show disassemble-next-line
4297 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
4298 the debuggee stops.
4299
4300 set remote noack-packet
4301 show remote noack-packet
4302 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4303 under "New remote packets."
4304
4305 set remote query-attached-packet
4306 show remote query-attached-packet
4307 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4308
4309 set remote read-siginfo-object
4310 show remote read-siginfo-object
4311 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4312 packet.
4313
4314 set remote write-siginfo-object
4315 show remote write-siginfo-object
4316 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4317 packet.
4318
4319 set remote reverse-continue
4320 show remote reverse-continue
4321 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4322
4323 set remote reverse-step
4324 show remote reverse-step
4325 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4326
4327 set displaced-stepping
4328 show displaced-stepping
4329 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4330 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4331 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4332
4333 set debug displaced
4334 show debug displaced
4335 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4336
4337 maint set internal-error
4338 maint show internal-error
4339 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4340
4341 maint set internal-warning
4342 maint show internal-warning
4343 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4344
4345 set exec-wrapper
4346 show exec-wrapper
4347 unset exec-wrapper
4348 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4349
4350 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4351 show multiple-symbols
4352 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4353 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4354 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4355
4356 set breakpoint always-inserted
4357 show breakpoint always-inserted
4358 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4359 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4360 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4361
4362 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4363 show arm fallback-mode
4364 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4365 show arm force-mode
4366 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4367 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4368 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4369 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4370
4371 set disable-randomization
4372 show disable-randomization
4373 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4374 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4375 multiple debugging sessions.
4376
4377 set non-stop
4378 show non-stop
4379 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4380 a breakpoint.
4381
4382 set target-async
4383 show target-async
4384 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4385 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4386 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4387 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4388
4389 set target-wide-charset
4390 show target-wide-charset
4391 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4392 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4393
4394 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4395 show tcp auto-retry
4396 set tcp connect-timeout
4397 show tcp connect-timeout
4398 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4399 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4400 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4401
4402 set libthread-db-search-path
4403 show libthread-db-search-path
4404 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4405 libthread_db.
4406
4407 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4408 show schedule-multiple
4409 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4410 the current process.
4411
4412 set stack-cache
4413 show stack-cache
4414 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4415 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4416 affecting correctness.
4417
4418 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4419 show interactive-mode
4420 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4421 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4422 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4423 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4424 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4425
4426 * Removed commands
4427
4428 info forks
4429 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4430 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4431 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4432 command.
4433
4434 fork NUM
4435 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4436 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4437 alias for the `fork' command.
4438
4439 process PID
4440 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4441 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4442 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4443
4444 delete fork NUM
4445 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4446 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4447 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4448 fork' command.
4449
4450 detach fork NUM
4451 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4452 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4453 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4454 fork' command.
4455
4456 * New native configurations
4457
4458 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4459
4460 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4461
4462 * New targets
4463
4464 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4465 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4466 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4467 S+core 3 score-*-*
4468
4469 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4470 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4471
4472 * Removed commands
4473
4474 catch load
4475 catch unload
4476 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4477
4478 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4479
4480 * New native configurations
4481
4482 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4483 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4484
4485 * New targets
4486
4487 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4488 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4489
4490 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4491
4492 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4493 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4494 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4495 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4496
4497 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4498 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4499
4500 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4501 is resolved.
4502
4503 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4504 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4505 and in inlined functions.
4506
4507 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4508 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4509 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4510
4511 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4512
4513 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4514 registers on PowerPC targets.
4515
4516 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4517 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4518
4519 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4520 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4521
4522 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4523 extended-remote mode.
4524
4525 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4526 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4527 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4528 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4529
4530 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4531 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4532 target architectures.
4533
4534 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4535 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4536 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4537 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4538
4539 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4540 breakpoints now.
4541
4542 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4543 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4544 include:
4545 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4546 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4547 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4548 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4549 of an assignment
4550 - Improved command completion in Ada
4551 - Several bug fixes
4552
4553 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4554 process.
4555
4556 * New commands
4557
4558 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4559 show print frame-arguments
4560 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4561 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4562
4563 remote put
4564 remote get
4565 remote delete
4566 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4567
4568 * New MI commands
4569
4570 -target-file-put
4571 -target-file-get
4572 -target-file-delete
4573 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4574
4575 * New remote packets
4576
4577 vFile:open:
4578 vFile:close:
4579 vFile:pread:
4580 vFile:pwrite:
4581 vFile:unlink:
4582 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4583
4584 vAttach
4585 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4586 mode.
4587
4588 vRun
4589 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4590
4591 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4592
4593 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4594 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4595 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4596
4597 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4598 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4599 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4600
4601 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4602 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4603 is not supported.
4604
4605 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4606 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4607
4608 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4609 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4610
4611 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4612
4613 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4614 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4615 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4616
4617 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4618 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4619
4620 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4621 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4622 as strings.
4623
4624 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4625 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4626 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4627
4628 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4629 iWMMXt coprocessor.
4630
4631 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4632 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4633 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4634
4635 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4636
4637 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4638
4639 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4640 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4641 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4642
4643 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4644 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4645
4646 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4647 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4648 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4649 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4650 Windows and SymbianOS).
4651
4652 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4653 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4654
4655 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4656 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4657
4658 * New commands
4659
4660 set remoteflow
4661 show remoteflow
4662 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4663 when debugging using remote targets.
4664
4665 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4666 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4667 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4668 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4669 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4670 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4671 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4672
4673 set breakpoint auto-hw
4674 show breakpoint auto-hw
4675 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4676 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4677 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4678 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4679 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4680 including "next" and "finish".
4681
4682 catch exception
4683 catch exception unhandled
4684 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4685
4686 catch assert
4687 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4688
4689 set sysroot
4690 show sysroot
4691 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4692 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4693 an alias to "set sysroot".
4694
4695 info spu
4696 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4697 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4698 architecture.
4699
4700 * New native configurations
4701
4702 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4703
4704 set tdesc filename
4705 unset tdesc filename
4706 show tdesc filename
4707 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4708 not query the target for its built-in description.
4709
4710 * New targets
4711
4712 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4713 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4714 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4715
4716 * New remote packets
4717
4718 QPassSignals:
4719 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4720 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4721
4722 qXfer:features:read:
4723 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4724 features.
4725
4726 qXfer:spu:read:
4727 qXfer:spu:write:
4728 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4729 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4730
4731 qXfer:libraries:read:
4732 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4733 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4734 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4735 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4736
4737 * Removed targets
4738
4739 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4740
4741 alpha*-*-osf1*
4742 alpha*-*-osf2*
4743 d10v-*-*
4744 hppa*-*-hiux*
4745 i[34567]86-ncr-*
4746 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
4747 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4748 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4749 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4750 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4751 i[34567]86-*-sco*
4752 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4753 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
4754 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
4755 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4756 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4757 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
4758 i[34567]86-*-isc*
4759 m68*-cisco*-*
4760 m68*-tandem-*
4761 mips*-*-pe
4762 rs6000-*-lynxos*
4763 sh*-*-pe
4764
4765 * Other removed features
4766
4767 target abug
4768 target cpu32bug
4769 target est
4770 target rom68k
4771
4772 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4773
4774 target hms
4775 target e7000
4776 target sh3
4777 target sh3e
4778
4779 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4780 H8/300.
4781
4782 target ocd
4783
4784 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4785 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4786 interfaces.
4787
4788 DWARF 1 support
4789
4790 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4791 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4792
4793 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4794
4795 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4796 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4797 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4798 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4799
4800 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4801
4802 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4803 in debugging information.
4804
4805 Scheme support
4806
4807 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4808 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4809
4810 set mips stack-arg-size
4811 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4812
4813 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4814
4815 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4816
4817 * New targets
4818
4819 Xtensa xtensa-elf
4820 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4821
4822 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4823 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4824 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4825
4826 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4827 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4828 supported.
4829
4830 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4831 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4832
4833 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4834 stub provides the required support.
4835
4836 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4837 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4838
4839 * New commands
4840
4841 set substitute-path
4842 unset substitute-path
4843 show substitute-path
4844 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4845 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4846 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4847 between compilation and debugging.
4848
4849 set trace-commands
4850 show trace-commands
4851 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4852 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4853 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4854
4855 * REMOVED features
4856
4857 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4858
4859 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4860 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4861
4862 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4863
4864 * New remote packets
4865
4866 qSupported:
4867 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4868 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4869 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4870 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4871 target.
4872
4873 qXfer:auxv:read:
4874 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4875 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4876
4877 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4878 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4879 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4880
4881 vFlashErase:
4882 vFlashWrite:
4883 vFlashDone:
4884 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4885
4886 * Removed remote packets
4887
4888 qPart:auxv:read:
4889 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4890 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4891
4892 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4893
4894 * New targets
4895
4896 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4897
4898 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4899
4900 * New commands
4901
4902 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4903 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4904
4905 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4906
4907 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4908
4909 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4910 previously saved state.
4911
4912 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4913
4914 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4915
4916 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4917 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4918
4919 info forks List forks of the user program that
4920 are available to be debugged.
4921
4922 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4923 forks of the user program that are
4924 available to be debugged.
4925
4926 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4927 that are available to be debugged (and
4928 kill the forked process).
4929
4930 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4931 that are available to be debugged (and
4932 allow the process to continue).
4933
4934 * New architecture
4935
4936 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4937
4938 * Improved Windows host support
4939
4940 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4941 native console support, and remote communications using either
4942 network sockets or serial ports.
4943
4944 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4945
4946 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4947 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4948 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4949 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4950 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4951 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4952
4953 * REMOVED features
4954
4955 The ARM rdi-share module.
4956
4957 The Netware NLM debug server.
4958
4959 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4960
4961 * New native configurations
4962
4963 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4964 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4965
4966 * New targets
4967
4968 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4969
4970 * New command line options
4971
4972 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4973 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4974 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4975 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4976 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4977 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4978 with the --command (-x) option.
4979
4980 * Deprecated commands removed
4981
4982 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4983 removed:
4984
4985 Command Replacement
4986 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4987 othernames set arm disassembler
4988 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4989 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4990 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4991 regs info registers
4992
4993 * New BSD user-level threads support
4994
4995 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4996 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4997 configurations are:
4998
4999 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5000 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
5001 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
5002
5003 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
5004 are not yet supported.
5005
5006 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
5007 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
5008
5009 * REMOVED configurations and files
5010
5011 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
5012 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5013 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
5014
5015 * New "set print array-indexes" command
5016
5017 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
5018 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
5019 behavior.
5020
5021 * VAX floating point support
5022
5023 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
5024
5025 * User-defined command support
5026
5027 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
5028 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
5029 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
5030
5031 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
5032
5033 * New command line option
5034
5035 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
5036 debugging.
5037
5038 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
5039
5040 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
5041 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
5042 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
5043 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
5044 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
5045
5046 * Internationalization
5047
5048 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
5049 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
5050 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
5051
5052 * Ada
5053
5054 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
5055 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
5056 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
5057
5058 * New native configurations
5059
5060 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
5061
5062 * Remote 'p' packet
5063
5064 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
5065 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
5066
5067 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
5068
5069 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5070 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
5071 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
5072 i386 application).
5073
5074 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
5075 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
5076 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
5077 configurations:
5078
5079 hppa-*-hpux
5080 ia64-*-aix
5081 mips-*-irix*
5082 *-*-lynx
5083 mips-*-linux-gnu
5084 sds protocol
5085 xdr protocol
5086 powerpc bdm protocol
5087
5088 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5089 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
5090
5091 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5092
5093 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5094 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5095 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5096 permanently REMOVED.
5097
5098 h8300-*-*
5099 mcore-*-*
5100 mn10300-*-*
5101 ns32k-*-*
5102 sh64-*-*
5103 v850-*-*
5104
5105 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
5106
5107 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
5108
5109 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
5110 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
5111 been fixed.
5112
5113 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
5114
5115 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
5116 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
5117 IRIX long double values).
5118
5119 * VAX and "next"
5120
5121 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
5122 command. This problem has been fixed.
5123
5124 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
5125
5126 * Fix for ``many threads''
5127
5128 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
5129 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
5130 error message:
5131
5132 ptrace: No such process.
5133 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
5134
5135 This problem has been fixed.
5136
5137 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
5138
5139 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
5140 GDB to dump core).
5141
5142 * New ``start'' command.
5143
5144 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
5145
5146 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
5147
5148 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
5149 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
5150 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
5151
5152 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5153 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
5154 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
5155 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
5156 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
5157 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5158 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
5159 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
5160 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5161
5162 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
5163
5164 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
5165 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
5166 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
5167 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
5168 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
5169
5170 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
5171 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
5172 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
5173
5174 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
5175
5176 * New native configurations
5177
5178 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
5179 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
5180 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
5181 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
5182 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
5183 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
5184 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
5185
5186 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
5187
5188 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
5189 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
5190 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
5191 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
5192 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
5193 work, was also included.
5194
5195 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
5196 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
5197
5198 h8300-*-*
5199 mcore-*-*
5200 mn10300-*-*
5201 ns32k-*-*
5202 sh64-*-*
5203 v850-*-*
5204 xstormy16-*-*
5205
5206 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
5207 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
5208
5209 * REMOVED configurations and files
5210
5211 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5212 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5213 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5214 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5215 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5216 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5217 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5218 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5219 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5220 sonymips mips-sony-*
5221 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5222
5223 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
5224
5225 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
5226
5227 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
5228 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
5229 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
5230 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
5231 with GDB".
5232
5233 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
5234
5235 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
5236 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
5237 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
5238 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
5239 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
5240 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
5241 are created.
5242
5243 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
5244
5245 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
5246
5247 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
5248 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
5249 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
5250
5251 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
5252
5253 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
5254 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
5255
5256 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
5257
5258 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
5259 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
5260 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
5261
5262 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
5263
5264 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
5265 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
5266
5267 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
5268
5269 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
5270 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
5271 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
5272
5273 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
5274
5275 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
5276 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
5277 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
5278
5279 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
5280
5281 * Removed --with-mmalloc
5282
5283 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
5284 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
5285
5286 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
5287
5288 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
5289 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
5290 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
5291 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
5292
5293 * Revised SPARC target
5294
5295 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
5296 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
5297 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
5298 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
5299 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5300
5301 * New C++ demangler
5302
5303 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5304 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5305 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5306 programs.
5307
5308 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5309
5310 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5311 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5312 encountered these.
5313
5314 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5315
5316 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5317 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5318 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5319 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5320 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5321 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5322 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5323 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5324 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5325
5326 * New native configurations
5327
5328 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5329 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5330 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5331 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5332 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5333
5334 * New debugging protocols
5335
5336 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5337
5338 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5339
5340 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5341 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5342 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5343
5344 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5345
5346 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5347 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5348 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5349 permanently REMOVED.
5350
5351 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5352 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5353 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5354 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5355 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5356 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5357 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5358 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5359 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5360 sonymips mips-sony-*
5361 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5362
5363 * REMOVED configurations and files
5364
5365 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5366 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5367 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5368 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5369 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5370 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5371 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5372 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5373 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5374 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5375 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5376 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5377 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5378 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5379 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5380 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5381 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5382
5383 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5384
5385 * Objective-C
5386
5387 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5388 integrated into GDB.
5389
5390 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5391
5392 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5393 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5394 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5395 backtraces.
5396
5397 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5398 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5399 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5400
5401 * Hosted file I/O.
5402
5403 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5404 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5405 remote protocol documentation for details.
5406
5407 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5408
5409 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5410 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5411 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5412 ppc32 on ppc64).
5413
5414 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5415
5416 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5417 per-thread variables.
5418
5419 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5420
5421 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5422 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5423
5424 * Separate debug info.
5425
5426 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5427 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5428 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5429 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5430 and optional debug files.
5431
5432 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5433
5434 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5435 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5436 debugger.
5437
5438 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5439 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5440
5441 * Java
5442
5443 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5444 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5445 considered "useable".
5446
5447 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5448
5449 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5450 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5451 kernel.
5452
5453 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5454
5455 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5456 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5457
5458 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5459
5460 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5461 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5462 command.
5463
5464 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5465
5466 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5467 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5468
5469 * Profiling support
5470
5471 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5472 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5473 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5474 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5475 data, for more informative profiling results.
5476
5477 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5478
5479 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5480 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5481 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5482
5483 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5484 removed.
5485
5486 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5487 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5488 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5489 in a subsequent -var-update.
5490
5491 * New native configurations.
5492
5493 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5494
5495 * Multi-arched targets.
5496
5497 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5498 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5499
5500 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5501
5502 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5503 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5504 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5505 permanently REMOVED.
5506
5507 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5508 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5509 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5510 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5511 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5512 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5513 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5514 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5515 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5516 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5517 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5518 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5519
5520 * REMOVED configurations and files
5521
5522 V850EA ISA
5523 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5524 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5525 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5526 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5527 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5528 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5529 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5530 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5531 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5532 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5533 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5534 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5535 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5536
5537 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5538
5539 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5540 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5541 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5542 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5543 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5544
5545 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5546
5547 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5548
5549 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5550 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5551 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5552 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5553 shared libs like mad''.
5554
5555 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5556
5557 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5558 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5559 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5560 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5561
5562 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5563
5564 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5565 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5566 they expand.
5567
5568 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5569 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5570
5571 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5572 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5573
5574 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5575 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5576 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5577 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5578
5579 * Multi-arched targets.
5580
5581 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5582 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5583 NEC V850 v850-*-*
5584 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5585 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5586 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5587
5588 * New targets.
5589
5590 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5591
5592
5593 * New native configurations
5594
5595 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5596 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5597 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5598 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5599
5600 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5601
5602 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5603 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5604 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5605 permanently REMOVED.
5606
5607 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5608 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5609 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5610 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5611 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5612 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5613 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5614 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5615 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5616 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5617 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5618 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5619 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5620
5621 * OBSOLETE languages
5622
5623 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5624
5625 * REMOVED configurations and files
5626
5627 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5628 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5629 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5630 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5631 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5632
5633 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5634
5635 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5636
5637 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5638 commands. The default is 1024.
5639
5640 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5641
5642 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5643
5644 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5645
5646 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5647 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5648 from a file into memory (restore).
5649
5650 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5651
5652 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5653 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5654 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5655
5656 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5657
5658 * New targets.
5659
5660 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
5661
5662 * Bug fixes
5663
5664 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5665 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5666 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5667
5668 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5669 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5670 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5671
5672 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5673 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5674 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5675
5676 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5677 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5678 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5679
5680 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5681
5682 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5683
5684 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5685 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5686 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5687 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5688 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5689 (notably embedded) targets.
5690
5691 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5692
5693 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5694 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5695 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5696 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5697
5698 * New command line option
5699
5700 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5701
5702 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5703
5704 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5705 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5706 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5707 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5708 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5709 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5710 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5711 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5712 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5713 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5714
5715 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5716
5717 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5718 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5719
5720 * New native configurations
5721
5722 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5723 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5724 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5725 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5726
5727 * New targets
5728
5729 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5730
5731 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5732
5733 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5734 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5735 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5736 permanently REMOVED.
5737
5738 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5739 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5740 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5741 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5742 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5743
5744 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5745
5746 * REMOVED configurations and files
5747
5748 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5749 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5750 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5751 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5752 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5753 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5754 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5755 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5756 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5757 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5758 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5759 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5760 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5761
5762 * Changes to command line processing
5763
5764 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5765 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5766
5767 * Changes to key bindings
5768
5769 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5770
5771 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5772
5773 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5774
5775 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5776 corrupted.
5777
5778 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5779
5780 Numerous documentation fixes.
5781
5782 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5783
5784 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5785
5786 * New native configurations
5787
5788 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5789 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5790 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5791 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5792 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5793 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5794
5795 * New targets
5796
5797 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5798 CRIS cris-axis
5799 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5800
5801 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5802
5803 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5804 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5805 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5806 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5807 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5808 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5809 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5810 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5811 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5812 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5813 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5814 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5815 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5816 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5817
5818 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5819 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5820
5821 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5822 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5823 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5824 permanently REMOVED.
5825
5826 * REMOVED configurations and files
5827
5828 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5829 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5830 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5831 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5832 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5833 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5834
5835 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5836
5837 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5838 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5839 present.
5840
5841 * Other news:
5842
5843 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5844
5845 * The MI enabled by default.
5846
5847 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5848 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5849 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5850 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5851 which is now deprecated.
5852
5853 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5854
5855 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5856 main features are supported:
5857
5858 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5859
5860 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5861 extension;
5862
5863 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5864
5865 - a Pascal expression parser.
5866
5867 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5868
5869 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5870
5871 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5872
5873 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5874 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5875
5876 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5877
5878 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5879
5880 * Changes in completion.
5881
5882 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5883 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5884 users expect at the shell prompt.
5885
5886 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5887 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5888 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5889 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5890 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5891 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5892 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5893
5894 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5895
5896 * New platform-independent commands:
5897
5898 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5899 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5900 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5901
5902 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5903
5904 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5905 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5906 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5907
5908 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5909
5910 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5911 multi-threaded programs though.
5912
5913 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5914
5915 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5916
5917 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5918 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5919 supported.)
5920
5921 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5922
5923 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5924 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5925 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5926 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5927 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5928 registers.
5929
5930 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5931 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5932 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5933
5934 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5935
5936 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5937 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5938
5939 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5940 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5941 IDT.
5942
5943 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5944 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5945 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5946 a given linear address.
5947
5948 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5949 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5950 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5951
5952 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5953
5954 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5955
5956 * Changes in documentation.
5957
5958 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5959 Documentation License.
5960
5961 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5962 manual.
5963
5964 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5965
5966 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5967 manual.
5968
5969 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5970 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5971 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5972
5973 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5974
5975 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5976 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5977 contents of this file.
5978
5979 * gdba.el deleted
5980
5981 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5982
5983 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5984
5985 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5986
5987 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5988 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5989 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5990 greater level of detail.
5991
5992 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5993
5994 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5995 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5996 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5997 written.
5998
5999 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
6000
6001 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
6002 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
6003 machines ``out of the box''.
6004
6005 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
6006 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
6007 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
6008 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
6009 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
6010
6011 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
6012 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
6013 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
6014 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
6015 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
6016
6017 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
6018 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
6019 also works.
6020
6021 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
6022 GDB.
6023
6024 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
6025 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
6026 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
6027 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
6028
6029 * New native configurations
6030
6031 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
6032 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6033
6034 * New targets
6035
6036 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
6037 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
6038 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
6039 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
6040
6041 * OBSOLETE configurations
6042
6043 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
6044 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
6045 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
6046 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
6047 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
6048
6049 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6050 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6051 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6052 be permanently REMOVED.
6053
6054 * Gould support removed
6055
6056 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
6057
6058 * New features for SVR4
6059
6060 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
6061 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
6062 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
6063
6064 * Many C++ enhancements
6065
6066 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
6067 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
6068
6069 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
6070
6071 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
6072 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
6073 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
6074 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
6075
6076 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
6077 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
6078
6079 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
6080
6081 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
6082 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
6083 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
6084
6085 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
6086 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
6087
6088 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
6089
6090 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
6091 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
6092 include ``set remote P-packet''.
6093
6094 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
6095
6096 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
6097 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
6098 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
6099
6100 * ``apropos'' command added.
6101
6102 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
6103 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
6104 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
6105
6106 * New MI interface
6107
6108 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
6109 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
6110 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
6111 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
6112 enabled by configuring with:
6113
6114 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
6115
6116 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
6117
6118 * New native configurations
6119
6120 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
6121 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
6122 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
6123
6124 * New targets
6125
6126 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
6127 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
6128 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
6129
6130 * OBSOLETE configurations
6131
6132 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
6133
6134 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
6135 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
6136 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
6137 be permanently REMOVED.
6138
6139 * ANSI/ISO C
6140
6141 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
6142 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
6143 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
6144 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
6145 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
6146 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
6147 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
6148 already.
6149
6150 * Readline 2.2
6151
6152 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
6153
6154 * set extension-language
6155
6156 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
6157 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
6158 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
6159 set extension-language .c c++
6160 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
6161 and their associated languages.
6162
6163 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
6164
6165 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
6166 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
6167 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
6168
6169 set processor NAME
6170
6171 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
6172 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
6173
6174 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
6175 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
6176 403 IBM PowerPC 403
6177 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
6178 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
6179 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
6180 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
6181 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
6182 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
6183 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
6184 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
6185
6186 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
6187 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
6188 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
6189 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
6190
6191 * HP-UX support
6192
6193 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
6194 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
6195 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
6196 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
6197 for xdb and dbx commands.
6198
6199 * Catchpoints
6200
6201 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
6202 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
6203 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
6204
6205 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
6206 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
6207 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
6208
6209 * Debugging across forks
6210
6211 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
6212 in the inferior.
6213
6214 * TUI
6215
6216 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
6217 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
6218 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
6219
6220 * GDB remote protocol additions
6221
6222 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
6223 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
6224 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
6225 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
6226
6227 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
6228 full 64-bit address. The command
6229
6230 set remoteaddresssize 32
6231
6232 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
6233 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
6234 will be discarded.
6235
6236 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
6237 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
6238
6239 maint packet heythere
6240
6241 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
6242 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
6243 time.
6244
6245 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
6246 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
6247 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
6248
6249 * Tracing can collect general expressions
6250
6251 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
6252 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
6253 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
6254
6255 * mask-address variable for Mips
6256
6257 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
6258 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
6259 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
6260
6261 * Higher serial baud rates
6262
6263 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
6264 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
6265 to achieve all of these rates.)
6266
6267 * i960 simulator
6268
6269 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
6270 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
6271
6272
6273 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
6274
6275 * New native configurations
6276
6277 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
6278 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
6279 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
6280 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
6281 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
6282 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
6283 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
6284
6285 * New targets
6286
6287 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
6288 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
6289 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
6290 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
6291 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
6292 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
6293 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
6294 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
6295 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6296 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6297 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
6298
6299 * New debugging protocols
6300
6301 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6302 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6303 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6304 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6305 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6306 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6307
6308 * DWARF 2
6309
6310 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6311 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6312 information.
6313
6314 * Java frontend
6315
6316 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6317 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6318
6319 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6320
6321 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6322 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6323 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6324
6325 * Live range splitting
6326
6327 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6328 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6329 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6330
6331 * Hurd support
6332
6333 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6334 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6335
6336 * ARM Thumb support
6337
6338 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6339 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6340 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6341 accordingly.
6342
6343 * MIPS16 support
6344
6345 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6346 instruction set.
6347
6348 * Overlay support
6349
6350 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6351 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6352 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6353 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6354 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6355 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6356
6357 * info symbol
6358
6359 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6360 the symbol at the specified address.
6361
6362 * Trace support
6363
6364 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6365 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6366 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6367 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6368 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6369
6370 * MIPS simulator
6371
6372 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6373 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6374 of most MIPS variants.
6375
6376 * Sparc simulator
6377
6378 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6379 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6380 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6381
6382 * set architecture
6383
6384 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6385 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6386 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6387 the possible architectures.
6388
6389 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6390
6391 * New native configurations
6392
6393 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6394 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6395 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6396 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6397 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6398 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6399
6400 * New targets
6401
6402 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6403 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6404 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6405 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6406 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6407 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
6408 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6409
6410 * PowerPC simulator
6411
6412 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6413 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6414 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6415 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6416 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6417
6418 * Solaris 2.5
6419
6420 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6421
6422 * Windows 95/NT native
6423
6424 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6425 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6426 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6427 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6428 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6429
6430 * dont-repeat command
6431
6432 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6433 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6434 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6435 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6436
6437 * Send break instead of ^C
6438
6439 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6440 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6441 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6442
6443 * Remote protocol timeout
6444
6445 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6446 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6447 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6448
6449 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6450
6451 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6452 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6453 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6454 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6455 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6456
6457 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6458 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6459 automatically on hpux10.
6460
6461 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6462
6463 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6464
6465 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6466
6467 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6468 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6469 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6470 every character. The default value is 1050.
6471
6472 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6473
6474 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6475 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6476 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6477 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6478 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6479 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6480
6481 * Speedups for remote debugging
6482
6483 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6484 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6485 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6486
6487 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6488
6489 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6490 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6491
6492 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6493
6494 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6495
6496 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6497 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6498
6499 * Remote targets use caching
6500
6501 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6502 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6503 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6504 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6505 off' turns the the data cache off.
6506
6507 * Remote targets may have threads
6508
6509 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6510 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6511 gdb/remote.c for details.
6512
6513 * NetROM support
6514
6515 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6516 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6517 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6518 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6519 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6520 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6521 sequence is something like
6522
6523 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6524 load <prog>
6525 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6526
6527 * Macintosh host
6528
6529 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6530 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6531 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6532 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6533 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6534 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6535 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6536 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6537
6538 * Autoconf
6539
6540 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6541 but does simplify configuration and building.
6542
6543 * hpux10
6544
6545 GDB now supports hpux10.
6546
6547 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6548
6549 * New native configurations
6550
6551 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6552 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6553 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6554 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6555
6556 * New targets
6557
6558 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6559 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6560 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6561 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6562 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
6563
6564 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6565
6566 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6567 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6568 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6569 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6570 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6571
6572 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6573
6574 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6575 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6576 trivial example:
6577 define adder
6578 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6579
6580 To execute the command use:
6581 adder 1 2 3
6582
6583 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6584 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6585 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6586
6587 * New `if' and `while' commands
6588
6589 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6590 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6591 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6592 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6593 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6594 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6595 if the expression is zero.
6596
6597 * Fortran source language mode
6598
6599 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6600 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6601 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6602 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6603 Fortran compilers.
6604
6605 * Better HPUX support
6606
6607 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6608 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6609 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6610 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6611 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6612
6613 adb -w a.out
6614 __dld_flags?W 0x5
6615 control-d
6616
6617 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6618 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6619
6620 adb -w a.out
6621 __dld_flags?W 0x4
6622 control-d
6623
6624 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6625 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6626 external linkage.
6627
6628 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6629 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6630
6631 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6632
6633 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6634 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6635 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6636 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6637 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6638 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6639
6640 * New DOS host serial code
6641
6642 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6643 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6644 a PC's serial port.
6645
6646 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6647
6648 * New "complete" command
6649
6650 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6651 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6652
6653 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6654
6655 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6656 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6657
6658 * Breakpoint hit counts
6659
6660 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6661 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6662 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6663 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6664 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6665 that breakpoint.
6666
6667 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6668
6669 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6670 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6671 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6672
6673 * Shared library breakpoints
6674
6675 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6676 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6677
6678 * Hardware watchpoints
6679
6680 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6681 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6682
6683 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6684
6685 * Annotations
6686
6687 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6688 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6689
6690 * Improved Irix 5 support
6691
6692 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6693
6694 * Improved HPPA support
6695
6696 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6697
6698 * New native configurations
6699
6700 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6701 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6702 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6703 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6704
6705 * New targets
6706
6707 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6708 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6709 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
6710
6711 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6712
6713 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6714 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6715
6716 * Fixes
6717
6718 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6719 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6720
6721 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6722
6723 * Irix 5 is now supported
6724
6725 * HPPA support
6726
6727 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6728 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6729 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6730 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6731 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6732
6733
6734 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6735
6736 * User visible changes:
6737
6738 * Remote Debugging
6739
6740 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6741 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6742 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6743 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6744 debugging info for the mips target).
6745
6746 * DEC Alpha native support
6747
6748 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6749 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6750 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6751 Alpha-specific notes.
6752
6753 * Preliminary thread implementation
6754
6755 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6756
6757 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6758
6759 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6760 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6761 for details).
6762
6763 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6764
6765 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6766 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6767 call methods, ...etc.
6768
6769 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6770
6771 * User visible changes:
6772
6773 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6774 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6775 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6776 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6777
6778 Filename completion now works.
6779
6780 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6781 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6782 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6783
6784 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6785 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6786 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6787 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6788 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6789
6790 * DEC alpha support
6791
6792 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6793 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6794
6795
6796 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6797
6798 * Testsuite
6799
6800 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6801 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6802 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6803
6804 * C++ demangling
6805
6806 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6807 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6808 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6809 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6810 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6811
6812 * Simulators
6813
6814 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6815 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6816 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6817
6818 * New targets supported
6819
6820 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6821 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6822 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6823 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6824 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6825
6826 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6827 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6828 GO32 memory extender.
6829
6830 * New remote protocols
6831
6832 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6833
6834 * New source languages supported
6835
6836 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6837 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6838 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6839
6840
6841 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6842
6843 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6844
6845 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6846 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6847 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6848 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6849 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6850 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6851
6852 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6853
6854 * Faster and better demangling
6855
6856 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6857 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6858 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6859 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6860 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6861 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6862 symbol lookups.
6863
6864 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6865 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6866 compiler does not actually implement.
6867
6868 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6869
6870 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6871 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6872 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6873 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6874 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6875 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6876 fix.
6877
6878 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6879 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6880
6881 * Improved configure script
6882
6883 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6884 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6885 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6886 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6887
6888 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6889 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6890 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6891 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6892 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6893 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6894
6895 * Documentation improvements
6896
6897 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6898 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6899 before submitting changes.
6900
6901 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6902 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6903 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6904 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6905 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6906
6907 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6908 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6909 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6910 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6911 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6912 around this problem.
6913
6914 * New features
6915
6916 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6917 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6918 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6919 the target program.
6920
6921 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6922 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6923
6924 * New native hosts supported
6925
6926 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6927 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6928
6929 * New targets supported
6930
6931 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6932
6933 * New file formats supported
6934
6935 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6936 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6937
6938 * Major bug fixes
6939
6940 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6941
6942 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6943 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6944
6945 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6946 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6947 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6948
6949 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6950 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6951
6952 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6953 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6954 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6955 libraries.
6956
6957 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6958 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6959 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6960 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6961 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6962
6963 * Internal improvements
6964
6965 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6966 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6967
6968 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6969 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6970 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6971 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6972 shared code that handles any of them.
6973
6974 * New command line options
6975
6976 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6977
6978 * Mmalloc licensing
6979
6980 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6981 General Public License.
6982
6983 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6984
6985 * Host/native/target split
6986
6987 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6988 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6989 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6990 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6991 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6992
6993 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6994 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6995 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6996 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6997 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6998 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6999 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
7000
7001 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
7002 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
7003 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
7004
7005 * New hosts supported
7006
7007 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
7008 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7009 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
7010
7011 * New targets supported
7012
7013 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
7014 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
7015
7016 * New native hosts supported
7017
7018 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
7019 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
7020 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
7021
7022 * New file formats supported
7023
7024 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
7025 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
7026 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
7027
7028 * New commands
7029
7030 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
7031 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
7032 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
7033
7034 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
7035
7036 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
7037 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
7038 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
7039 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
7040
7041 * C++ improvements
7042
7043 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
7044 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
7045 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
7046
7047 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
7048
7049 * Major bug fixes
7050
7051 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
7052 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
7053 by the compiler.
7054
7055 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
7056 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
7057
7058 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
7059 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
7060 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
7061 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
7062 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
7063 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
7064
7065 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
7066 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
7067 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
7068 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
7069
7070 * AMD 29k support
7071
7072 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
7073 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
7074 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
7075 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
7076 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
7077
7078 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
7079 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
7080 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
7081 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
7082
7083 * Remote interfaces
7084
7085 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
7086 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
7087 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
7088 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
7089 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
7090 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
7091 each instruction being stepped through.
7092
7093 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
7094 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
7095
7096 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
7097 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
7098 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
7099 processor with a serial port.
7100
7101 * Configuration
7102
7103 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
7104 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
7105 supported, and what files each one uses.
7106
7107 * Library changes
7108
7109 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
7110 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
7111 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
7112 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
7113
7114 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
7115 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
7116 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
7117 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
7118
7119 * Documentation
7120
7121 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
7122 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
7123 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
7124 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
7125 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
7126 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
7127
7128 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
7129
7130
7131 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
7132
7133 * Better support for C++ function names
7134
7135 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
7136 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
7137 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
7138 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
7139 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
7140
7141 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
7142 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
7143 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
7144 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
7145 for the list of formats.
7146
7147 * G++ symbol mangling problem
7148
7149 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
7150 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
7151 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
7152 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
7153 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
7154 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
7155 this problem.)
7156
7157 * New 'maintenance' command
7158
7159 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
7160 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
7161 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
7162
7163 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
7164 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
7165 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
7166 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
7167 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
7168 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
7169
7170 The following commands are new:
7171
7172 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
7173 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
7174 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
7175
7176 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
7177
7178 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
7179 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
7180 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
7181 read after argv processing.
7182
7183 * New hosts supported
7184
7185 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
7186
7187 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
7188
7189 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
7190 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
7191 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
7192 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
7193 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
7194 It costs extra.
7195
7196 * New targets supported
7197
7198 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
7199
7200 * More smarts about finding #include files
7201
7202 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
7203 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
7204 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
7205 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
7206 the one that contains your sources.
7207
7208 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
7209 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
7210 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
7211
7212 * Interesting infernals change
7213
7214 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
7215 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
7216 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
7217 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
7218
7219 * Bug fixes (of course!)
7220
7221 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
7222 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
7223 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
7224
7225 See the ChangeLog for details.
7226
7227 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
7228
7229 * New machines supported (host and target)
7230
7231 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
7232
7233 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
7234
7235 * New malloc package
7236
7237 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
7238 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
7239 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
7240 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
7241 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
7242 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
7243
7244 * info proc
7245
7246 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
7247 'help info proc' for details.
7248
7249 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
7250
7251 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
7252 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
7253 possible.
7254
7255 * File name changes for MS-DOS
7256
7257 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
7258 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
7259 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
7260 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
7261 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
7262 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
7263
7264 * Cross byte order fixes
7265
7266 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
7267 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
7268
7269 * New -mapped and -readnow options
7270
7271 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
7272 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
7273 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
7274 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
7275 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
7276 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
7277 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
7278 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
7279 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
7280 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
7281
7282 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
7283 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
7284 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
7285 slower, but makes future operations faster.
7286
7287 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
7288 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
7289 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
7290 use is:
7291
7292 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
7293
7294 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
7295 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
7296 shared across multiple host platforms.
7297
7298 * longjmp() handling
7299
7300 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
7301 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7302 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7303 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7304
7305 * Solaris 2.0
7306
7307 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7308 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7309 reading symbols.
7310
7311 * Bug fixes
7312
7313 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7314 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7315 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7316
7317 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7318
7319 * New machines supported (host and target)
7320
7321 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7322 (except core files)
7323 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7324 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7325
7326 * New machines supported (target)
7327
7328 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7329
7330 * C++ support
7331
7332 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7333 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7334 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7335
7336 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7337 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7338 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7339 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7340 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7341 released.
7342
7343 * New features for SVR4
7344
7345 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7346 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7347 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7348
7349 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7350 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7351 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7352
7353 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7354 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7355
7356 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7357
7358 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7359 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7360 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7361 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7362 same code linked statically.
7363
7364 * New Getopt
7365
7366 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7367 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7368 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7369 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7370 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7371 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7372
7373 * Bugs fixed
7374
7375 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7376 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7377 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7378
7379
7380 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7381
7382 * New machines supported (host and target)
7383
7384 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7385 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7386 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7387
7388 * Almost SCO Unix support
7389
7390 We had hoped to support:
7391 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7392 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7393 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7394 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7395
7396 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7397
7398 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7399 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7400 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7401 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7402 reqired (if any).
7403
7404 * New Readline
7405
7406 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7407 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7408 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7409
7410 * Bugs fixed
7411
7412 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7413 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7414 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7415
7416 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7417
7418 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7419 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7420 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7421
7422 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7423 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7424 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7425 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7426 version 2.
7427
7428 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7429 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7430 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7431 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7432 situation somewhat.
7433
7434 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7435 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7436 methods.
7437
7438 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7439 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7440 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7441
7442
7443 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7444
7445 * Improved configuration
7446
7447 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7448 Porting BFD is simpler.
7449
7450 * Stepping improved
7451
7452 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7453 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7454 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7455 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7456
7457 * Bug fixing
7458
7459 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7460
7461 * New host supported (not target)
7462
7463 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7464
7465
7466 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7467
7468 * Multiple source language support
7469
7470 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7471 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7472 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7473 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7474 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7475 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7476
7477 * GDB and Modula-2
7478
7479 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7480 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7481 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7482 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7483
7484 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7485 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7486 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7487
7488 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7489 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7490
7491 * set write on/off
7492
7493 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7494 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7495 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7496 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7497 effect immediately.
7498
7499 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7500
7501 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7502 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7503 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7504 examining core files.
7505
7506 * set listsize
7507
7508 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7509 The default is 10.
7510
7511 * New machines supported (host and target)
7512
7513 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7514 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7515 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7516
7517 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7518
7519 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7520
7521 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7522
7523 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7524 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7525 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7526
7527 * New remote interfaces
7528
7529 AMD 29000 Adapt
7530 AMD 29000 Minimon
7531
7532
7533 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7534
7535 * New Facilities
7536
7537 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7538
7539 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7540 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7541 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7542 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7543 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7544 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7545 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7546 stub on the target system.
7547
7548 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7549
7550 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7551 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7552 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7553
7554 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7555 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7556
7557
7558 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7559
7560 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7561 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7562
7563 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7564 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7565 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7566
7567 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7568 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7569 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7570 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7571
7572 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7573 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7574 it is already running. Default is ON.
7575
7576 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7577 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7578 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7579 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7580 Default is ON.
7581
7582 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7583 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7584 or the value of the environment variable
7585 GDBHISTFILE.
7586
7587 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7588 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7589 HISTSIZE.
7590
7591 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7592 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7593 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7594
7595 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7596 history expansion will be performed on
7597 command line input. The default is OFF.
7598
7599 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7600 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7601 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7602
7603 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7604 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7605 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7606 variable TERM.
7607
7608 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7609 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7610 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7611 variable TERM.
7612
7613 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7614 ``set width'' instead.
7615
7616 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7617 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7618 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7619 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7620
7621 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7622 is OFF.
7623
7624 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7625 "raw" form if off.
7626
7627 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7628 like instructions.
7629
7630 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7631
7632
7633 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7634
7635 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7636 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7637 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7638 window.
7639
7640
7641 * Support for Shared Libraries
7642
7643 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7644 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7645 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7646 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7647 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7648 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7649 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7650 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7651
7652 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7653 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7654 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7655
7656 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7657
7658
7659 * Watchpoints
7660
7661 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7662 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7663 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7664 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7665 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7666 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7667
7668 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7669
7670 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7671
7672 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7673 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7674 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7675
7676
7677 * C++ multiple inheritance
7678
7679 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7680 for C++ programs.
7681
7682 * C++ exception handling
7683
7684 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7685 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7686 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7687 handler's context).
7688
7689 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7690 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7691 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7692
7693 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7694 current stack frame.
7695
7696
7697 * Minor command changes
7698
7699 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7700 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7701 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7702
7703 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7704 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7705 frames without printing.
7706
7707 * New directory command
7708
7709 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7710 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7711 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7712 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7713 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7714
7715 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7716
7717 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7718 for more details.
7719
7720 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7721 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7722 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7723 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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