2011-09-02 Pedro Alves <pedro@codesourcery.com>
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.3
5
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6* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
7 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
8 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
9 target hardware watchpoint.
10
11 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
12 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
13 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
14 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
15
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16* Python scripting
17
18 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
19 deprecated, and a new command: "set python print-stack on|off" has
20 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is now
21 "off".
22
23 ** A prompt subsitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
24 Python API.
713389e0 25
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26 ** A new command set/show extended-prompt has been added.
27
28 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
29 modules library. This module provides functionality for
30 escape sequentions in prompts (used by set/show
31 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
32 corresponding value.
33
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34 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
35 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
36 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
37 on GDB start-up.
38
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39 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
40
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41* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
42 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
43 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
44 lives.
45
46 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
47 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
48 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
49 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
50 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
51
52 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
53 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
54
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55* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
56 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
57 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
58 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
59 use this option to specify where to find it.
60
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61* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
62 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
63 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
64 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
65 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
66 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
67 section in the user manual for more details.
68
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69* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
70 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
71 become available after that.
72
edc84990 73* New commands "info macros", and "info definitions" have been added.
74
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75* Changed commands
76
77watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
78 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
79 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
80
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81info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
82 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
83 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
84
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85* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
86 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
87 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
88 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
89 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
90 is running.
91
92* New remote packets
93
94QTEnable
95
96 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
97
98QTDisable
99
100 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
101
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102* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
103 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
104
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105* New targets
106
107Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
108
d6e00af6 109*** Changes in GDB 7.3
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111* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
112 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
113 matches the given regular expression.
114
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115* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
116
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117* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
118 dumping the instruction opcodes.
119
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120* New command line options
121
122-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
123 This is mostly for testing purposes.
124
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125* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
126 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
127
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128* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
129 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
130 source path list instead of augmenting it.
131
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132* GDB now understands thread names.
133
134 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
135 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
136
137 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
138 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
139
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140* OpenCL C
141 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
142 has been integrated into GDB.
143
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144* Python scripting
145
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146 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
147 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
148 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
149
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150 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
151 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
152 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
153 and allows for more dynamic content.
154
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155 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
156 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
157 have an is_valid method.
158
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159 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
160 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
161 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
162
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163 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
164
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165 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
166 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
167 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
168 that function like so:
169
170 result = some_value (10,20)
171
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172 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
173 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
174 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
175
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176 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
177 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
178 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
179 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
180 New function: register_pretty_printer.
181
182 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
183 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
184
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185 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
186
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187 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
188 selected thread.
189
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190 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
191 holds the thread's name.
192
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193 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
194 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 195 occurring in the process being debugged.
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196 The following events are currently supported:
197 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
198 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
199 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
200
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201* C++ Improvements:
202
203 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
204 instantiation. For example, if you have:
205
206 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
207
208 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
209 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
210 was added to GCC 4.5.
211
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212 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
213 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
214 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
215 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
216 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
217 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
218
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219* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
220 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
221 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
222 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
223 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
224
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225* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
226 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
227 execution to a label.
228
229* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
230 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
231 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
232 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
233
b56df873 234* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 235 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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236 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
237 of scope.
238
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239* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
240
241 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
242 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
243 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
244 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
245 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
246 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
247
248 (gdb) info threads
249 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
250
251 While now you see this:
252
253 (gdb) info threads
254 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
255
256 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
257 dumps.
258
259 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
260 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
261 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
262 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
263
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264* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
265 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
266 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
267 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
268 section in the user manual for more details.
269
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270* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
271
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272 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
273 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 274
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275 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
276
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277* New native configurations
278
279ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
280
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281* New targets:
282
283Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
284
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285* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
286 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
287 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
288 in the GDB user manual.
289
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290* Guile support was removed.
291
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292* New features in the GNU simulator
293
294 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
295
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296 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
297
76b8507d 298*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 299
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300* Shared library support for remote targets by default
301
302 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
303 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
304 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
305 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
306 was always disabled for such configurations.
307
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308* C++ Improvements:
309
310 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
311
312 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
313 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
314 For example:
315 namespace A
316 {
317 class B { };
318 void foo (B) { }
319 }
320 ...
321 A::B b
322 foo(b)
323 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
324 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
325 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
326
327 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
328
329 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
330 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
331 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
332 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
333 entry.
334 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
335 mentioned flavors of operators.
336
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337 ** static const class members
338
339 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
340 class definition has been fixed.
341
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342* Windows Thread Information Block access.
343
344 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
345 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
346 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
347 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
348 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
349 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
350
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351* Static tracepoints
352
353 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
354 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
355 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
356 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
357 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
358 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
359 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
360 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
361 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
362 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
363 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
364 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
365 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
366 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
367 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
368 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
369 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
370 the "New remote packets" section below.
371
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372* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
373
374 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
375 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
376 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
377 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
378
379* Observer mode
380
381 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
382 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
383 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
384 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
385 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
386 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
387 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
388
389* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
390 current thread.
391
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392* New remote packets
393
394qGetTIBAddr
395
396 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
397
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398qRelocInsn
399
400 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
401 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
402 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
403 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
404 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
405 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
406
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407qTfSTM, qTsSTM
408
409 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
410
411qTSTMat
412
413 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
414 program.
415
416qXfer:statictrace:read
417
418 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
419 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
420 to gdb's qSupported query.
421
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422QAllow
423
424 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
425
426QTDPsrc
427
428 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
429 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
430
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431* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
432 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
433 a directory.
434
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435* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
436
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437 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
438 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
439 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
440 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
441
442 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
443 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
444 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
445 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
446 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
447 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
448 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
449
450 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
451 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 452
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453 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
454
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455* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
456 it understands register description.
457
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458* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
459
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460* X86 general purpose registers
461
462 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
463 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
464 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
465 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
466 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
467
95a42b64 468* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
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469 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
470 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
471 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
472 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
473 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 474
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475* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
476 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
477 in the specified file.
478
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479* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
480 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
481 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
482 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
483 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
484 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
485 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
486 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
487 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
488 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
489
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490* New commands
491
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492eval template, expressions...
493 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
494 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
495
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496set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
497show target-file-system-kind
498 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
499 names.
500
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501save breakpoints <filename>
502 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
503 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
504 definitions, use the `source' command.
505
506`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
507is now deprecated.
508
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509info static-tracepoint-markers
510 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
511
512strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
513 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
514 function, line, address, or marker ID.
515
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516set observer on|off
517show observer
518 Enable and disable observer mode.
519
520set may-write-registers on|off
521set may-write-memory on|off
522set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
523set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
524set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
525set may-interrupt on|off
526 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
527 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
528 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
529 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
530 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
531 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
532 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
533
534set record memory-query on|off
535show record memory-query
536 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
537 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
538
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539* Changed commands
540
541disassemble
542 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
543
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544* Python scripting
545
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546** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
547 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
548 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
549 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
550 GDB using Python' in the manual.
551
adc36818 552** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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553 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
554 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
555 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 556
fa33c3cd 557** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
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558 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
559
560** New exception gdb.GdbError.
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561
562** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 563
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564** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
565
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566** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
567 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
568 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
569
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570* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
571there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
572tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
573regular breakpoints.
574
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575* New targets
576
577ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
578
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579* D language support.
580 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
581 language.
582
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583* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
584 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
585 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
586 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
587 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
588
589* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
590 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
591 conditions of the form:
592
593 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
594
595 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
596 interface mentioned above.
597
bfbf3774 598*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 599
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600* C++ Improvements
601
602 ** Namespace Support
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603
604 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
605 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
606 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
607 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
608 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
609
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610 ** Bug Fixes
611
612 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
613 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
614 qualified name.
615
616 ** Cast Operators
617
618 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
619 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
620
2d1c1221
ME
621* New targets
622
623Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 624Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
625
626* New Simulators
627
628Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 629Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 630
6c95b8df
PA
631* Multi-program debugging.
632
633 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
634 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
635 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
636 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
637 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
638 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
639 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
640 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
641
d5551862
SS
642* New tracing features
643
644 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
645
646 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
647
648 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
649 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
650 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
651 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
652 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
653 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
654 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
655 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
656 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
657 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 658
d5551862 659 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
660
661 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
662 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
663 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
664 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
665 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
666 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
667 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
668 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
669 the regular trace command.
670
d5551862
SS
671 ** Disconnected tracing
672
673 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
674 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
675 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
676 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
677 connection is lost unexpectedly.
678
00bf0b85
SS
679 ** Trace files
680
681 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
682 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
683 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
684 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
685 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
686 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
687 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
688
689 ** Circular trace buffer
690
691 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
692 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
693 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
694 not be available for all target agents.
695
21a0512e
PP
696* Changed commands
697
698disassemble
699 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
700 the arguments to be comma-separated.
701
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DJ
702info variables
703 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
704 which only declare a variable are not shown.
705
fb2e7cb4
JB
706source
707 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
708 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
709 support.
710
711 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
712 "set script-extension" (see below).
713
6c95b8df
PA
714* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
715
399cd161
MS
716record save [<FILENAME>]
717 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
718 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
719
720record restore <FILENAME>
721 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
722 earlier time, for replay debugging.
723
6c95b8df
PA
724add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
725 Add a new inferior.
726
727clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
728 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
729 inferior has loaded.
730
731remove-inferior ID
732 Remove an inferior.
733
734maint info program-spaces
735 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
736
9a7071a8
JB
737set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
738show remote interrupt-sequence
739 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
740 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
741 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
742 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
743 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
744
745set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
746show remote interrupt-on-connect
747 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
748 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
749 Linux kernel.
750
751set remotebreak [on | off]
752show remotebreak
753Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
754
f61e138d
SS
755tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
756 Create or modify a trace state variable.
757
758info tvariables
759 List trace state variables and their values.
760
761delete tvariable $NAME ...
762 Delete one or more trace state variables.
763
6da95a67
SS
764teval EXPR, ...
765 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
766 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
767
7a697b8d
SS
768ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
769 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
770
b0f02ee9
JK
771* New expression syntax
772
773 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
774 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
775
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PA
776* New options
777
778set follow-exec-mode new|same
779show follow-exec-mode
780 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
781 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
782 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
783
236f1d4d
SS
784set default-collect EXPR, ...
785show default-collect
786 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
787 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
788 such as registers or a critical global variable.
789
d5551862
SS
790set disconnected-tracing
791show disconnected-tracing
792 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
793 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
794 upon disconnection.
795
4daf5ac0
SS
796set circular-trace-buffer
797show circular-trace-buffer
798 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
799 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
800 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
801 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
802
fb2e7cb4
JB
803set script-extension off|soft|strict
804show script-extension
805 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
806 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
807 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
808 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
809 evaluation failed.
810 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
811
2b71fc8e
JB
812set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
813show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
814 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
815 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
816 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
817 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
818 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
819 is on.
820
de2e5182
TT
821* Python API Improvements
822
823 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
824 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
825 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
826
827 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
828 `is_base_class' attribute.
829
830 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
831
832 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
833 evaluate an expression.
834
f61e138d
SS
835* New remote packets
836
837QTDV
838 Define a trace state variable.
839
840qTV
841 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
842
d5551862
SS
843QTDisconnected
844 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
845
4daf5ac0
SS
846QTBuffer:circular
847 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
848
d5551862
SS
849qTfP, qTsP
850 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
851
2d483d34
MS
852* Bug fixes
853
854Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
855
6e0e5977
JB
856Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
857much more reliable. In particular:
858 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
859 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
860 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
861 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
862 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
863 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
864 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
865 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
866 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
867 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
868 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
869 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
870 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
871 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
872 non-threaded programs.
873
93c26624
JK
874PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
875This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
876libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
877executable program.
878
abc7453d 879*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 880
4efc6507
DE
881* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
882dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
883them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
884for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
885"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
886
782b2b07
SS
887* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
888breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
889or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
890the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
891for tracepoint actions.
892
53a71c06
CR
893* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
894raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
895modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 896
e7a8dbfb
HZ
897* Process record and replay
898
899 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
900 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
901 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
902 execute commands.
903
64644d9b
MS
904* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
905step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
906set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
907reverse execution.
908
b9412953
DD
909* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
910feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
9112.6.28 or later.
912
6c7a06a3
TT
913* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
914target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
915char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
916literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
917U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
918`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
919system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
920the installation instructions for more information.
921
f1838a98
UW
922* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
923remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
924with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
925the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
926
55333a84
DE
927* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
928and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
929
7f6a6314
PM
930* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
931now complete on file names.
932
65d12d83
TT
933* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
934completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
935For instance, consider:
936
937 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
938 # struct example variable;
939 (gdb) p variable.
940
941If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
942completions will be "f1" and "f2".
943
edb3359d
DJ
944* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
945the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
946
2fae03e8
TT
947* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
948operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
949macros.
950
47a3467a 951* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
952the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
953implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
954
955* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
956registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
957can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
958and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 959
08388c79
DE
960* New remote packets
961
962qSearch:memory:
963 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
964
a6f3e723
SL
965QStartNoAckMode
966 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
967 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
968 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
969
d7713ae0
EZ
970vKill
971 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
972 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
973
07e059b5
VP
974qXfer:osdata:read
975 Obtains additional operating system information
976
47a3467a
PA
977qXfer:siginfo:read
978qXfer:siginfo:write
979 Read or write additional signal information.
980
060871df
PA
981* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
982
983 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
984 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
985 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
986
c055b101 987* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 988DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
989
990* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
991and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
992`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 993
31fffb02
CS
994* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
995with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
996
88d8a8e0
JB
997* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
998
7f99b190
JB
999* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1000
ccd213ac
DJ
1001* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1002which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1003
1fddbabb 1004* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1005list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1006
a0ef4274
DJ
1007* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1008conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1009have also been fixed.
1010
bfb8797a 1011* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1012From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1013are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1014
71c25dea
TT
1015* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1016example, given:
1017
1018 template<typename T> class C { };
1019 C<char const *> c;
1020
1021GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1022
1023 ptype C<char const *>
1024 ptype C<char const*>
1025 ptype C<const char *>
1026 ptype C<const char*>
1027
ccd213ac
DJ
1028* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1029
1030 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1031 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1032
7ae0e2a2
UW
1033 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1034 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1035 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1036
a6f3e723
SL
1037 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1038 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1039
da8bd9a3
DJ
1040 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1041 gdbserver.
1042
d70e31dd
DE
1043 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1044 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1045
1046 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1047 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1048 as appropriate.
1049
d57a3c85
TJB
1050* Python scripting
1051
1052 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1053 available is determined at configure time.
1054
d8906c6f
TJB
1055 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1056
aadc346a
JB
1057* Ada tasking support
1058
1059 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1060 been introduced:
1061
1062 info tasks
1063 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1064 info task N
1065 Print detailed information about task number N.
1066 task
1067 Print the task number of the current task.
1068 task N
1069 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1070
adb483fe
DJ
1071* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1072add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1073
2277426b
PA
1074* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1075
1076 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1077 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1078 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1079 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1080 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1081 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1082 below.
1083
08d16641
PA
1084* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1085"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1086information.
1087
e35359c5
UW
1088* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1089to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1090architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1091See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1092more information.
1093
85e747d2
UW
1094* Multi-architecture debugging.
1095
1096 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1097 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1098 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1099 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1100 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1101
1102* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1103use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1104Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1105powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1106--enable-targets configure option.
1107
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PA
1108* Non-stop mode debugging.
1109
1110 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1111 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1112 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1113 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1114 section in the user manual for more information.
1115
1116 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1117 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1118 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1119 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1120 extensions on linux targets.
1121
d7713ae0 1122* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1123
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1124catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1125 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1126 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1127 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1128 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1129 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1130 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1131 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1132 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1133
08388c79
DE
1134find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1135 val1 [, val2, ...]
1136 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1137
d57a3c85
TJB
1138maint set python print-stack
1139maint show python print-stack
1140 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1141
1142python [CODE]
1143 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1144
d7713ae0
EZ
1145macro define
1146macro list
1147macro undef
1148 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1149 interactively.
1150
1151info os processes
1152 Show operating system information about processes.
1153
2277426b
PA
1154info inferiors
1155 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1156
1157inferior NUM
1158 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1159
1160detach inferior NUM
1161 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1162
1163kill inferior NUM
1164 Kill inferior number NUM.
1165
d7713ae0
EZ
1166* New options
1167
3285f3fe
UW
1168set spu stop-on-load
1169show spu stop-on-load
1170 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1171
ff1a52c6
UW
1172set spu auto-flush-cache
1173show spu auto-flush-cache
1174 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1175 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1176
d7713ae0
EZ
1177set sh calling-convention
1178show sh calling-convention
1179 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1180
e0a3ce09 1181set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1182show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1183 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1184
1185set disassemble-next-line
1186show disassemble-next-line
1187 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1188 the debuggee stops.
1189
1190set remote noack-packet
1191show remote noack-packet
1192 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1193 under "New remote packets."
1194
1195set remote query-attached-packet
1196show remote query-attached-packet
1197 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1198
1199set remote read-siginfo-object
1200show remote read-siginfo-object
1201 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1202 packet.
1203
1204set remote write-siginfo-object
1205show remote write-siginfo-object
1206 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1207 packet.
1208
40ab02ce
MS
1209set remote reverse-continue
1210show remote reverse-continue
1211 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1212
1213set remote reverse-step
1214show remote reverse-step
1215 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1216
d7713ae0
EZ
1217set displaced-stepping
1218show displaced-stepping
1219 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1220 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1221 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1222
1223set debug displaced
1224show debug displaced
1225 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1226
1227maint set internal-error
1228maint show internal-error
1229 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1230
1231maint set internal-warning
1232maint show internal-warning
1233 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1234
ccd213ac
DJ
1235set exec-wrapper
1236show exec-wrapper
1237unset exec-wrapper
1238 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1239
aad4b048
JB
1240set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1241show multiple-symbols
1242 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1243 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1244 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1245
74960c60
VP
1246set breakpoint always-inserted
1247show breakpoint always-inserted
1248 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1249 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1250 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1251
0428b8f5
DJ
1252set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1253show arm fallback-mode
1254set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1255show arm force-mode
1256 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1257 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1258 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1259 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1260
10568435
JK
1261set disable-randomization
1262show disable-randomization
1263 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1264 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1265 multiple debugging sessions.
1266
d7713ae0
EZ
1267set non-stop
1268show non-stop
1269 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1270 a breakpoint.
1271
b3eb342c 1272set target-async
d7713ae0 1273show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1274 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1275 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1276 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1277 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1278
6c7a06a3
TT
1279set target-wide-charset
1280show target-wide-charset
1281 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1282 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1283
84603566
SL
1284set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1285show tcp auto-retry
1286set tcp connect-timeout
1287show tcp connect-timeout
1288 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1289 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1290 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1291
17a37d48
PP
1292set libthread-db-search-path
1293show libthread-db-search-path
1294 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1295 libthread_db.
1296
d4db2f36
PA
1297set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1298show schedule-multiple
1299 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1300 the current process.
1301
4e5d721f
DE
1302set stack-cache
1303show stack-cache
1304 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1305 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1306 affecting correctness.
1307
910c5da8
JB
1308set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1309show interactive-mode
1310 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1311 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1312 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1313 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1314 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1315
2277426b
PA
1316* Removed commands
1317
1318info forks
1319 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1320 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1321 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1322 command.
1323
1324fork NUM
1325 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1326 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1327 alias for the `fork' command.
1328
1329process PID
1330 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1331 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1332 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1333
1334delete fork NUM
1335 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1336 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1337 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1338 fork' command.
1339
1340detach fork NUM
1341 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1342 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1343 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1344 fork' command.
1345
a80b95ba
TG
1346* New native configurations
1347
1348x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1349
b8bfd3ed
JB
1350x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1351
75a2d5e7
TT
1352* New targets
1353
c28c63d8 1354Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1355x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1356x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1357S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1358
6de3146c
PA
1359* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1360 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1361
d5cbbe6e
JB
1362* Removed commands
1363
1364catch load
1365catch unload
1366 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1367
75feb17d 1368*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1369
af5ca30d
NH
1370* New native configurations
1371
1372NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1373Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1374
1375* New targets
1376
1377NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1378Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1379
7a404eba
PA
1380* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1381
1382 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1383 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1384 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1385 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1386
430ebac9
PA
1387* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1388(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1389
fe6fbf8b 1390* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1391is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1392
1393* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1394including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1395and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1396
10665d76
JB
1397* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1398accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1399more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1400
7cc46491
DJ
1401* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1402
d71340b8
DJ
1403* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1404registers on PowerPC targets.
1405
523c4513
DJ
1406* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1407targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1408
a6b151f1
DJ
1409* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1410commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1411
2d717e4f
DJ
1412* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1413extended-remote mode.
1414
24a836bd 1415* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1416The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1417error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1418The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1419
d0c678e6
UW
1420* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1421building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1422target architectures.
1423
d64a946d
TJB
1424* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1425Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1426now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1427stored in two consecutive float registers.
1428
ee163bf5
VP
1429* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1430breakpoints now.
1431
b93b6ca7 1432* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1433Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1434include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1435 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1436 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1437 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1438 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1439 of an assignment
1440 - Improved command completion in Ada
1441 - Several bug fixes
1442
d001be7a
DJ
1443* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1444process.
1445
a6b151f1
DJ
1446* New commands
1447
6d53d0af
JB
1448set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1449show print frame-arguments
1450 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1451 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1452
a6b151f1
DJ
1453remote put
1454remote get
1455remote delete
1456 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1457
1458* New MI commands
1459
1460-target-file-put
1461-target-file-get
1462-target-file-delete
1463 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1464
1465* New remote packets
1466
1467vFile:open:
1468vFile:close:
1469vFile:pread:
1470vFile:pwrite:
1471vFile:unlink:
1472 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1473
2d717e4f
DJ
1474vAttach
1475 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1476 mode.
1477
1478vRun
1479 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1480
8d5f9c6f 1481*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1482
19d378fc
MS
1483* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1484bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1485Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1486
3a40aaa0
UW
1487* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1488symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1489-Bsymbolic linker option.
1490
a6ec25f2
BW
1491* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1492recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1493is not supported.
1494
6dd09645
JB
1495* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1496frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1497
c9bb8148
DJ
1498* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
149932-bit or 64-bit register values.
1500
0d5de010
DJ
1501* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1502
23181151
DJ
1503* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1504target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1505a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1506
ea37ba09
DJ
1507* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1508automatically displayed as character or string data.
1509
1510* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1511arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1512as strings.
e1f48ead 1513
123dc839
DJ
1514* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1515for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1516only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1517
05a4558a
DJ
1518* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1519iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1520
7c963485
PA
1521* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1522ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1523has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1524
b18be20d
DJ
1525* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1526
0ca420ce
UW
1527* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1528
31d99776
DJ
1529* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1530layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1531segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1532
a4642986
MR
1533* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1534immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1535
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1536* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1537"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1538packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1539where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1540Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1541
1542* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1543(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1544
1545* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1546according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1547
c9bb8148
DJ
1548* New commands
1549
23776285
MR
1550set remoteflow
1551show remoteflow
1552 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1553 when debugging using remote targets.
1554
c9bb8148
DJ
1555set mem inaccessible-by-default
1556show mem inaccessible-by-default
1557 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1558 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1559 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1560 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1561 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1562
1563set breakpoint auto-hw
1564show breakpoint auto-hw
1565 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1566 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1567 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1568 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1569 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1570 including "next" and "finish".
1571
0e420bd8
JB
1572catch exception
1573catch exception unhandled
1574 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1575
1576catch assert
1577 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1578
f822c95b
DJ
1579set sysroot
1580show sysroot
1581 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1582 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1583 an alias to "set sysroot".
1584
83cc5c53
UW
1585info spu
1586 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1587 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1588 architecture.
1589
bd372731
MK
1590* New native configurations
1591
1592OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1593
23181151
DJ
1594set tdesc filename
1595unset tdesc filename
1596show tdesc filename
1597 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1598 not query the target for its built-in description.
1599
c9bb8148
DJ
1600* New targets
1601
54fe9172 1602OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1603MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1604Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1605
6dd09645
JB
1606* New remote packets
1607
1608QPassSignals:
1609 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1610 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1611
23181151
DJ
1612qXfer:features:read:
1613 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1614 features.
6dd09645 1615
83cc5c53
UW
1616qXfer:spu:read:
1617qXfer:spu:write:
1618 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1619 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1620
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1621qXfer:libraries:read:
1622 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1623 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1624 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1625 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1626
483367ee
DJ
1627* Removed targets
1628
1629Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1630
d08950c4
UW
1631alpha*-*-osf1*
1632alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1633d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1634hppa*-*-hiux*
1635i[34567]86-ncr-*
1636i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1637i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1638i[34567]86-*-netware*
1639i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1640i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1641i[34567]86-*-sco*
1642i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
1643i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
1644i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
1645i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
1646i[34567]86-*-unixware*
1647i[34567]86-*-sysv*
1648i[34567]86-*-isc*
1649m68*-cisco*-*
1650m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 1651mips*-*-pe
483367ee 1652rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 1653sh*-*-pe
483367ee 1654
7ce59000
DJ
1655* Other removed features
1656
1657target abug
1658target cpu32bug
1659target est
1660target rom68k
1661
1662 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
1663
ea35711c
DJ
1664target hms
1665target e7000
1666target sh3
1667target sh3e
1668
1669 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
1670 H8/300.
1671
1672target ocd
1673
1674 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
1675 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
1676 interfaces.
1677
7ce59000
DJ
1678DWARF 1 support
1679
1680 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
1681 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
1682
54d61198
DJ
1683Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
1684
1685 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
1686 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
1687 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
1688 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
1689
ea35711c
DJ
1690MIPS ".pdr" sections
1691
1692 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
1693 in debugging information.
1694
1695Scheme support
1696
1697 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
1698 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
1699
1a69e1e4
DJ
1700set mips stack-arg-size
1701set mips saved-gpreg-size
1702
1703 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
1704
6dd09645 1705*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 1706
ca3bf3bd
DJ
1707* New targets
1708
1709Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 1710Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 1711
6aec2e11
DJ
1712* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
1713(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
1714running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
1715
1716* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
1717Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
1718supported.
1719
17218d91
DJ
1720* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
1721broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
1722
9ebce043
DJ
1723* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
1724stub provides the required support.
1725
7d3d3ece
DJ
1726* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
1727longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
1728
4f8253f3
JB
1729* New commands
1730
1731set substitute-path
1732unset substitute-path
1733show substitute-path
1734 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
1735 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
1736 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
1737 between compilation and debugging.
1738
9fa66fd7
AS
1739set trace-commands
1740show trace-commands
1741 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
1742 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
1743 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
1744
1f5befc1
DJ
1745* REMOVED features
1746
1747The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
1748
2ec3381a
DJ
1749Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
1750an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
1751
3d00d119
DJ
1752The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
1753
be2a5f71
DJ
1754* New remote packets
1755
1756qSupported:
1757 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
1758 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
1759 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
1760 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
1761 target.
1762
0876f84a
DJ
1763qXfer:auxv:read:
1764 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
1765 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
1766
9ebce043
DJ
1767qXfer:memory-map:read:
1768 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
1769 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
1770
1771vFlashErase:
1772vFlashWrite:
1773vFlashDone:
1774 Erase and program a flash memory device.
1775
0876f84a
DJ
1776* Removed remote packets
1777
1778qPart:auxv:read:
1779 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
1780 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
1781
e374b601 1782*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 1783
96309189
MS
1784* New targets
1785
1786Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
1787
1788Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1789
53e5f3cf
AS
1790* New commands
1791
1792init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
1793 only if it doesn't already have a value.
1794
ac264b3b
MS
1795The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
1796
1797checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
1798
1799restart <n> Return the program state to a
1800 previously saved state.
1801
1802info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
1803
1804delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
1805
1806set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
1807 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
1808
1809info forks List forks of the user program that
1810 are available to be debugged.
1811
1812fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
1813 forks of the user program that are
1814 available to be debugged.
1815
1816delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1817 that are available to be debugged (and
1818 kill the forked process).
1819
1820detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
1821 that are available to be debugged (and
1822 allow the process to continue).
1823
3950dc3f
NS
1824* New architecture
1825
1826Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
1827
0ea3f30e
DJ
1828* Improved Windows host support
1829
1830GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
1831native console support, and remote communications using either
1832network sockets or serial ports.
1833
f79daebb
GM
1834* Improved Modula-2 language support
1835
1836GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
1837basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
1838pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
1839printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
1840written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
1841GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
1842
acab6ab2
MM
1843* REMOVED features
1844
1845The ARM rdi-share module.
1846
f4267320
DJ
1847The Netware NLM debug server.
1848
53e5f3cf 1849*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 1850
e0ecbda1
MK
1851* New native configurations
1852
02a677ac 1853OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
1854OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
1855
d64a6579
KB
1856* New targets
1857
1858Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
1859
b33a6190
AS
1860* New command line options
1861
1862--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1863--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1864 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1865--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1866 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1867 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1868 with the --command (-x) option.
1869
11dced61
AC
1870* Deprecated commands removed
1871
1872The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1873removed:
1874
1875 Command Replacement
1876 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1877 othernames set arm disassembler
1878 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1879 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1880 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1881 regs info registers
1882
6fe85783
MK
1883* New BSD user-level threads support
1884
1885It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1886library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1887configurations are:
1888
1889FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1890FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1891OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1892
1893Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1894are not yet supported.
1895
5260ca71
MS
1896* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1897(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1898
e84ecc99
AC
1899* REMOVED configurations and files
1900
1901VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 1902Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 1903National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 1904
31e35378
JB
1905* New "set print array-indexes" command
1906
1907After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1908when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1909behavior.
1910
e85e5c83
MK
1911* VAX floating point support
1912
1913GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1914
d91e9901
AS
1915* User-defined command support
1916
1917In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1918to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1919section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1920
f2cb65ca
MC
1921*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1922
f47b1503
AS
1923* New command line option
1924
1925GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1926debugging.
1927
f2cb65ca
MC
1928* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1929
1930GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1931information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1932by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1933proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1934to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 1935
d08c0230
AC
1936* Internationalization
1937
1938When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1939internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1940continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1941
117ea3cf
PH
1942* Ada
1943
1944Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1945implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1946into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1947
d08c0230
AC
1948* New native configurations
1949
1950GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1951
1952* Remote 'p' packet
1953
1954GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1955packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1956
1957* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1958
1959GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1960The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1961features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1962i386 application).
1963
1964GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1965compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1966continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1967configurations:
1968
1969hppa-*-hpux
1970ia64-*-aix
1971mips-*-irix*
1972*-*-lynx
1973mips-*-linux-gnu
1974sds protocol
1975xdr protocol
1976powerpc bdm protocol
1977
1978Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1979made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1980
1981* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1982
1983Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1984been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1985configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1986permanently REMOVED.
1987
1988h8300-*-*
1989mcore-*-*
1990mn10300-*-*
1991ns32k-*-*
1992sh64-*-*
1993v850-*-*
1994
ebb7c577
AC
1995*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1996
1997* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1998
1999When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2000heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2001been fixed.
2002
2003* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2004
2005When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2006fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2007IRIX long double values).
2008
2009* VAX and "next"
2010
2011A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2012command. This problem has been fixed.
2013
860660cb 2014*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2015
0dea2468
AC
2016* Fix for ``many threads''
2017
2018On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2019rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2020error message:
2021
2022 ptrace: No such process.
2023 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2024
2025This problem has been fixed.
2026
2c07db7a
AC
2027* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2028
2029Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2030GDB to dump core).
2031
c23968a2
JB
2032* New ``start'' command.
2033
2034This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2035
71009278
MK
2036* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2037
2038Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2039live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2040platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2041
2042FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2043FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2044NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2045NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2046NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2047OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2048OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2049OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2050OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2051
3c0b7db2
AC
2052* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2053
2054Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2055These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2056of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2057call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2058signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2059
73cc75f3
AC
2060Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2061features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2062include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2063
7243600a
BF
2064* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2065
6f606e1c
MK
2066* New native configurations
2067
97dc871c 2068GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2069OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2070OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2071OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2072OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2073NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2074OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2075
a1b461bf
AC
2076* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2077
2078GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2079The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2080including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2081migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2082compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2083work, was also included.
2084
2085GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2086module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2087
2088h8300-*-*
2089mcore-*-*
2090mn10300-*-*
2091ns32k-*-*
2092sh64-*-*
2093v850-*-*
2094xstormy16-*-*
2095
2096Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2097made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2098
3c7012f5
AC
2099* REMOVED configurations and files
2100
2101Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2102Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2103Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2104Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2105Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2106AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2107Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2108decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2109riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2110sonymips mips-sony-*
2111sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2112
e5fe55f7
AC
2113*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2114
2115* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2116
2117The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2118GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2119command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2120program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2121with GDB".
2122
2123* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2124
2125Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2126libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2127cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2128GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2129shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2130the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2131are created.
2132
2133Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2134
2135* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2136
2137The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2138non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2139compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2140
2141* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2142
2143Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2144wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2145
2146* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2147
2148The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2149permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2150systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2151
2152* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2153
2154Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2155has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2156
2157* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2158
2159GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2160its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2161panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2162
2163* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2164
2165When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2166by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2167not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2168
faae5abe 2169*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2170
9175c9a3
MC
2171* Removed --with-mmalloc
2172
2173Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2174conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2175
3cc87ec0
MK
2176* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2177
2178The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2179the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2180and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2181you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2182
f0424ef6
MK
2183* Revised SPARC target
2184
2185The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2186FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2187support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2188from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2189(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2190
59659be2
ILT
2191* New C++ demangler
2192
2193GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2194names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2195with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2196programs.
2197
9e08b29b
DJ
2198* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2199
2200GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2201arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2202encountered these.
2203
8dfe8985
DC
2204* C++ nested types and namespaces
2205
2206GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2207improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2208is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2209Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2210namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2211"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2212frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2213if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2214GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2215
cced5e27
MK
2216* New native configurations
2217
2218NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2219OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2220OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2221OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2222OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2223
b4b4b794
KI
2224* New debugging protocols
2225
2226M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2227
7989c619
AC
2228* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2229
2230The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2231and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2232tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2233
5994185b
AC
2234* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2235
2236Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2237been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2238configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2239permanently REMOVED.
2240
2241Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2242Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2243Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2244Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2245Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2246AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2247Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2248decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2249riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2250sonymips mips-sony-*
2251sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2252
0ddabb4c
AC
2253* REMOVED configurations and files
2254
2255SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2256SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2257Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2258Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2259H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2260HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2261HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2262HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2263PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2264386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2265Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2266 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2267 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2268SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2269SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2270Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2271Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2272
c7f1390e
DJ
2273*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2274
1fe43d45
AC
2275* Objective-C
2276
2277Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2278integrated into GDB.
2279
e6beb428
AC
2280* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2281
2282DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2283information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2284By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2285backtraces.
2286
2287The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2288have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2289DWARF 2 CFI support.
2290
2291* Hosted file I/O.
2292
2293GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2294file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2295remote protocol documentation for details.
2296
2297* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2298
2299All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2300architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2301to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2302ppc32 on ppc64).
2303
2304* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2305
2306GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2307per-thread variables.
2308
2309* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2310
2311GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2312GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2313
2314* Separate debug info.
2315
2316GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2317automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2318of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2319system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2320and optional debug files.
2321
2322* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2323
2324DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2325describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2326debugger.
2327
2328GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2329for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2330
2331* Java
2332
2333A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2334Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2335considered "useable".
2336
85f8f974
DJ
2337* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2338
2339The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2340commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2341kernel.
2342
0fac0b41
DJ
2343* GDB supports logging output to a file
2344
2345There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2346used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2347
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2348* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2349
2350The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2351disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2352command.
2353
e286caf2 2354* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2355
2356The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2357registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2358
d28f9cdf
DJ
2359* Profiling support
2360
2361A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2362be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2363session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2364"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2365data, for more informative profiling results.
2366
da0f9dcd
AC
2367* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2368
2369The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2370option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2371"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2372
2373Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2374removed.
2375
fb9b6b35
JJ
2376Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2377Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2378Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2379 in a subsequent -var-update.
2380
954a4db8
MK
2381* New native configurations.
2382
2383FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2384
6760f9e6
JB
2385* Multi-arched targets.
2386
b4263afa 2387HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2388Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2389
1b831c93
AC
2390* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2391
2392Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2393been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2394configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2395permanently REMOVED.
2396
8b0e5691 2397Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2398Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2399H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2400HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2401HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2402HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2403PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2404Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2405 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2406 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2407Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2408Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2409
5835abe7
NC
2410* REMOVED configurations and files
2411
2412V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2413Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2414IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2415i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2416i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2417i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2418HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2419 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2420 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2421Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2422Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2423Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2424OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2425I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2426
a094c6fb
AC
2427* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2428
2429The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2430the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2431context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2432address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2433The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2434
299ffc64 2435*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2436
46248966
AC
2437* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2438
2439When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2440`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2441in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2442library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2443shared libs like mad''.
2444
b9d14705 2445* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2446
b9d14705
DJ
2447Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2448the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2449arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2450powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2451
e0e9281e
JB
2452* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2453
2454GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2455and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2456they expand.
2457
dd73b9bb
AC
2458The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2459invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2460
2461The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2462macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2463
e0e9281e
JB
2464Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2465information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2466your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2467information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2468
2250ee0c
CV
2469* Multi-arched targets.
2470
6e3ba3b8
JT
2471DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2472DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2473NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2474National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2475Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2476Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2477
cd9bfe15 2478* New targets.
e33ce519 2479
456f8b9d
DB
2480Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2481
e33ce519 2482
da8ca43d
JT
2483* New native configurations
2484
2485Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2486SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2487MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2488UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2489
cd9bfe15
AC
2490* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2491
2492Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2493been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2494configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2495permanently REMOVED.
2496
92eb23c5 2497Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2498OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2499IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2500Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2501Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2502Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2503i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2504i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2505i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2506HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2507 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2508 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2509I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2510
db034ac5
AC
2511* OBSOLETE languages
2512
2513CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2514
cd9bfe15
AC
2515* REMOVED configurations and files
2516
2517AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2518A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2519AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2520AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2521AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2522
2523testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2524
20f01a46
DH
2525* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2526
2527This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2528commands. The default is 1024.
2529
a5941fbf
MK
2530* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2531
2532Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2533
89743e04
MS
2534* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2535
2536These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2537to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2538from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2539
9fb14e79
JB
2540* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2541
2542The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2543including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2544of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2545
2037aebb
AC
2546*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2547
2548* New targets.
2549
2550Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2551
2552* Bug fixes
2553
2554gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2555mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2556Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2557
2558gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2559dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2560Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2561
2562Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2563Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2564By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2565
2566i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2567avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2568By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2569
37057839 2570*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2571
1a703748
MS
2572* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2573
2574This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2575really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2576In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2577target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2578This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2579(notably embedded) targets.
2580
cefd4ef5
MS
2581* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2582
55241689
AC
2583This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2584process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2585GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2586hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2587
352ed7b4
MS
2588* New command line option
2589
2590GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2591
2592* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2593
2594There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2595command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2596a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2597be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2598open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2599issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2600a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2601it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2602GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2603is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2604
fe419ffc
RE
2605* Changes in ARM configurations.
2606
2607Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2608configuration is fully multi-arch.
2609
eb7cedd9
MK
2610* New native configurations
2611
fe419ffc 2612ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2613x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2614AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2615Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2616
c9f63e6b
CV
2617* New targets
2618
2619Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2620
9b4ff276
AC
2621* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2622
2623Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2624been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2625configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2626permanently REMOVED.
2627
2628AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2629A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2630AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2631AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2632AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2633
b4ceaee6 2634testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2635
e2caac18
AC
2636* REMOVED configurations and files
2637
2638TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2639WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2640PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2641PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2642PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 2643Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
2644Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2645 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 2646SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 2647Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
2648Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2649ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 2650Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 2651
c2a727fa
TT
2652* Changes to command line processing
2653
2654The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
2655for the inferior from gdb's command line.
2656
467d8519
TT
2657* Changes to key bindings
2658
2659There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
2660
7072a954
AC
2661*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
2662
2663Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
2664
2665Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
2666corrupted.
2667
2668Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
2669
2670Numerous documentation fixes.
2671
2672Numerous testsuite fixes.
2673
34f47bc4 2674*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
2675
2676* New native configurations
2677
2678Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
2679x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 2680MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
2681MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2682ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 2683s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 2684
bf64bfd6
AC
2685* New targets
2686
def90278 2687Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 2688CRIS cris-axis
55241689 2689UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 2690
17e78a56 2691* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
2692
2693x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 2694Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
2695Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
2696 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
2697TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2698WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 2699Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
2700PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2701PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2702PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 2703SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
2704Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
2705ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 2706Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 2707
17e78a56
AC
2708stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
2709kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
2710
7fcca85b
AC
2711Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2712been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2713configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2714permanently REMOVED.
2715
a196c81c 2716* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
2717
2718Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2719Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2720Pyramid pyramid-*-*
2721ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2722Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 2723ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 2724
6d6b80e5 2725* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 2726
6d6b80e5 2727GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
2728sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
2729present.
2730
bf64bfd6
AC
2731* Other news:
2732
e23194cb
EZ
2733* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
2734
2735* The MI enabled by default.
2736
2737The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
2738revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
2739engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
2740using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
2741which is now deprecated.
2742
2743* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
2744
2745GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
2746main features are supported:
2747
2748 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
2749
2750 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
2751 extension;
2752
2753 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
2754
2755 - a Pascal expression parser.
2756
2757However, some important features are not yet supported.
2758
2759 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
2760
2761 - there are some problems with boolean types;
2762
2763 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
2764 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
2765
2766 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
2767
2768 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
2769
2770* Changes in completion.
2771
2772Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
2773to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
2774users expect at the shell prompt.
2775
2776Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
2777`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
2778program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
2779files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
2780be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
2781considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
2782name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
2783
2784`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
2785
2786* New platform-independent commands:
2787
2788It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
2789hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
2790documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
2791
2792* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
2793
d7275149
MK
2794Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
2795revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
2796many threads as your system allows you to have.
2797
e23194cb
EZ
2798Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
2799
d7275149
MK
2800Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
2801multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
2802
2803* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
2804
2805Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
2806
e23194cb
EZ
2807GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
2808debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
2809supported.)
2810
2811* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
2812
2813Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
2814breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
2815implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
2816put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
2817and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
2818registers.
2819
2820The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
2821debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
2822watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
2823
2824* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
2825
2826New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
2827the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
2828
2829New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
2830display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
2831IDT.
2832
2833New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
2834from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
2835New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
2836a given linear address.
2837
2838GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
2839program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
2840which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
2841
2842DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
2843
6c56c069
EZ
2844It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
2845
e23194cb
EZ
2846* Changes in documentation.
2847
2848All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
2849Documentation License.
2850
2851Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2852manual.
2853
2854TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
2855
2856Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
2857manual.
2858
2859The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
2860documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
2861hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2862
5d6640b1
AC
2863* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2864
2865The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2866``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2867contents of this file.
2868
1a1d8446
AC
2869* gdba.el deleted
2870
2871GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 2872
9debab2f 2873*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 2874
c63ce875
EZ
2875* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2876
2877Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2878programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2879displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2880greater level of detail.
2881
2882* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2883
2884It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2885bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2886on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2887written.
2888
2889* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2890
2891The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2892necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2893machines ``out of the box''.
2894
2895The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2896possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2897signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2898would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2899interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2900
2901It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2902standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2903even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2904and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2905terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2906
2907The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2908enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2909also works.
2910
2911DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2912GDB.
2913
2914It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2915directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2916times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2917breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2918
ed9a39eb
JM
2919* New native configurations
2920
2921ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 2922PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 2923
7a292a7a
SS
2924* New targets
2925
96baa820 2926Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
2927x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2928PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
2929TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2930
085dd6e6
JM
2931* OBSOLETE configurations
2932
2933Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2934Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 2935Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 2936ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 2937Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 2938
9debab2f
AC
2939Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2940but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2941these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2942be permanently REMOVED.
2943
5330533d
SS
2944* Gould support removed
2945
2946Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2947
bc9e5bbf
AC
2948* New features for SVR4
2949
2950On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2951without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2952load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2953
2954* Many C++ enhancements
2955
2956C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2957in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2958
adf40b2e
JM
2959* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2960
2961A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2962sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2963with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2964``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2965
2966 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2967 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2968
43e526b9
JM
2969* MIPS 64 remote protocol
2970
2971A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2972expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2973instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2974
2975The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2976added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2977
96baa820
JM
2978* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2979
2980The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2981``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2982include ``set remote P-packet''.
2983
11cf8741
JM
2984* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2985
2986The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2987accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2988``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2989
7876dd43
DB
2990* ``apropos'' command added.
2991
2992The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2993documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2994try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2995
bc9e5bbf
AC
2996* New MI interface
2997
2998A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2999interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3000process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3001"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3002enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3003
3004 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3005
c906108c
SS
3006*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3007
3008* New native configurations
3009
3010HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3011HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3012M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3013
3014* New targets
3015
3016Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3017Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3018Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3019
3020* OBSOLETE configurations
3021
3022Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3023
3024Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3025but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3026these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3027be permanently REMOVED.
3028
3029* ANSI/ISO C
3030
3031As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3032buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3033containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3034use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3035available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3036configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3037information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3038already.
3039
3040* Readline 2.2
3041
3042GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3043
3044* set extension-language
3045
3046You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3047languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3048you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3049 set extension-language .c c++
3050The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3051and their associated languages.
3052
3053* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3054
3055When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3056you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3057PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3058
3059 set processor NAME
3060
3061sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3062following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3063
3064 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3065 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3066 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3067 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3068 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3069 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3070 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3071 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3072 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3073 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3074 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3075
3076At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3077special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3078registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3079only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3080
3081* HP-UX support
3082
3083Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3084more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3085library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3086support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3087for xdb and dbx commands.
3088
3089* Catchpoints
3090
3091HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3092generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3093to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3094
3095This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3096argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3097output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3098
3099* Debugging across forks
3100
3101On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3102in the inferior.
3103
3104* TUI
3105
3106HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3107it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3108configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3109
3110* GDB remote protocol additions
3111
3112A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3113Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3114fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3115allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3116
3117For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3118full 64-bit address. The command
3119
3120 set remoteaddresssize 32
3121
3122can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3123the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3124will be discarded.
3125
3126In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3127command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3128
3129 maint packet heythere
3130
3131sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3132disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3133time.
3134
3135The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3136target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3137downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3138
3139* Tracing can collect general expressions
3140
3141You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3142further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3143doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3144
3145* mask-address variable for Mips
3146
3147For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3148a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3149of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3150
3151* Higher serial baud rates
3152
3153GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3154230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3155to achieve all of these rates.)
3156
3157* i960 simulator
3158
3159The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3160builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3161
3162
3163*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3164
3165* New native configurations
3166
3167Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3168Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3169Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3170PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3171PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3172Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3173Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3174
3175* New targets
3176
3177Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3178Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3179Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3180Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3181MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3182MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3183MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3184Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3185Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3186Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3187NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3188
3189* New debugging protocols
3190
3191ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3192M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3193DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3194PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3195PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3196Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3197
3198* DWARF 2
3199
3200All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3201format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3202information.
3203
3204* Java frontend
3205
3206GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3207only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3208
3209* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3210
3211For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3212loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3213locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3214
3215* Live range splitting
3216
3217GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3218range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3219more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3220
3221* Hurd support
3222
3223GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3224updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3225
3226* ARM Thumb support
3227
3228GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3229instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3230instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3231accordingly.
3232
3233* MIPS16 support
3234
3235GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3236instruction set.
3237
3238* Overlay support
3239
3240GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3241linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3242will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3243control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3244additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3245in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3246
3247* info symbol
3248
3249The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3250the symbol at the specified address.
3251
3252* Trace support
3253
3254The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3255asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3256extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3257includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3258file tracepoint.c for more details.
3259
3260* MIPS simulator
3261
3262Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3263by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3264of most MIPS variants.
3265
3266* Sparc simulator
3267
3268Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3269by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3270Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3271
3272* set architecture
3273
3274For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3275basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3276architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3277the possible architectures.
3278
3279*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3280
3281* New native configurations
3282
3283Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3284M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3285PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3286PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3287PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3288RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3289
3290* New targets
3291
3292ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3293I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3294MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3295MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3296PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3297Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3298Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3299
3300* PowerPC simulator
3301
3302The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3303contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3304PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3305basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3306performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3307
3308* Solaris 2.5
3309
3310GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3311
3312* Windows 95/NT native
3313
3314GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3315To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3316which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3317Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3318ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3319
3320* dont-repeat command
3321
3322If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3323command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3324useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3325extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3326
3327* Send break instead of ^C
3328
3329The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3330rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3331GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3332
3333* Remote protocol timeout
3334
3335The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3336that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3337to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3338
3339* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3340
3341By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3342loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3343stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3344when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3345in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3346
3347Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3348/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3349automatically on hpux10.
3350
3351* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3352
3353Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3354
3355* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3356
3357When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3358may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3359the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3360every character. The default value is 1050.
3361
3362* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3363
3364If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3365a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3366replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3367details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3368remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3369to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3370
3371* Speedups for remote debugging
3372
3373GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3374the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3375and more efficient S-record downloading.
3376
3377* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3378
3379GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3380Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3381
3382*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3383
3384* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3385
3386The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3387can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3388
3389* Remote targets use caching
3390
3391Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3392remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3393it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3394debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3395off' turns the the data cache off.
3396
3397* Remote targets may have threads
3398
3399The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3400in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3401gdb/remote.c for details.
3402
3403* NetROM support
3404
3405If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3406support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3407acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3408write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3409support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3410another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3411sequence is something like
3412
3413 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3414 load <prog>
3415 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3416
3417* Macintosh host
3418
3419GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3420may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3421it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3422available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3423device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3424directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3425scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3426mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3427
3428* Autoconf
3429
3430GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3431but does simplify configuration and building.
3432
3433* hpux10
3434
3435GDB now supports hpux10.
3436
3437*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3438
3439* New native configurations
3440
3441x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3442x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3443NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3444Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3445
3446* New targets
3447
3448A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3449HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3450CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3451PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3452WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3453
3454* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3455
3456GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3457possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3458filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3459the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3460if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3461
3462* Arguments to user-defined commands
3463
3464User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3465Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3466trivial example:
3467define adder
3468 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3469
3470To execute the command use:
3471adder 1 2 3
3472
3473Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3474Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3475use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3476
3477* New `if' and `while' commands
3478
3479This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3480commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3481expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3482execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3483terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3484`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3485if the expression is zero.
3486
3487* Fortran source language mode
3488
3489GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3490Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3491variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3492with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3493Fortran compilers.
3494
3495* Better HPUX support
3496
3497Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3498running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3499processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3500for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3501that behavior do the following before running the program:
3502
3503 adb -w a.out
3504 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3505 control-d
3506
3507This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3508To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3509
3510 adb -w a.out
3511 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3512 control-d
3513
3514You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3515the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3516external linkage.
3517
3518GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3519HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3520
3521* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3522
3523You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3524commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3525current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3526"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3527associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3528configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3529
3530* New DOS host serial code
3531
3532This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3533no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3534a PC's serial port.
3535
3536*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3537
3538* New "complete" command
3539
3540This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3541were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3542
3543* Trailing space optional in prompt
3544
3545"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3546allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3547
3548* Breakpoint hit counts
3549
3550"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3551has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3552can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3553to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3554less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3555that breakpoint.
3556
3557* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3558
3559"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3560an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3561arrays actually contain only short strings.
3562
3563* Shared library breakpoints
3564
3565In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3566breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3567
3568* Hardware watchpoints
3569
3570There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3571targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3572
55241689 3573Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3574
3575* Annotations
3576
3577Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3578and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3579
3580* Improved Irix 5 support
3581
3582GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3583
3584* Improved HPPA support
3585
3586GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3587
3588* New native configurations
3589
3590Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3591HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3592Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3593RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3594
3595* New targets
3596
3597OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3598MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3599Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3600
3601* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3602
3603There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3604This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3605
3606* Fixes
3607
3608As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3609and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3610
3611*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3612
3613* Irix 5 is now supported
3614
3615* HPPA support
3616
3617GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3618to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3619GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3620of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3621can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3622
3623
3624*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3625
3626* User visible changes:
3627
3628* Remote Debugging
3629
3630The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3631target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3632debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3633integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3634debugging info for the mips target).
3635
3636* DEC Alpha native support
3637
3638GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3639debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3640work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3641Alpha-specific notes.
3642
3643* Preliminary thread implementation
3644
3645GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
3646
3647* LynxOS native and target support for 386
3648
3649This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
3650to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
3651for details).
3652
3653* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
3654
3655This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
3656mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
3657call methods, ...etc.
3658
3659*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
3660
3661 * User visible changes:
3662
3663Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
3664supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
3665other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
3666somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
3667
3668Filename completion now works.
3669
3670When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
3671arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
3672addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
3673
3674All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
3675vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
3676should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
3677your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
3678to be on the far side of a thin network line.
3679
3680 * DEC alpha support
3681
3682This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
3683cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
3684
3685
3686*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
3687
3688 * Testsuite
3689
3690This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
3691The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
3692via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
3693
3694 * C++ demangling
3695
3696'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
3697emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
3698Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
3699disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
3700use gdb with AT&T cfront.
3701
3702 * Simulators
3703
3704GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
3705So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
3706Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
3707
3708 * New targets supported
3709
3710H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3711H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3712SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
3713Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3714IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
3715
3716Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
3717version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
3718GO32 memory extender.
3719
3720 * New remote protocols
3721
3722MIPS remote debugging protocol.
3723
3724 * New source languages supported
3725
3726This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
3727used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
3728into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
3729
3730
3731*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
3732
3733 * HP Precision Architecture supported
3734
3735GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
3736version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
3737University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
3738compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
3739format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
3740(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
3741
3742Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
3743
3744 * Faster and better demangling
3745
3746We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
3747demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
3748character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
3749only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
3750This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
3751increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
3752symbol lookups.
3753
3754`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
3755from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
3756compiler does not actually implement.
3757
3758 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
3759
3760In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
3761inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
3762recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
3763very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
3764The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
3765circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
3766fix.
3767
3768The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
3769release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
3770
3771 * Improved configure script
3772
3773The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
3774you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
3775host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
3776done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
3777
3778We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
3779version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
3780`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
3781The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
3782only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
3783We hope to make this the default in a future release.
3784
3785 * Documentation improvements
3786
3787There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
3788produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
3789before submitting changes.
3790
3791The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
3792M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
3793`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
3794you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
3795a future texinfo-X.Y release.
3796
3797*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
3798We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
3799been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
3800or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
3801`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
3802around this problem.
3803
3804 * New features
3805
3806GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
3807the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
3808`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
3809the target program.
3810
3811The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
3812how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
3813
3814 * New native hosts supported
3815
3816HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
3817386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
3818
3819 * New targets supported
3820
3821AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
3822
3823 * New file formats supported
3824
3825BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
3826HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
3827
3828 * Major bug fixes
3829
3830Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
3831
3832We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
3833printf_filtered("%s") problems.
3834
3835We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
3836for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
3837release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
3838
3839You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
3840will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
3841
3842We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
3843for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
3844especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
3845libraries.
3846
3847The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
3848information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
3849command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
3850any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
3851when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
3852
3853 * Internal improvements
3854
3855GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
3856debugging of multiple languages in the future.
3857
3858GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
3859Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
3860symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
3861contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
3862shared code that handles any of them.
3863
3864 * New command line options
3865
3866We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3867
3868 * Mmalloc licensing
3869
3870The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3871General Public License.
3872
3873*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3874
3875 * Host/native/target split
3876
3877GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3878hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3879target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3880local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3881ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3882
3883The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3884GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3885is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3886code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3887any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3888built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3889handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3890
3891GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3892It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3893plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3894
3895 * New hosts supported
3896
3897HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3898386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3899386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3900
3901 * New targets supported
3902
3903Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
390468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3905
3906 * New native hosts supported
3907
3908386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3909 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3910386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3911
3912 * New file formats supported
3913
3914BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3915supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3916format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3917
3918 * New commands
3919
3920`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3921`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3922These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3923
3924`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3925
3926You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3927scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3928prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3929executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3930
3931 * C++ improvements
3932
3933We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3934info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3935symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3936
3937Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3938
3939 * Major bug fixes
3940
3941The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3942fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3943by the compiler.
3944
3945We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3946support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3947
3948John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3949slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3950that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3951purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3952the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3953mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3954
3955Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3956about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3957completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3958we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3959
3960 * AMD 29k support
3961
3962A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3963specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3964calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3965usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3966in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3967
3968We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3969Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3970of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3971resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3972
3973 * Remote interfaces
3974
3975We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3976with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3977message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3978This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3979needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3980breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3981each instruction being stepped through.
3982
3983The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3984registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3985
3986There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3987find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3988Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3989processor with a serial port.
3990
3991 * Configuration
3992
3993Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3994`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3995supported, and what files each one uses.
3996
3997 * Library changes
3998
3999There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4000disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4001Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4002disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4003
4004The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4005Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4006can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4007grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4008
4009 * Documentation
4010
4011The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4012reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4013as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4014encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4015system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4016bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4017
4018And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4019
4020
4021*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4022
4023 * Better support for C++ function names
4024
4025GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4026names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4027(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4028single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4029Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4030
4031GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4032the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4033You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4034lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4035for the list of formats.
4036
4037 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4038
4039Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4040C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4041directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4042can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4043usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4044about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4045this problem.)
4046
4047 * New 'maintenance' command
4048
4049All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4050the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4051can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4052
4053 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4054 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4055 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4056 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4057 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4058 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4059
4060The following commands are new:
4061
4062 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4063 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4064 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4065
4066 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4067
4068We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4069(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4070be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4071read after argv processing.
4072
4073 * New hosts supported
4074
4075Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4076
55241689 4077GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4078
4079We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4080is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4081for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4082masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4083fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4084It costs extra.
4085
4086 * New targets supported
4087
4088Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4089
4090 * More smarts about finding #include files
4091
4092GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4093all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4094greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4095especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4096the one that contains your sources.
4097
4098We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4099breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4100try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4101
4102 * Interesting infernals change
4103
4104GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4105section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4106target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4107stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4108
4109 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4110
4111There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4112 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4113 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4114
4115See the ChangeLog for details.
4116
4117*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4118
4119 * New machines supported (host and target)
4120
4121IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4122
4123SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4124
4125 * New malloc package
4126
4127GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4128Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4129capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4130This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4131pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4132more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4133
4134 * info proc
4135
4136The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4137'help info proc' for details.
4138
4139 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4140
4141The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4142Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4143possible.
4144
4145 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4146
4147Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4148support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4149conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4150environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4151that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4152in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4153
4154 * Cross byte order fixes
4155
4156Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4157targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4158
4159 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4160
4161If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4162system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4163`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4164program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4165called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4166Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4167and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4168the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4169option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4170starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4171
4172You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4173the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4174information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4175slower, but makes future operations faster.
4176
4177The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4178build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4179A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4180use is:
4181
4182 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4183
4184The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4185It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4186shared across multiple host platforms.
4187
4188 * longjmp() handling
4189
4190GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4191siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4192all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4193platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4194
4195 * Solaris 2.0
4196
4197Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4198this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4199reading symbols.
4200
4201 * Bug fixes
4202
4203As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4204People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4205crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4206
4207*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4208
4209 * New machines supported (host and target)
4210
4211SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4212 (except core files)
4213BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4214Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4215
4216 * New machines supported (target)
4217
4218AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4219
4220 * C++ support
4221
4222GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4223The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4224per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4225
4226GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4227`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4228extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4229good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4230will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4231released.
4232
4233 * New features for SVR4
4234
4235GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4236shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4237only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4238
4239The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4240on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4241it prints the address mappings of the process.
4242
4243If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4244bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4245
4246 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4247
4248Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4249now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4250skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4251make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4252same code linked statically.
4253
4254 * New Getopt
4255
4256GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4257version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4258continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4259Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4260added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4261future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4262
4263 * Bugs fixed
4264
4265The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4266Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4267See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4268
4269
4270*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4271
4272 * New machines supported (host and target)
4273
4274Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4275NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4276Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4277
4278 * Almost SCO Unix support
4279
4280We had hoped to support:
4281SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4282(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4283that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4284about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4285
4286 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4287
4288GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4289debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4290is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4291send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4292reqired (if any).
4293
4294 * New Readline
4295
4296GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4297is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4298required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4299
4300 * Bugs fixed
4301
4302The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4303Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4304See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4305
4306 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4307
4308GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4309supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4310symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4311
4312Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4313mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4314debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4315mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4316version 2.
4317
4318Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4319really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4320line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4321variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4322situation somewhat.
4323
4324When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4325However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4326methods.
4327
4328We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4329DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4330encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4331
4332
4333*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4334
4335 * Improved configuration
4336
4337Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4338Porting BFD is simpler.
4339
4340 * Stepping improved
4341
4342The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4343of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4344in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4345function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4346
4347 * Bug fixing
4348
4349Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4350
4351 * New host supported (not target)
4352
4353Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4354
4355
4356*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4357
4358 * Multiple source language support
4359
4360GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4361It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4362and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4363language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4364You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4365`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4366
4367 * GDB and Modula-2
4368
4369GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4370currently under development at the State University of New York at
4371Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4372continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4373
4374Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4375debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4376symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4377
4378There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4379in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4380
4381 * set write on/off
4382
4383GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4384a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4385the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4386by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4387effect immediately.
4388
4389 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4390
4391When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4392shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4393The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4394examining core files.
4395
4396 * set listsize
4397
4398You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4399The default is 10.
4400
4401 * New machines supported (host and target)
4402
4403SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4404Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4405Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4406
4407 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4408
4409IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4410
4411 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4412
4413AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4414AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4415Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4416
4417 * New remote interfaces
4418
4419AMD 29000 Adapt
4420AMD 29000 Minimon
4421
4422
4423*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4424
4425 * New Facilities
4426
4427Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4428
4429Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4430target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4431is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4432remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4433remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4434also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4435using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4436stub on the target system.
4437
4438New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4439
4440GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4441library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4442object file types such as a.out and coff.
4443
4444There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4445refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4446
4447
4448 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4449
4450All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4451by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4452
4453For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4454``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4455Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4456
4457What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4458print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4459will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4460all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4461
4462confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4463 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4464 it is already running. Default is ON.
4465
4466editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4467 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4468 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4469 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4470 Default is ON.
4471
4472history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4473 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4474 or the value of the environment variable
4475 GDBHISTFILE.
4476
4477history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4478 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4479 HISTSIZE.
4480
4481history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4482 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4483 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4484
4485history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4486 history expansion will be performed on
4487 command line input. The default is OFF.
4488
4489radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4490 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4491 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4492
4493height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4494 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4495 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4496 variable TERM.
4497
4498width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4499 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4500 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4501 variable TERM.
4502
4503Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4504``set width'' instead.
4505
4506print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4507 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4508 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4509 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4510
4511print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4512 is OFF.
4513
4514print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4515 "raw" form if off.
4516
4517print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4518 like instructions.
4519
4520print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4521
4522
4523 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4524
4525The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4526new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4527are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4528window.
4529
4530
4531 * Support for Shared Libraries
4532
4533GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4534Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4535before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4536happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4537At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4538from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4539shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4540It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4541
4542sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4543 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4544 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4545
4546info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4547
4548
4549 * Watchpoints
4550
4551A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4552expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4553tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4554quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4555problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4556more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4557
4558watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4559
4560info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4561
4562delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4563disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4564enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4565
4566
4567 * C++ multiple inheritance
4568
4569When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4570for C++ programs.
4571
4572 * C++ exception handling
4573
4574Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4575ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4576the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4577handler's context).
4578
4579catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4580 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4581 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4582
4583info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4584 current stack frame.
4585
4586
4587 * Minor command changes
4588
4589The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4590command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4591is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4592
4593The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4594at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4595frames without printing.
4596
4597 * New directory command
4598
4599'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4600The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4601about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4602with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4603find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4604
4605 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4606
4607For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4608for more details.
4609
4610GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4611two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4612Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4613where the program that you are debugging will run.
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