Fix a type in the last entry.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.8
5
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6* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
7remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
8with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
9the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
10
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11* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
12now complete on file names.
13
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14* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
15completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
16For instance, consider:
17
18 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
19 # struct example variable;
20 (gdb) p variable.
21
22If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
23completions will be "f1" and "f2".
24
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25* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
26operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
27macros.
28
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29* New remote packets
30
31qSearch:memory:
32 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
33
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34QStartNoAckMode
35 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
36 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
37 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
38
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39qXfer:osdata:read
40 Obtains additional operating system information
41
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42* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
43
44 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
45 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
46 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
47
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48* The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
49source+assembly.
50
c055b101 51* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 52DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
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53
54* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
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55and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
56`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 57
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58* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
59with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
60
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61* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
62
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63* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
64
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65* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
66which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
67
1fddbabb 68* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 69list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 70
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71* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
72conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
73have also been fixed.
74
bfb8797a 75* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
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76From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
77are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 78
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79* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
80
81 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
82 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
83
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84 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
85 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
86 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
87
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88 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
89 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
90
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91 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
92 gdbserver.
93
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94* Python scripting
95
96 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
97 available is determined at configure time.
98
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99* Ada tasking support
100
101 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
102 been introduced:
103
104 info tasks
105 Print the list of Ada tasks.
106 info task N
107 Print detailed information about task number N.
108 task
109 Print the task number of the current task.
110 task N
111 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
112
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113* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
114add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
115
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116* New commands
117
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118find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
119 val1 [, val2, ...]
120 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
121
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122maint set python print-stack
123maint show python print-stack
124 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
125
126python [CODE]
127 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
128
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129set print symbol-loading
130show print symbol-loading
131 Control printing of symbol loading messages.
132
e0a3ce09 133set debug timestamp
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134show debug timestamp
135 Display timestamps with GDB debugging output.
136
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137set exec-wrapper
138show exec-wrapper
139unset exec-wrapper
140 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 141
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142set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
143show multiple-symbols
144 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
145 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
146 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
147
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148set breakpoint always-inserted
149show breakpoint always-inserted
150 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
151 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
152 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
153
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154set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
155show arm fallback-mode
156set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
157show arm force-mode
158 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
159 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
160 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
161 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
162
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163set disable-randomization
164show disable-randomization
165 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
166 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
167 multiple debugging sessions.
168
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169set target-async
170 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
171 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
172 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
173 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
174
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175set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
176show tcp auto-retry
177set tcp connect-timeout
178show tcp connect-timeout
179 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
180 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
181 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
182
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183macro define
184macro list
185macro undef
186 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
187 interactively.
188
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189info os processes
190 Show operating system information about processes.
191
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192* New native configurations
193
194x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
195
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196x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
197
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198* New targets
199
200x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
201
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202* Removed commands
203
204catch load
205catch unload
206 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
207
75feb17d 208*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 209
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210* New native configurations
211
212NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 213Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
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214
215* New targets
216
217NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 218Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 219
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220* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
221
222 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
223 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
224 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
225 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
226
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227* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
228(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
229
fe6fbf8b 230* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 231is resolved.
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232
233* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
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234including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
235and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 236
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237* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
238accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
239more than one contiguous range of addresses.
240
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241* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
242
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243* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
244registers on PowerPC targets.
245
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246* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
247targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
248
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249* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
250commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
251
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252* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
253extended-remote mode.
254
24a836bd 255* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
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256The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
257error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
258The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 259
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260* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
261building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
262target architectures.
263
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264* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
265Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
266now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
267stored in two consecutive float registers.
268
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269* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
270breakpoints now.
271
b93b6ca7 272* Improved support for debugging Ada
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273Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
274include:
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275 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
276 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
277 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
278 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
279 of an assignment
280 - Improved command completion in Ada
281 - Several bug fixes
282
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283* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
284process.
285
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286* New commands
287
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288set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
289show print frame-arguments
290 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
291 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
292
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293remote put
294remote get
295remote delete
296 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
297
298* New MI commands
299
300-target-file-put
301-target-file-get
302-target-file-delete
303 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
304
305* New remote packets
306
307vFile:open:
308vFile:close:
309vFile:pread:
310vFile:pwrite:
311vFile:unlink:
312 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 313
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314vAttach
315 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
316 mode.
317
318vRun
319 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
320
8d5f9c6f 321*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 322
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323* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
324bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
325Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
326
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327* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
328symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
329-Bsymbolic linker option.
330
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331* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
332recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
333is not supported.
334
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335* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
336frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
337
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338* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
33932-bit or 64-bit register values.
340
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341* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
342
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343* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
344target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
345a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
346
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347* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
348automatically displayed as character or string data.
349
350* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
351arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
352as strings.
e1f48ead 353
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354* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
355for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 356only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 357
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358* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
359iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 360
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361* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
362ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
363has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
364
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365* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
366
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367* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
368
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369* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
370layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
371segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
372
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373* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
374immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
375
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376* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
377"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
378packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
379where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
380Windows and SymbianOS).
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381
382* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
383(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
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384
385* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
386according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 387
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388* New commands
389
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390set remoteflow
391show remoteflow
392 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
393 when debugging using remote targets.
394
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395set mem inaccessible-by-default
396show mem inaccessible-by-default
397 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
398 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
399 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
400 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
401 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
402
403set breakpoint auto-hw
404show breakpoint auto-hw
405 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
406 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
407 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
408 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
409 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
410 including "next" and "finish".
411
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412catch exception
413catch exception unhandled
414 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
415
416catch assert
417 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
418
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419set sysroot
420show sysroot
421 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
422 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
423 an alias to "set sysroot".
424
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425info spu
426 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
427 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
428 architecture.
429
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430* New native configurations
431
432OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
433
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434set tdesc filename
435unset tdesc filename
436show tdesc filename
437 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
438 not query the target for its built-in description.
439
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440* New targets
441
54fe9172 442OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 443MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 444Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 445
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446* New remote packets
447
448QPassSignals:
449 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
450 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
451
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452qXfer:features:read:
453 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
454 features.
6dd09645 455
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456qXfer:spu:read:
457qXfer:spu:write:
458 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
459 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
460
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461qXfer:libraries:read:
462 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
463 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
464 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
465 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
466
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467* Removed targets
468
469Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
470
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471alpha*-*-osf1*
472alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 473d10v-*-*
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474hppa*-*-hiux*
475i[34567]86-ncr-*
476i[34567]86-*-dgux*
477i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
478i[34567]86-*-netware*
479i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
480i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
481i[34567]86-*-sco*
482i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
483i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
484i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
485i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
486i[34567]86-*-unixware*
487i[34567]86-*-sysv*
488i[34567]86-*-isc*
489m68*-cisco*-*
490m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 491mips*-*-pe
483367ee 492rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 493sh*-*-pe
483367ee 494
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495* Other removed features
496
497target abug
498target cpu32bug
499target est
500target rom68k
501
502 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
503
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504target hms
505target e7000
506target sh3
507target sh3e
508
509 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
510 H8/300.
511
512target ocd
513
514 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
515 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
516 interfaces.
517
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518DWARF 1 support
519
520 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
521 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
522
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523Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
524
525 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
526 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
527 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
528 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
529
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530MIPS ".pdr" sections
531
532 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
533 in debugging information.
534
535Scheme support
536
537 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
538 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
539
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540set mips stack-arg-size
541set mips saved-gpreg-size
542
543 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
544
6dd09645 545*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 546
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547* New targets
548
549Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 550Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 551
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552* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
553(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
554running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
555
556* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
557Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
558supported.
559
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560* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
561broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
562
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563* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
564stub provides the required support.
565
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566* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
567longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
568
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569* New commands
570
571set substitute-path
572unset substitute-path
573show substitute-path
574 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
575 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
576 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
577 between compilation and debugging.
578
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579set trace-commands
580show trace-commands
581 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
582 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
583 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
584
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585* REMOVED features
586
587The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
588
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589Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
590an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
591
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592The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
593
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594* New remote packets
595
596qSupported:
597 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
598 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
599 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
600 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
601 target.
602
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603qXfer:auxv:read:
604 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
605 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
606
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607qXfer:memory-map:read:
608 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
609 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
610
611vFlashErase:
612vFlashWrite:
613vFlashDone:
614 Erase and program a flash memory device.
615
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616* Removed remote packets
617
618qPart:auxv:read:
619 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
620 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
621
e374b601 622*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 623
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624* New targets
625
626Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
627
628Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
629
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630* New commands
631
632init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
633 only if it doesn't already have a value.
634
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635The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
636
637checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
638
639restart <n> Return the program state to a
640 previously saved state.
641
642info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
643
644delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
645
646set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
647 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
648
649info forks List forks of the user program that
650 are available to be debugged.
651
652fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
653 forks of the user program that are
654 available to be debugged.
655
656delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
657 that are available to be debugged (and
658 kill the forked process).
659
660detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
661 that are available to be debugged (and
662 allow the process to continue).
663
3950dc3f
NS
664* New architecture
665
666Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
667
0ea3f30e
DJ
668* Improved Windows host support
669
670GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
671native console support, and remote communications using either
672network sockets or serial ports.
673
f79daebb
GM
674* Improved Modula-2 language support
675
676GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
677basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
678pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
679printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
680written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
681GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
682
acab6ab2
MM
683* REMOVED features
684
685The ARM rdi-share module.
686
f4267320
DJ
687The Netware NLM debug server.
688
53e5f3cf 689*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 690
e0ecbda1
MK
691* New native configurations
692
02a677ac 693OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
694OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
695
d64a6579
KB
696* New targets
697
698Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
699
b33a6190
AS
700* New command line options
701
702--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
703--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
704 the child (debugged) program exited with.
705--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
706 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
707 specified multiple times and in conjunction
708 with the --command (-x) option.
709
11dced61
AC
710* Deprecated commands removed
711
712The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
713removed:
714
715 Command Replacement
716 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
717 othernames set arm disassembler
718 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
719 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
720 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
721 regs info registers
722
6fe85783
MK
723* New BSD user-level threads support
724
725It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
726library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
727configurations are:
728
729FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
730FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
731OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
732
733Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
734are not yet supported.
735
5260ca71
MS
736* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
737(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
738
e84ecc99
AC
739* REMOVED configurations and files
740
741VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 742Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 743National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 744
31e35378
JB
745* New "set print array-indexes" command
746
747After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
748when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
749behavior.
750
e85e5c83
MK
751* VAX floating point support
752
753GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
754
d91e9901
AS
755* User-defined command support
756
757In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
758to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
759section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
760
f2cb65ca
MC
761*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
762
f47b1503
AS
763* New command line option
764
765GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
766debugging.
767
f2cb65ca
MC
768* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
769
770GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
771information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
772by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
773proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
774to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 775
d08c0230
AC
776* Internationalization
777
778When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
779internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
780continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
781
117ea3cf
PH
782* Ada
783
784Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
785implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
786into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
787
d08c0230
AC
788* New native configurations
789
790GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
791
792* Remote 'p' packet
793
794GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
795packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
796
797* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
798
799GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
800The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
801features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
802i386 application).
803
804GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
805compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
806continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
807configurations:
808
809hppa-*-hpux
810ia64-*-aix
811mips-*-irix*
812*-*-lynx
813mips-*-linux-gnu
814sds protocol
815xdr protocol
816powerpc bdm protocol
817
818Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
819made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
820
821* OBSOLETE configurations and files
822
823Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
824been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
825configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
826permanently REMOVED.
827
828h8300-*-*
829mcore-*-*
830mn10300-*-*
831ns32k-*-*
832sh64-*-*
833v850-*-*
834
ebb7c577
AC
835*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
836
837* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
838
839When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
840heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
841been fixed.
842
843* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
844
845When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
846fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
847IRIX long double values).
848
849* VAX and "next"
850
851A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
852command. This problem has been fixed.
853
860660cb 854*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 855
0dea2468
AC
856* Fix for ``many threads''
857
858On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
859rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
860error message:
861
862 ptrace: No such process.
863 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
864
865This problem has been fixed.
866
2c07db7a
AC
867* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
868
869Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
870GDB to dump core).
871
c23968a2
JB
872* New ``start'' command.
873
874This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
875
71009278
MK
876* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
877
878Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
879live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
880platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
881
882FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
883FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
884NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
885NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
886NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
887OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
888OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
889OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
890OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
891
3c0b7db2
AC
892* Signal trampoline code overhauled
893
894Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
895These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
896of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
897call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
898signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
899
73cc75f3
AC
900Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
901features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
902include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 903
7243600a
BF
904* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
905
6f606e1c
MK
906* New native configurations
907
97dc871c 908GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 909OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
910OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
911OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 912OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 913NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 914OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 915
a1b461bf
AC
916* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
917
918GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
919The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
920including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
921migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
922compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
923work, was also included.
924
925GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
926module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
927
928h8300-*-*
929mcore-*-*
930mn10300-*-*
931ns32k-*-*
932sh64-*-*
933v850-*-*
934xstormy16-*-*
935
936Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
937made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
938
3c7012f5
AC
939* REMOVED configurations and files
940
941Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
942Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
943Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
944Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
945Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
946AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
947Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
948decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
949riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
950sonymips mips-sony-*
951sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
952
e5fe55f7
AC
953*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
954
955* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
956
957The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
958GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
959command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
960program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
961with GDB".
962
963* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
964
965Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
966libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
967cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
968GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
969shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
970the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
971are created.
972
973Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
974
975* Fixed ISO-C build problems
976
977The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
978non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
979compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
980
981* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
982
983Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
984wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
985
986* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
987
988The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
989permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
990systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
991
992* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
993
994Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
995has been updated to use constant array sizes.
996
997* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
998
999GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1000its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1001panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1002
1003* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1004
1005When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1006by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1007not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1008
faae5abe 1009*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 1010
9175c9a3
MC
1011* Removed --with-mmalloc
1012
1013Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1014conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1015
3cc87ec0
MK
1016* Changes in AMD64 configurations
1017
1018The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1019the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1020and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1021you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1022
f0424ef6
MK
1023* Revised SPARC target
1024
1025The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1026FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
1027support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1028from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1029(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 1030
59659be2
ILT
1031* New C++ demangler
1032
1033GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1034names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1035with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1036programs.
1037
9e08b29b
DJ
1038* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1039
1040GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1041arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1042encountered these.
1043
8dfe8985
DC
1044* C++ nested types and namespaces
1045
1046GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1047improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1048is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1049Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1050namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1051"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1052frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1053if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1054GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1055
cced5e27
MK
1056* New native configurations
1057
1058NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 1059OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 1060OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
1061OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1062OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 1063
b4b4b794
KI
1064* New debugging protocols
1065
1066M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1067
7989c619
AC
1068* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1069
1070The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1071and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1072tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1073
5994185b
AC
1074* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1075
1076Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1077been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1078configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1079permanently REMOVED.
1080
1081Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1082Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1083Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1084Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1085Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1086AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1087Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
1088decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1089riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1090sonymips mips-sony-*
1091sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 1092
0ddabb4c
AC
1093* REMOVED configurations and files
1094
1095SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1096SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
1097Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1098Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1099H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1100HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1101HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1102HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1103PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 1104386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
1105Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1106 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1107 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
1108SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1109SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
1110Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1111Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 1112
c7f1390e
DJ
1113*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1114
1fe43d45
AC
1115* Objective-C
1116
1117Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1118integrated into GDB.
1119
e6beb428
AC
1120* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1121
1122DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1123information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1124By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1125backtraces.
1126
1127The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1128have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1129DWARF 2 CFI support.
1130
1131* Hosted file I/O.
1132
1133GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1134file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1135remote protocol documentation for details.
1136
1137* All targets using the new architecture framework.
1138
1139All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1140architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1141to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1142ppc32 on ppc64).
1143
1144* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1145
1146GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1147per-thread variables.
1148
1149* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1150
1151GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1152GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1153
1154* Separate debug info.
1155
1156GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1157automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1158of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1159system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1160and optional debug files.
1161
1162* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1163
1164DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1165describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1166debugger.
1167
1168GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1169for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1170
1171* Java
1172
1173A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1174Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1175considered "useable".
1176
85f8f974
DJ
1177* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1178
1179The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1180commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1181kernel.
1182
0fac0b41
DJ
1183* GDB supports logging output to a file
1184
1185There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1186used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 1187
6ad8ae5c
DJ
1188* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1189
1190The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1191disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1192command.
1193
e286caf2 1194* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
1195
1196The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1197registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1198
d28f9cdf
DJ
1199* Profiling support
1200
1201A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1202be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1203session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1204"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1205data, for more informative profiling results.
1206
da0f9dcd
AC
1207* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1208
1209The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1210option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 1211"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
1212
1213Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1214removed.
1215
fb9b6b35
JJ
1216Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1217Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1218Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1219 in a subsequent -var-update.
1220
954a4db8
MK
1221* New native configurations.
1222
1223FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1224
6760f9e6
JB
1225* Multi-arched targets.
1226
b4263afa 1227HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 1228Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 1229
1b831c93
AC
1230* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1231
1232Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1233been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1234configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1235permanently REMOVED.
1236
8b0e5691 1237Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 1238Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 1239H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
1240HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1241HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1242HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 1243PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
1244Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1245 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1246 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
1247Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1248Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 1249
5835abe7
NC
1250* REMOVED configurations and files
1251
1252V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
1253Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1254IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1255i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1256i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1257i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1258HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1259 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1260 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1261Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1262Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1263Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1264OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1265I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 1266
a094c6fb
AC
1267* MIPS $fp behavior changed
1268
1269The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1270the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1271context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1272address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1273The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1274
299ffc64 1275*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 1276
46248966
AC
1277* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1278
1279When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1280`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1281in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1282library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1283shared libs like mad''.
1284
b9d14705 1285* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 1286
b9d14705
DJ
1287Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1288the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1289arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1290powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 1291
e0e9281e
JB
1292* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1293
1294GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1295and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1296they expand.
1297
dd73b9bb
AC
1298The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1299invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1300
1301The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1302macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1303
e0e9281e
JB
1304Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1305information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1306your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1307information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1308
2250ee0c
CV
1309* Multi-arched targets.
1310
6e3ba3b8
JT
1311DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1312DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 1313NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 1314National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
1315Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1316Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 1317
cd9bfe15 1318* New targets.
e33ce519 1319
456f8b9d
DB
1320Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1321
e33ce519 1322
da8ca43d
JT
1323* New native configurations
1324
1325Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 1326SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 1327MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 1328UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 1329
cd9bfe15
AC
1330* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1331
1332Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1333been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1334configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1335permanently REMOVED.
1336
92eb23c5 1337Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 1338OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 1339IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 1340Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 1341Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 1342Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
1343i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1344i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1345i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
1346HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1347 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
1348 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 1349I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 1350
db034ac5
AC
1351* OBSOLETE languages
1352
1353CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1354
cd9bfe15
AC
1355* REMOVED configurations and files
1356
1357AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1358A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1359AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1360AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1361AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1362
1363testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1364
20f01a46
DH
1365* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1366
1367This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1368commands. The default is 1024.
1369
a5941fbf
MK
1370* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1371
1372Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1373
89743e04
MS
1374* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1375
1376These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1377to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1378from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 1379
9fb14e79
JB
1380* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1381
1382The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1383including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1384of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1385
2037aebb
AC
1386*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1387
1388* New targets.
1389
1390Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
1391
1392* Bug fixes
1393
1394gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1395mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1396Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1397
1398gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1399dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1400Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1401
1402Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1403Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1404By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1405
1406i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1407avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1408By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1409
37057839 1410*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 1411
1a703748
MS
1412* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1413
1414This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1415really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1416In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1417target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1418This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1419(notably embedded) targets.
1420
cefd4ef5
MS
1421* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1422
55241689
AC
1423This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1424process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1425GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1426hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 1427
352ed7b4
MS
1428* New command line option
1429
1430GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1431
1432* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1433
1434There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1435command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1436a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1437be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1438open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1439issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1440a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1441it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1442GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1443is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1444
fe419ffc
RE
1445* Changes in ARM configurations.
1446
1447Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1448configuration is fully multi-arch.
1449
eb7cedd9
MK
1450* New native configurations
1451
fe419ffc 1452ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1453x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1454AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1455Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1456
c9f63e6b
CV
1457* New targets
1458
1459Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1460
9b4ff276
AC
1461* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1462
1463Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1464been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1465configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1466permanently REMOVED.
1467
1468AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1469A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1470AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1471AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1472AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1473
b4ceaee6 1474testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1475
e2caac18
AC
1476* REMOVED configurations and files
1477
1478TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1479WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1480PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1481PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1482PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1483Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1484Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1485 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1486SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1487Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1488Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1489ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1490Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1491
c2a727fa
TT
1492* Changes to command line processing
1493
1494The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1495for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1496
467d8519
TT
1497* Changes to key bindings
1498
1499There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1500
7072a954
AC
1501*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1502
1503Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1504
1505Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1506corrupted.
1507
1508Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1509
1510Numerous documentation fixes.
1511
1512Numerous testsuite fixes.
1513
34f47bc4 1514*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1515
1516* New native configurations
1517
1518Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1519x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1520MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1521MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1522ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1523s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1524
bf64bfd6
AC
1525* New targets
1526
def90278 1527Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1528CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1529UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1530
17e78a56 1531* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1532
1533x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1534Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1535Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1536 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1537TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1538WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1539Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1540PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1541PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1542PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1543SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1544Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1545ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1546Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1547
17e78a56
AC
1548stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1549kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1550
7fcca85b
AC
1551Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1552been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1553configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1554permanently REMOVED.
1555
a196c81c 1556* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1557
1558Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1559Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1560Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1561ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1562Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1563ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1564
6d6b80e5 1565* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1566
6d6b80e5 1567GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1568sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1569present.
1570
bf64bfd6
AC
1571* Other news:
1572
e23194cb
EZ
1573* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1574
1575* The MI enabled by default.
1576
1577The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1578revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1579engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1580using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1581which is now deprecated.
1582
1583* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1584
1585GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1586main features are supported:
1587
1588 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1589
1590 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1591 extension;
1592
1593 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1594
1595 - a Pascal expression parser.
1596
1597However, some important features are not yet supported.
1598
1599 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1600
1601 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1602
1603 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1604 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1605
1606 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1607
1608 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1609
1610* Changes in completion.
1611
1612Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1613to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1614users expect at the shell prompt.
1615
1616Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1617`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1618program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1619files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1620be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1621considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1622name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1623
1624`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1625
1626* New platform-independent commands:
1627
1628It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1629hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1630documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1631
1632* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1633
d7275149
MK
1634Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1635revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1636many threads as your system allows you to have.
1637
e23194cb
EZ
1638Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1639
d7275149
MK
1640Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1641multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1642
1643* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1644
1645Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1646
e23194cb
EZ
1647GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1648debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1649supported.)
1650
1651* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1652
1653Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1654breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1655implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1656put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1657and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1658registers.
1659
1660The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1661debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1662watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1663
1664* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1665
1666New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1667the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1668
1669New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1670display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1671IDT.
1672
1673New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1674from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1675New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1676a given linear address.
1677
1678GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1679program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1680which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1681
1682DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1683
6c56c069
EZ
1684It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1685
e23194cb
EZ
1686* Changes in documentation.
1687
1688All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1689Documentation License.
1690
1691Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1692manual.
1693
1694TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1695
1696Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1697manual.
1698
1699The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1700documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1701hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1702
5d6640b1
AC
1703* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1704
1705The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1706``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1707contents of this file.
1708
1a1d8446
AC
1709* gdba.el deleted
1710
1711GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1712
9debab2f 1713*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1714
c63ce875
EZ
1715* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1716
1717Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1718programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1719displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1720greater level of detail.
1721
1722* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1723
1724It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1725bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1726on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1727written.
1728
1729* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1730
1731The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1732necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1733machines ``out of the box''.
1734
1735The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1736possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1737signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1738would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1739interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1740
1741It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1742standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1743even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1744and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1745terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1746
1747The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1748enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1749also works.
1750
1751DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1752GDB.
1753
1754It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1755directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1756times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1757breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1758
ed9a39eb
JM
1759* New native configurations
1760
1761ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1762PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1763
7a292a7a
SS
1764* New targets
1765
96baa820 1766Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1767x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1768PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1769TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1770
085dd6e6
JM
1771* OBSOLETE configurations
1772
1773Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1774Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1775Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1776ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1777Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1778
9debab2f
AC
1779Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1780but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1781these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1782be permanently REMOVED.
1783
5330533d
SS
1784* Gould support removed
1785
1786Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1787
bc9e5bbf
AC
1788* New features for SVR4
1789
1790On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1791without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1792load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1793
1794* Many C++ enhancements
1795
1796C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1797in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1798
adf40b2e
JM
1799* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1800
1801A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1802sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1803with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1804``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1805
1806 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1807 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1808
43e526b9
JM
1809* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1810
1811A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1812expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1813instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1814
1815The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1816added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1817
96baa820
JM
1818* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1819
1820The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1821``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1822include ``set remote P-packet''.
1823
11cf8741
JM
1824* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1825
1826The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1827accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1828``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1829
7876dd43
DB
1830* ``apropos'' command added.
1831
1832The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1833documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1834try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1835
bc9e5bbf
AC
1836* New MI interface
1837
1838A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1839interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1840process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1841"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1842enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1843
1844 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1845
c906108c
SS
1846*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1847
1848* New native configurations
1849
1850HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1851HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1852M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1853
1854* New targets
1855
1856Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1857Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1858Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1859
1860* OBSOLETE configurations
1861
1862Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1863
1864Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1865but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1866these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1867be permanently REMOVED.
1868
1869* ANSI/ISO C
1870
1871As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1872buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1873containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1874use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1875available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1876configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1877information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1878already.
1879
1880* Readline 2.2
1881
1882GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1883
1884* set extension-language
1885
1886You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1887languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1888you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1889 set extension-language .c c++
1890The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1891and their associated languages.
1892
1893* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1894
1895When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1896you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1897PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1898
1899 set processor NAME
1900
1901sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1902following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1903
1904 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1905 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1906 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1907 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1908 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1909 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1910 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1911 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1912 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1913 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1914 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1915
1916At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1917special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1918registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1919only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1920
1921* HP-UX support
1922
1923Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1924more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1925library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1926support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1927for xdb and dbx commands.
1928
1929* Catchpoints
1930
1931HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1932generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1933to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1934
1935This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1936argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1937output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1938
1939* Debugging across forks
1940
1941On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1942in the inferior.
1943
1944* TUI
1945
1946HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1947it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1948configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1949
1950* GDB remote protocol additions
1951
1952A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1953Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1954fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1955allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1956
1957For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1958full 64-bit address. The command
1959
1960 set remoteaddresssize 32
1961
1962can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1963the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1964will be discarded.
1965
1966In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1967command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1968
1969 maint packet heythere
1970
1971sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1972disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1973time.
1974
1975The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1976target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1977downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1978
1979* Tracing can collect general expressions
1980
1981You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1982further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1983doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1984
1985* mask-address variable for Mips
1986
1987For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1988a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1989of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1990
1991* Higher serial baud rates
1992
1993GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1994230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1995to achieve all of these rates.)
1996
1997* i960 simulator
1998
1999The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2000builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2001
2002
2003*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2004
2005* New native configurations
2006
2007Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2008Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2009Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2010PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2011PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2012Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2013Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2014
2015* New targets
2016
2017Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2018Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2019Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2020Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2021MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2022MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2023MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2024Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2025Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2026Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2027NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2028
2029* New debugging protocols
2030
2031ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2032M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2033DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2034PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2035PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2036Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2037
2038* DWARF 2
2039
2040All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2041format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2042information.
2043
2044* Java frontend
2045
2046GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2047only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2048
2049* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2050
2051For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2052loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2053locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2054
2055* Live range splitting
2056
2057GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2058range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2059more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2060
2061* Hurd support
2062
2063GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2064updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2065
2066* ARM Thumb support
2067
2068GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2069instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2070instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2071accordingly.
2072
2073* MIPS16 support
2074
2075GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2076instruction set.
2077
2078* Overlay support
2079
2080GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2081linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2082will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2083control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2084additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2085in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2086
2087* info symbol
2088
2089The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2090the symbol at the specified address.
2091
2092* Trace support
2093
2094The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2095asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2096extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2097includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2098file tracepoint.c for more details.
2099
2100* MIPS simulator
2101
2102Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2103by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2104of most MIPS variants.
2105
2106* Sparc simulator
2107
2108Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2109by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2110Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2111
2112* set architecture
2113
2114For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2115basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2116architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2117the possible architectures.
2118
2119*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2120
2121* New native configurations
2122
2123Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2124M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2125PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2126PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2127PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2128RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2129
2130* New targets
2131
2132ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2133I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2134MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2135MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2136PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2137Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
2138Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2139
2140* PowerPC simulator
2141
2142The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2143contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2144PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2145basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2146performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2147
2148* Solaris 2.5
2149
2150GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2151
2152* Windows 95/NT native
2153
2154GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2155To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2156which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2157Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2158ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2159
2160* dont-repeat command
2161
2162If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2163command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2164useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2165extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2166
2167* Send break instead of ^C
2168
2169The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2170rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2171GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2172
2173* Remote protocol timeout
2174
2175The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2176that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2177to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2178
2179* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2180
2181By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2182loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2183stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2184when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2185in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2186
2187Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2188/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2189automatically on hpux10.
2190
2191* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2192
2193Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2194
2195* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2196
2197When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2198may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2199the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2200every character. The default value is 1050.
2201
2202* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2203
2204If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2205a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2206replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2207details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2208remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2209to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2210
2211* Speedups for remote debugging
2212
2213GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2214the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2215and more efficient S-record downloading.
2216
2217* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2218
2219GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2220Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2221
2222*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2223
2224* Psymtabs for XCOFF
2225
2226The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2227can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2228
2229* Remote targets use caching
2230
2231Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2232remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2233it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2234debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2235off' turns the the data cache off.
2236
2237* Remote targets may have threads
2238
2239The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2240in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2241gdb/remote.c for details.
2242
2243* NetROM support
2244
2245If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2246support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2247acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2248write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2249support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2250another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2251sequence is something like
2252
2253 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2254 load <prog>
2255 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2256
2257* Macintosh host
2258
2259GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2260may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2261it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2262available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2263device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2264directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2265scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2266mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2267
2268* Autoconf
2269
2270GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2271but does simplify configuration and building.
2272
2273* hpux10
2274
2275GDB now supports hpux10.
2276
2277*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2278
2279* New native configurations
2280
2281x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2282x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2283NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2284Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2285
2286* New targets
2287
2288A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2289HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2290CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2291PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2292WDC 65816 w65-*-*
2293
2294* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2295
2296GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2297possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2298filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2299the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2300if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2301
2302* Arguments to user-defined commands
2303
2304User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2305Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2306trivial example:
2307define adder
2308 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2309
2310To execute the command use:
2311adder 1 2 3
2312
2313Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2314Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2315use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2316
2317* New `if' and `while' commands
2318
2319This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2320commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2321expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2322execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2323terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2324`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2325if the expression is zero.
2326
2327* Fortran source language mode
2328
2329GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2330Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2331variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2332with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2333Fortran compilers.
2334
2335* Better HPUX support
2336
2337Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2338running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2339processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2340for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2341that behavior do the following before running the program:
2342
2343 adb -w a.out
2344 __dld_flags?W 0x5
2345 control-d
2346
2347This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2348To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2349
2350 adb -w a.out
2351 __dld_flags?W 0x4
2352 control-d
2353
2354You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2355the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2356external linkage.
2357
2358GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2359HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2360
2361* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2362
2363You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2364commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2365current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2366"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2367associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2368configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2369
2370* New DOS host serial code
2371
2372This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2373no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2374a PC's serial port.
2375
2376*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2377
2378* New "complete" command
2379
2380This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2381were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2382
2383* Trailing space optional in prompt
2384
2385"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2386allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2387
2388* Breakpoint hit counts
2389
2390"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2391has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2392can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2393to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2394less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2395that breakpoint.
2396
2397* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2398
2399"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2400an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2401arrays actually contain only short strings.
2402
2403* Shared library breakpoints
2404
2405In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2406breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2407
2408* Hardware watchpoints
2409
2410There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2411targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2412
55241689 2413Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
2414
2415* Annotations
2416
2417Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2418and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2419
2420* Improved Irix 5 support
2421
2422GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2423
2424* Improved HPPA support
2425
2426GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2427
2428* New native configurations
2429
2430Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2431HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2432Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2433RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2434
2435* New targets
2436
2437OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2438MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2439Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2440
2441* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2442
2443There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2444This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2445
2446* Fixes
2447
2448As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2449and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2450
2451*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2452
2453* Irix 5 is now supported
2454
2455* HPPA support
2456
2457GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2458to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2459GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2460of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2461can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2462
2463
2464*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2465
2466* User visible changes:
2467
2468* Remote Debugging
2469
2470The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2471target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2472debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2473integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2474debugging info for the mips target).
2475
2476* DEC Alpha native support
2477
2478GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2479debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2480work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2481Alpha-specific notes.
2482
2483* Preliminary thread implementation
2484
2485GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2486
2487* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2488
2489This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2490to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2491for details).
2492
2493* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2494
2495This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2496mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2497call methods, ...etc.
2498
2499*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2500
2501 * User visible changes:
2502
2503Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2504supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2505other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2506somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2507
2508Filename completion now works.
2509
2510When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2511arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2512addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2513
2514All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2515vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2516should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2517your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2518to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2519
2520 * DEC alpha support
2521
2522This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2523cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2524
2525
2526*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2527
2528 * Testsuite
2529
2530This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2531The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2532via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2533
2534 * C++ demangling
2535
2536'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2537emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2538Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2539disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2540use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2541
2542 * Simulators
2543
2544GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2545So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2546Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2547
2548 * New targets supported
2549
2550H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2551H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2552SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2553Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2554IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2555
2556Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2557version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2558GO32 memory extender.
2559
2560 * New remote protocols
2561
2562MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2563
2564 * New source languages supported
2565
2566This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2567used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2568into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2569
2570
2571*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2572
2573 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2574
2575GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2576version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2577University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2578compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2579format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2580(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2581
2582Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2583
2584 * Faster and better demangling
2585
2586We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2587demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2588character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2589only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2590This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2591increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2592symbol lookups.
2593
2594`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2595from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2596compiler does not actually implement.
2597
2598 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2599
2600In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2601inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2602recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2603very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2604The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2605circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2606fix.
2607
2608The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2609release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2610
2611 * Improved configure script
2612
2613The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2614you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2615host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2616done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2617
2618We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2619version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2620`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2621The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2622only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2623We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2624
2625 * Documentation improvements
2626
2627There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2628produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2629before submitting changes.
2630
2631The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2632M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2633`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2634you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2635a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2636
2637*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2638We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2639been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2640or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2641`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2642around this problem.
2643
2644 * New features
2645
2646GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2647the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2648`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2649the target program.
2650
2651The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2652how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2653
2654 * New native hosts supported
2655
2656HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2657386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2658
2659 * New targets supported
2660
2661AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2662
2663 * New file formats supported
2664
2665BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2666HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2667
2668 * Major bug fixes
2669
2670Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2671
2672We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2673printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2674
2675We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2676for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2677release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2678
2679You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2680will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2681
2682We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2683for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2684especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2685libraries.
2686
2687The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2688information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2689command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2690any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2691when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2692
2693 * Internal improvements
2694
2695GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2696debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2697
2698GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2699Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2700symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2701contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2702shared code that handles any of them.
2703
2704 * New command line options
2705
2706We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2707
2708 * Mmalloc licensing
2709
2710The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2711General Public License.
2712
2713*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2714
2715 * Host/native/target split
2716
2717GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2718hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2719target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2720local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2721ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2722
2723The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2724GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2725is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2726code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2727any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2728built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2729handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2730
2731GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2732It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2733plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2734
2735 * New hosts supported
2736
2737HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2738386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2739386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2740
2741 * New targets supported
2742
2743Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
274468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2745
2746 * New native hosts supported
2747
2748386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2749 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2750386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2751
2752 * New file formats supported
2753
2754BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2755supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2756format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2757
2758 * New commands
2759
2760`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2761`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2762These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2763
2764`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2765
2766You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2767scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2768prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2769executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2770
2771 * C++ improvements
2772
2773We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2774info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2775symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2776
2777Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2778
2779 * Major bug fixes
2780
2781The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2782fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2783by the compiler.
2784
2785We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2786support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2787
2788John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2789slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2790that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2791purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2792the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2793mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2794
2795Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2796about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2797completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2798we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2799
2800 * AMD 29k support
2801
2802A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2803specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2804calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2805usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2806in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2807
2808We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2809Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2810of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2811resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2812
2813 * Remote interfaces
2814
2815We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2816with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2817message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2818This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2819needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2820breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2821each instruction being stepped through.
2822
2823The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2824registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2825
2826There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2827find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2828Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2829processor with a serial port.
2830
2831 * Configuration
2832
2833Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2834`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2835supported, and what files each one uses.
2836
2837 * Library changes
2838
2839There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2840disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2841Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2842disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2843
2844The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2845Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2846can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2847grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2848
2849 * Documentation
2850
2851The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2852reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2853as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2854encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2855system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2856bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2857
2858And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2859
2860
2861*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2862
2863 * Better support for C++ function names
2864
2865GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2866names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2867(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2868single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2869Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2870
2871GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2872the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2873You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2874lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2875for the list of formats.
2876
2877 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2878
2879Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2880C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2881directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2882can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2883usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2884about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2885this problem.)
2886
2887 * New 'maintenance' command
2888
2889All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2890the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2891can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2892
2893 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2894 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2895 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2896 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2897 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2898 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2899
2900The following commands are new:
2901
2902 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2903 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2904 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2905
2906 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2907
2908We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2909(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2910be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2911read after argv processing.
2912
2913 * New hosts supported
2914
2915Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2916
55241689 2917GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2918
2919We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2920is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2921for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2922masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2923fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2924It costs extra.
2925
2926 * New targets supported
2927
2928Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2929
2930 * More smarts about finding #include files
2931
2932GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2933all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2934greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2935especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2936the one that contains your sources.
2937
2938We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2939breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2940try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2941
2942 * Interesting infernals change
2943
2944GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2945section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2946target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2947stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2948
2949 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2950
2951There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2952 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2953 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2954
2955See the ChangeLog for details.
2956
2957*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2958
2959 * New machines supported (host and target)
2960
2961IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2962
2963SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2964
2965 * New malloc package
2966
2967GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2968Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2969capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2970This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2971pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2972more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2973
2974 * info proc
2975
2976The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2977'help info proc' for details.
2978
2979 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2980
2981The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2982Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2983possible.
2984
2985 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2986
2987Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2988support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2989conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2990environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2991that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2992in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2993
2994 * Cross byte order fixes
2995
2996Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2997targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2998
2999 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3000
3001If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3002system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3003`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3004program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3005called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3006Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3007and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3008the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3009option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3010starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3011
3012You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3013the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3014information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3015slower, but makes future operations faster.
3016
3017The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3018build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3019A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3020use is:
3021
3022 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3023
3024The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3025It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3026shared across multiple host platforms.
3027
3028 * longjmp() handling
3029
3030GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3031siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3032all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3033platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3034
3035 * Solaris 2.0
3036
3037Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3038this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3039reading symbols.
3040
3041 * Bug fixes
3042
3043As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3044People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3045crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3046
3047*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3048
3049 * New machines supported (host and target)
3050
3051SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3052 (except core files)
3053BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3054Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3055
3056 * New machines supported (target)
3057
3058AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3059
3060 * C++ support
3061
3062GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3063The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3064per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3065
3066GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3067`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3068extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3069good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3070will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3071released.
3072
3073 * New features for SVR4
3074
3075GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3076shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3077only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3078
3079The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3080on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3081it prints the address mappings of the process.
3082
3083If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3084bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3085
3086 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3087
3088Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3089now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3090skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3091make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3092same code linked statically.
3093
3094 * New Getopt
3095
3096GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3097version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3098continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3099Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3100added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3101future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3102
3103 * Bugs fixed
3104
3105The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3106Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3107See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3108
3109
3110*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3111
3112 * New machines supported (host and target)
3113
3114Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3115NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3116Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3117
3118 * Almost SCO Unix support
3119
3120We had hoped to support:
3121SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3122(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3123that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3124about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3125
3126 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3127
3128GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3129debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3130is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3131send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3132reqired (if any).
3133
3134 * New Readline
3135
3136GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3137is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3138required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3139
3140 * Bugs fixed
3141
3142The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3143Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3144See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3145
3146 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3147
3148GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3149supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3150symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3151
3152Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3153mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3154debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3155mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3156version 2.
3157
3158Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3159really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3160line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3161variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3162situation somewhat.
3163
3164When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3165However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3166methods.
3167
3168We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3169DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3170encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3171
3172
3173*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3174
3175 * Improved configuration
3176
3177Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3178Porting BFD is simpler.
3179
3180 * Stepping improved
3181
3182The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3183of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3184in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3185function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3186
3187 * Bug fixing
3188
3189Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3190
3191 * New host supported (not target)
3192
3193Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3194
3195
3196*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3197
3198 * Multiple source language support
3199
3200GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3201It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3202and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3203language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3204You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3205`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3206
3207 * GDB and Modula-2
3208
3209GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3210currently under development at the State University of New York at
3211Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3212continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3213
3214Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3215debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3216symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3217
3218There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3219in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3220
3221 * set write on/off
3222
3223GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3224a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3225the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3226by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3227effect immediately.
3228
3229 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3230
3231When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3232shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3233The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3234examining core files.
3235
3236 * set listsize
3237
3238You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3239The default is 10.
3240
3241 * New machines supported (host and target)
3242
3243SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3244Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3245Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3246
3247 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3248
3249IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3250
3251 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3252
3253AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3254AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3255Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3256
3257 * New remote interfaces
3258
3259AMD 29000 Adapt
3260AMD 29000 Minimon
3261
3262
3263*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3264
3265 * New Facilities
3266
3267Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3268
3269Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3270target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3271is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3272remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3273remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3274also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3275using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3276stub on the target system.
3277
3278New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3279
3280GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3281library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3282object file types such as a.out and coff.
3283
3284There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3285refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3286
3287
3288 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3289
3290All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3291by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3292
3293For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3294``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3295Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3296
3297What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3298print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3299will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3300all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3301
3302confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3303 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3304 it is already running. Default is ON.
3305
3306editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3307 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3308 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3309 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3310 Default is ON.
3311
3312history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3313 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3314 or the value of the environment variable
3315 GDBHISTFILE.
3316
3317history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3318 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3319 HISTSIZE.
3320
3321history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3322 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3323 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3324
3325history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3326 history expansion will be performed on
3327 command line input. The default is OFF.
3328
3329radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3330 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3331 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3332
3333height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3334 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3335 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3336 variable TERM.
3337
3338width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3339 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3340 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3341 variable TERM.
3342
3343Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3344``set width'' instead.
3345
3346print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3347 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3348 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3349 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3350
3351print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3352 is OFF.
3353
3354print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3355 "raw" form if off.
3356
3357print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3358 like instructions.
3359
3360print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3361
3362
3363 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3364
3365The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3366new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3367are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3368window.
3369
3370
3371 * Support for Shared Libraries
3372
3373GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3374Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3375before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3376happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3377At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3378from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3379shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3380It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3381
3382sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3383 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3384 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3385
3386info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3387
3388
3389 * Watchpoints
3390
3391A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3392expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3393tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3394quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3395problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3396more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3397
3398watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3399
3400info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3401
3402delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3403disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3404enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3405
3406
3407 * C++ multiple inheritance
3408
3409When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3410for C++ programs.
3411
3412 * C++ exception handling
3413
3414Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3415ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3416the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3417handler's context).
3418
3419catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3420 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3421 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3422
3423info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3424 current stack frame.
3425
3426
3427 * Minor command changes
3428
3429The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3430command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3431is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3432
3433The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3434at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3435frames without printing.
3436
3437 * New directory command
3438
3439'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3440The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3441about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3442with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3443find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3444
3445 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3446
3447For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3448for more details.
3449
3450GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3451two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3452Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3453where the program that you are debugging will run.
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