* configure.in: Restore CFLAGS if GM P isn't present.
[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 6.4
5
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6* New targets
7
8Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
9
10Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
11
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12* New commands
13
14init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
15 only if it doesn't already have a value.
16
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17The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
18
19checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
20
21restart <n> Return the program state to a
22 previously saved state.
23
24info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
25
26delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
27
28set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
29 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
30
31info forks List forks of the user program that
32 are available to be debugged.
33
34fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
35 forks of the user program that are
36 available to be debugged.
37
38delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
39 that are available to be debugged (and
40 kill the forked process).
41
42detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
43 that are available to be debugged (and
44 allow the process to continue).
45
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46* New architecture
47
48Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
49
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50* Improved Windows host support
51
52GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
53native console support, and remote communications using either
54network sockets or serial ports.
55
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56* REMOVED features
57
58The ARM rdi-share module.
59
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60The Netware NLM debug server.
61
53e5f3cf 62*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 63
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64* New native configurations
65
02a677ac 66OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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67OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
68
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69* New targets
70
71Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
72
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73* New command line options
74
75--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
76--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
77 the child (debugged) program exited with.
78--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
79 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
80 specified multiple times and in conjunction
81 with the --command (-x) option.
82
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83* Deprecated commands removed
84
85The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
86removed:
87
88 Command Replacement
89 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
90 othernames set arm disassembler
91 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
92 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
93 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
94 regs info registers
95
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96* New BSD user-level threads support
97
98It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
99library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
100configurations are:
101
102FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
103FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
104OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
105
106Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
107are not yet supported.
108
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109* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
110(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
111
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112* REMOVED configurations and files
113
114VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 115Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 116National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 117
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118* New "set print array-indexes" command
119
120After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
121when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
122behavior.
123
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124* VAX floating point support
125
126GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
127
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128* User-defined command support
129
130In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
131to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
132section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
133
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134*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
135
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136* New command line option
137
138GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
139debugging.
140
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141* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
142
143GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
144information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
145by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
146proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
147to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 148
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149* Internationalization
150
151When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
152internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
153continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
154
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155* Ada
156
157Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
158implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
159into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
160
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161* New native configurations
162
163GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
164
165* Remote 'p' packet
166
167GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
168packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
169
170* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
171
172GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
173The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
174features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
175i386 application).
176
177GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
178compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
179continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
180configurations:
181
182hppa-*-hpux
183ia64-*-aix
184mips-*-irix*
185*-*-lynx
186mips-*-linux-gnu
187sds protocol
188xdr protocol
189powerpc bdm protocol
190
191Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
192made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
193
194* OBSOLETE configurations and files
195
196Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
197been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
198configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
199permanently REMOVED.
200
201h8300-*-*
202mcore-*-*
203mn10300-*-*
204ns32k-*-*
205sh64-*-*
206v850-*-*
207
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208*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
209
210* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
211
212When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
213heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
214been fixed.
215
216* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
217
218When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
219fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
220IRIX long double values).
221
222* VAX and "next"
223
224A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
225command. This problem has been fixed.
226
860660cb 227*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 228
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229* Fix for ``many threads''
230
231On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
232rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
233error message:
234
235 ptrace: No such process.
236 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
237
238This problem has been fixed.
239
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240* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
241
242Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
243GDB to dump core).
244
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245* New ``start'' command.
246
247This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
248
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249* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
250
251Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
252live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
253platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
254
255FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
256FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
257NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
258NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
259NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
260OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
261OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
262OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
263OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
264
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265* Signal trampoline code overhauled
266
267Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
268These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
269of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
270call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
271signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
272
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273Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
274features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
275include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 276
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277* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
278
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279* New native configurations
280
97dc871c 281GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 282OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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283OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
284OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 285OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 286NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 287OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 288
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289* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
290
291GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
292The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
293including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
294migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
295compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
296work, was also included.
297
298GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
299module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
300
301h8300-*-*
302mcore-*-*
303mn10300-*-*
304ns32k-*-*
305sh64-*-*
306v850-*-*
307xstormy16-*-*
308
309Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
310made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
311
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312* REMOVED configurations and files
313
314Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
315Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
316Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
317Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
318Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
319AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
320Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
321decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
322riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
323sonymips mips-sony-*
324sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
325
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326*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
327
328* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
329
330The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
331GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
332command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
333program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
334with GDB".
335
336* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
337
338Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
339libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
340cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
341GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
342shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
343the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
344are created.
345
346Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
347
348* Fixed ISO-C build problems
349
350The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
351non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
352compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
353
354* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
355
356Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
357wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
358
359* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
360
361The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
362permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
363systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
364
365* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
366
367Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
368has been updated to use constant array sizes.
369
370* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
371
372GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
373its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
374panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
375
376* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
377
378When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
379by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
380not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
381
faae5abe 382*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 383
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384* Removed --with-mmalloc
385
386Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
387conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
388
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389* Changes in AMD64 configurations
390
391The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
392the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
393and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
394you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
395
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396* Revised SPARC target
397
398The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
399FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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400support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
401from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
402(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 403
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404* New C++ demangler
405
406GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
407names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
408with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
409programs.
410
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411* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
412
413GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
414arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
415encountered these.
416
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417* C++ nested types and namespaces
418
419GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
420improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
421is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
422Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
423namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
424"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
425frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
426if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
427GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
428
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429* New native configurations
430
431NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 432OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 433OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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434OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
435OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 436
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437* New debugging protocols
438
439M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
440
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441* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
442
443The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
444and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
445tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
446
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447* OBSOLETE configurations and files
448
449Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
450been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
451configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
452permanently REMOVED.
453
454Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
455Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
456Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
457Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
458Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
459AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
460Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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461decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
462riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
463sonymips mips-sony-*
464sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 465
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466* REMOVED configurations and files
467
468SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
469SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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470Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
471Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
472H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
473HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
474HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
475HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
476PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 477386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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478Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
479 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
480 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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481SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
482SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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483Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
484Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 485
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486*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
487
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488* Objective-C
489
490Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
491integrated into GDB.
492
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493* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
494
495DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
496information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
497By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
498backtraces.
499
500The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
501have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
502DWARF 2 CFI support.
503
504* Hosted file I/O.
505
506GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
507file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
508remote protocol documentation for details.
509
510* All targets using the new architecture framework.
511
512All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
513architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
514to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
515ppc32 on ppc64).
516
517* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
518
519GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
520per-thread variables.
521
522* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
523
524GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
525GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
526
527* Separate debug info.
528
529GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
530automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
531of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
532system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
533and optional debug files.
534
535* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
536
537DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
538describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
539debugger.
540
541GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
542for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
543
544* Java
545
546A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
547Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
548considered "useable".
549
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550* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
551
552The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
553commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
554kernel.
555
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556* GDB supports logging output to a file
557
558There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
559used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 560
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561* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
562
563The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
564disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
565command.
566
e286caf2 567* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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568
569The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
570registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
571
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572* Profiling support
573
574A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
575be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
576session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
577"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
578data, for more informative profiling results.
579
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580* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
581
582The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
583option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 584"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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585
586Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
587removed.
588
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589Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
590Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
591Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
592 in a subsequent -var-update.
593
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594* New native configurations.
595
596FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
597
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598* Multi-arched targets.
599
b4263afa 600HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 601Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 602
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603* OBSOLETE configurations and files
604
605Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
606been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
607configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
608permanently REMOVED.
609
8b0e5691 610Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 611Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 612H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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613HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
614HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
615HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 616PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
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617Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
618 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
619 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
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620Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
621Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 622
5835abe7
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623* REMOVED configurations and files
624
625V850EA ISA
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626Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
627IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
628i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
629i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
630i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
631HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
632 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
633 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
634Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
635Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
636Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
637OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
638I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 639
a094c6fb
AC
640* MIPS $fp behavior changed
641
642The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
643the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
644context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
645address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
646The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
647
299ffc64 648*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 649
46248966
AC
650* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
651
652When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
653`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
654in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
655library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
656shared libs like mad''.
657
b9d14705 658* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 659
b9d14705
DJ
660Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
661the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
662arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
663powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 664
e0e9281e
JB
665* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
666
667GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
668and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
669they expand.
670
dd73b9bb
AC
671The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
672invocations in expression, and shows the result.
673
674The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
675macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
676
e0e9281e
JB
677Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
678information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
679your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
680information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
681
2250ee0c
CV
682* Multi-arched targets.
683
6e3ba3b8
JT
684DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
685DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 686NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 687National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
688Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
689Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 690
cd9bfe15 691* New targets.
e33ce519 692
456f8b9d
DB
693Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
694
e33ce519 695
da8ca43d
JT
696* New native configurations
697
698Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 699SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 700MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 701UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 702
cd9bfe15
AC
703* OBSOLETE configurations and files
704
705Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
706been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
707configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
708permanently REMOVED.
709
92eb23c5 710Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 711OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 712IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 713Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 714Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 715Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
716i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
717i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
718i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
719HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
720 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
721 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 722I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 723
db034ac5
AC
724* OBSOLETE languages
725
726CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
727
cd9bfe15
AC
728* REMOVED configurations and files
729
730AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
731A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
732AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
733AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
734AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
735
736testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
737
20f01a46
DH
738* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
739
740This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
741commands. The default is 1024.
742
a5941fbf
MK
743* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
744
745Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
746
89743e04
MS
747* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
748
749These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
750to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
751from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 752
9fb14e79
JB
753* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
754
755The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
756including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
757of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
758
2037aebb
AC
759*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
760
761* New targets.
762
763Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
764
765* Bug fixes
766
767gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
768mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
769Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
770
771gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
772dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
773Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
774
775Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
776Surprisingly enough, it works now.
777By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
778
779i386 hardware watchpoint support:
780avoid misses on second run for some targets.
781By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
782
37057839 783*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 784
1a703748
MS
785* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
786
787This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
788really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
789In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
790target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
791This can be a significant performance improvement on some
792(notably embedded) targets.
793
cefd4ef5
MS
794* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
795
55241689
AC
796This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
797process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
798GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
799hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 800
352ed7b4
MS
801* New command line option
802
803GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
804
805* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
806
807There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
808command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
809a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
810be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
811open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
812issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
813a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
814it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
815GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
816is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
817
fe419ffc
RE
818* Changes in ARM configurations.
819
820Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
821configuration is fully multi-arch.
822
eb7cedd9
MK
823* New native configurations
824
fe419ffc 825ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 826x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 827AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 828Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 829
c9f63e6b
CV
830* New targets
831
832Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
833
9b4ff276
AC
834* OBSOLETE configurations and files
835
836Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
837been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
838configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
839permanently REMOVED.
840
841AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
842A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
843AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
844AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
845AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
846
b4ceaee6 847testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 848
e2caac18
AC
849* REMOVED configurations and files
850
851TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 852WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
853PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
854PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
855PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 856Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
857Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
858 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 859SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 860Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
861Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
862ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 863Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 864
c2a727fa
TT
865* Changes to command line processing
866
867The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
868for the inferior from gdb's command line.
869
467d8519
TT
870* Changes to key bindings
871
872There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
873
7072a954
AC
874*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
875
876Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
877
878Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
879corrupted.
880
881Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
882
883Numerous documentation fixes.
884
885Numerous testsuite fixes.
886
34f47bc4 887*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
888
889* New native configurations
890
891Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
892x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 893MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
894MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
895ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 896s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 897
bf64bfd6
AC
898* New targets
899
def90278 900Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 901CRIS cris-axis
55241689 902UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 903
17e78a56 904* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
905
906x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 907Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
908Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
909 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
910TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
911WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 912Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
913PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
914PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
915PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 916SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
917Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
918ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 919Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 920
17e78a56
AC
921stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
922kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
923
7fcca85b
AC
924Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
925been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
926configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
927permanently REMOVED.
928
a196c81c 929* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
930
931Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
932Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
933Pyramid pyramid-*-*
934ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
935Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 936ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 937
6d6b80e5 938* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 939
6d6b80e5 940GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
941sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
942present.
943
bf64bfd6
AC
944* Other news:
945
e23194cb
EZ
946* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
947
948* The MI enabled by default.
949
950The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
951revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
952engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
953using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
954which is now deprecated.
955
956* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
957
958GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
959main features are supported:
960
961 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
962
963 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
964 extension;
965
966 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
967
968 - a Pascal expression parser.
969
970However, some important features are not yet supported.
971
972 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
973
974 - there are some problems with boolean types;
975
976 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
977 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
978
979 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
980
981 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
982
983* Changes in completion.
984
985Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
986to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
987users expect at the shell prompt.
988
989Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
990`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
991program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
992files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
993be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
994considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
995name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
996
997`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
998
999* New platform-independent commands:
1000
1001It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1002hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1003documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1004
1005* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1006
d7275149
MK
1007Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1008revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1009many threads as your system allows you to have.
1010
e23194cb
EZ
1011Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1012
d7275149
MK
1013Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1014multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1015
1016* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1017
1018Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1019
e23194cb
EZ
1020GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1021debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1022supported.)
1023
1024* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1025
1026Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1027breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1028implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1029put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1030and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1031registers.
1032
1033The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1034debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1035watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1036
1037* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1038
1039New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1040the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1041
1042New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1043display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1044IDT.
1045
1046New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1047from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1048New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1049a given linear address.
1050
1051GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1052program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1053which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1054
1055DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1056
6c56c069
EZ
1057It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1058
e23194cb
EZ
1059* Changes in documentation.
1060
1061All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1062Documentation License.
1063
1064Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1065manual.
1066
1067TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1068
1069Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1070manual.
1071
1072The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1073documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1074hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1075
5d6640b1
AC
1076* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1077
1078The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1079``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1080contents of this file.
1081
1a1d8446
AC
1082* gdba.el deleted
1083
1084GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1085
9debab2f 1086*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1087
c63ce875
EZ
1088* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1089
1090Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1091programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1092displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1093greater level of detail.
1094
1095* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1096
1097It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1098bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1099on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1100written.
1101
1102* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1103
1104The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1105necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1106machines ``out of the box''.
1107
1108The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1109possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1110signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1111would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1112interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1113
1114It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1115standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1116even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1117and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1118terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1119
1120The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1121enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1122also works.
1123
1124DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1125GDB.
1126
1127It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1128directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1129times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1130breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1131
ed9a39eb
JM
1132* New native configurations
1133
1134ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1135PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1136
7a292a7a
SS
1137* New targets
1138
96baa820 1139Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1140x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1141PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1142TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1143
085dd6e6
JM
1144* OBSOLETE configurations
1145
1146Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1147Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1148Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1149ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1150Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1151
9debab2f
AC
1152Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1153but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1154these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1155be permanently REMOVED.
1156
5330533d
SS
1157* Gould support removed
1158
1159Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1160
bc9e5bbf
AC
1161* New features for SVR4
1162
1163On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1164without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1165load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1166
1167* Many C++ enhancements
1168
1169C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1170in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1171
adf40b2e
JM
1172* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1173
1174A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1175sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1176with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1177``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1178
1179 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1180 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1181
43e526b9
JM
1182* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1183
1184A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1185expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1186instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1187
1188The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1189added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1190
96baa820
JM
1191* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1192
1193The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1194``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1195include ``set remote P-packet''.
1196
11cf8741
JM
1197* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1198
1199The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1200accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1201``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1202
7876dd43
DB
1203* ``apropos'' command added.
1204
1205The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1206documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1207try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1208
bc9e5bbf
AC
1209* New MI interface
1210
1211A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1212interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1213process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1214"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1215enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1216
1217 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1218
c906108c
SS
1219*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1220
1221* New native configurations
1222
1223HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1224HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1225M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1226
1227* New targets
1228
1229Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1230Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1231Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1232
1233* OBSOLETE configurations
1234
1235Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1236
1237Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1238but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1239these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1240be permanently REMOVED.
1241
1242* ANSI/ISO C
1243
1244As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1245buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1246containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1247use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1248available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1249configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1250information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1251already.
1252
1253* Readline 2.2
1254
1255GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1256
1257* set extension-language
1258
1259You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1260languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1261you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1262 set extension-language .c c++
1263The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1264and their associated languages.
1265
1266* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1267
1268When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1269you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1270PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1271
1272 set processor NAME
1273
1274sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1275following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1276
1277 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1278 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1279 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1280 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1281 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1282 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1283 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1284 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1285 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1286 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1287 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1288
1289At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1290special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1291registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1292only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1293
1294* HP-UX support
1295
1296Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1297more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1298library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1299support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1300for xdb and dbx commands.
1301
1302* Catchpoints
1303
1304HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1305generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1306to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1307
1308This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1309argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1310output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1311
1312* Debugging across forks
1313
1314On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1315in the inferior.
1316
1317* TUI
1318
1319HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1320it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1321configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1322
1323* GDB remote protocol additions
1324
1325A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1326Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1327fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1328allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1329
1330For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1331full 64-bit address. The command
1332
1333 set remoteaddresssize 32
1334
1335can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1336the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1337will be discarded.
1338
1339In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1340command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1341
1342 maint packet heythere
1343
1344sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1345disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1346time.
1347
1348The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1349target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1350downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1351
1352* Tracing can collect general expressions
1353
1354You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1355further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1356doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1357
1358* mask-address variable for Mips
1359
1360For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1361a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1362of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1363
1364* Higher serial baud rates
1365
1366GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1367230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1368to achieve all of these rates.)
1369
1370* i960 simulator
1371
1372The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1373builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1374
1375
1376*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1377
1378* New native configurations
1379
1380Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1381Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1382Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1383PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1384PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1385Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1386Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1387
1388* New targets
1389
1390Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1391Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1392Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1393Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1394MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1395MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1396MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1397Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1398Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1399Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1400NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1401
1402* New debugging protocols
1403
1404ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1405M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1406DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1407PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1408PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1409Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1410
1411* DWARF 2
1412
1413All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1414format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1415information.
1416
1417* Java frontend
1418
1419GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1420only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1421
1422* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1423
1424For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1425loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1426locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1427
1428* Live range splitting
1429
1430GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1431range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1432more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1433
1434* Hurd support
1435
1436GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1437updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1438
1439* ARM Thumb support
1440
1441GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1442instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1443instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1444accordingly.
1445
1446* MIPS16 support
1447
1448GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1449instruction set.
1450
1451* Overlay support
1452
1453GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1454linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1455will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1456control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1457additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1458in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1459
1460* info symbol
1461
1462The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1463the symbol at the specified address.
1464
1465* Trace support
1466
1467The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1468asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1469extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1470includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1471file tracepoint.c for more details.
1472
1473* MIPS simulator
1474
1475Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1476by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1477of most MIPS variants.
1478
1479* Sparc simulator
1480
1481Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1482by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1483Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1484
1485* set architecture
1486
1487For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1488basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1489architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1490the possible architectures.
1491
1492*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1493
1494* New native configurations
1495
1496Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1497M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1498PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1499PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1500PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1501RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1502
1503* New targets
1504
1505ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1506I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1507MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1508MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1509PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1510Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1511Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1512
1513* PowerPC simulator
1514
1515The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1516contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1517PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1518basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1519performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1520
1521* Solaris 2.5
1522
1523GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1524
1525* Windows 95/NT native
1526
1527GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1528To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1529which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1530Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1531ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1532
1533* dont-repeat command
1534
1535If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1536command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1537useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1538extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1539
1540* Send break instead of ^C
1541
1542The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1543rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1544GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1545
1546* Remote protocol timeout
1547
1548The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1549that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1550to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1551
1552* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1553
1554By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1555loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1556stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1557when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1558in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1559
1560Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1561/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1562automatically on hpux10.
1563
1564* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1565
1566Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1567
1568* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1569
1570When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1571may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1572the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1573every character. The default value is 1050.
1574
1575* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1576
1577If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1578a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1579replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1580details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1581remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1582to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1583
1584* Speedups for remote debugging
1585
1586GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1587the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1588and more efficient S-record downloading.
1589
1590* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1591
1592GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1593Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1594
1595*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1596
1597* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1598
1599The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1600can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1601
1602* Remote targets use caching
1603
1604Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1605remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1606it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1607debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1608off' turns the the data cache off.
1609
1610* Remote targets may have threads
1611
1612The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1613in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1614gdb/remote.c for details.
1615
1616* NetROM support
1617
1618If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1619support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1620acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1621write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1622support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1623another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1624sequence is something like
1625
1626 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1627 load <prog>
1628 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1629
1630* Macintosh host
1631
1632GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1633may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1634it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1635available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1636device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1637directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1638scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1639mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1640
1641* Autoconf
1642
1643GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1644but does simplify configuration and building.
1645
1646* hpux10
1647
1648GDB now supports hpux10.
1649
1650*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1651
1652* New native configurations
1653
1654x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1655x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1656NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1657Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1658
1659* New targets
1660
1661A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1662HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1663CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1664PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1665WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1666
1667* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1668
1669GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1670possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1671filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1672the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1673if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1674
1675* Arguments to user-defined commands
1676
1677User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1678Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1679trivial example:
1680define adder
1681 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1682
1683To execute the command use:
1684adder 1 2 3
1685
1686Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1687Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1688use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1689
1690* New `if' and `while' commands
1691
1692This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1693commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1694expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1695execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1696terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1697`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1698if the expression is zero.
1699
1700* Fortran source language mode
1701
1702GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1703Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1704variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1705with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1706Fortran compilers.
1707
1708* Better HPUX support
1709
1710Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1711running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1712processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1713for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1714that behavior do the following before running the program:
1715
1716 adb -w a.out
1717 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1718 control-d
1719
1720This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1721To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1722
1723 adb -w a.out
1724 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1725 control-d
1726
1727You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1728the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1729external linkage.
1730
1731GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1732HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1733
1734* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1735
1736You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1737commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1738current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1739"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1740associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1741configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1742
1743* New DOS host serial code
1744
1745This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1746no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1747a PC's serial port.
1748
1749*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1750
1751* New "complete" command
1752
1753This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1754were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1755
1756* Trailing space optional in prompt
1757
1758"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1759allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1760
1761* Breakpoint hit counts
1762
1763"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1764has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1765can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1766to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1767less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1768that breakpoint.
1769
1770* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1771
1772"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1773an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1774arrays actually contain only short strings.
1775
1776* Shared library breakpoints
1777
1778In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1779breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1780
1781* Hardware watchpoints
1782
1783There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1784targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1785
55241689 1786Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1787
1788* Annotations
1789
1790Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1791and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1792
1793* Improved Irix 5 support
1794
1795GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1796
1797* Improved HPPA support
1798
1799GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1800
1801* New native configurations
1802
1803Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1804HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1805Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1806RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1807
1808* New targets
1809
1810OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1811MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1812Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1813
1814* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1815
1816There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1817This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1818
1819* Fixes
1820
1821As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1822and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1823
1824*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1825
1826* Irix 5 is now supported
1827
1828* HPPA support
1829
1830GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1831to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1832GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1833of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1834can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1835
1836
1837*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1838
1839* User visible changes:
1840
1841* Remote Debugging
1842
1843The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1844target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1845debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1846integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1847debugging info for the mips target).
1848
1849* DEC Alpha native support
1850
1851GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1852debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1853work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1854Alpha-specific notes.
1855
1856* Preliminary thread implementation
1857
1858GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1859
1860* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1861
1862This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1863to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1864for details).
1865
1866* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1867
1868This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1869mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1870call methods, ...etc.
1871
1872*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1873
1874 * User visible changes:
1875
1876Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1877supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1878other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1879somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1880
1881Filename completion now works.
1882
1883When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1884arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1885addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1886
1887All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1888vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1889should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1890your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1891to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1892
1893 * DEC alpha support
1894
1895This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1896cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1897
1898
1899*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1900
1901 * Testsuite
1902
1903This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1904The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1905via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1906
1907 * C++ demangling
1908
1909'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1910emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1911Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1912disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1913use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1914
1915 * Simulators
1916
1917GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1918So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1919Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1920
1921 * New targets supported
1922
1923H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1924H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1925SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1926Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1927IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1928
1929Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1930version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1931GO32 memory extender.
1932
1933 * New remote protocols
1934
1935MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1936
1937 * New source languages supported
1938
1939This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1940used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1941into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1942
1943
1944*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1945
1946 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1947
1948GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1949version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1950University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1951compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1952format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1953(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1954
1955Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1956
1957 * Faster and better demangling
1958
1959We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1960demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1961character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1962only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1963This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1964increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1965symbol lookups.
1966
1967`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1968from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1969compiler does not actually implement.
1970
1971 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1972
1973In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1974inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1975recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1976very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1977The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1978circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1979fix.
1980
1981The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1982release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1983
1984 * Improved configure script
1985
1986The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1987you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1988host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1989done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1990
1991We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1992version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1993`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1994The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1995only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1996We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1997
1998 * Documentation improvements
1999
2000There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2001produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2002before submitting changes.
2003
2004The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2005M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2006`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2007you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2008a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2009
2010*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2011We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2012been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2013or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2014`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2015around this problem.
2016
2017 * New features
2018
2019GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2020the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2021`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2022the target program.
2023
2024The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2025how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2026
2027 * New native hosts supported
2028
2029HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2030386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2031
2032 * New targets supported
2033
2034AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2035
2036 * New file formats supported
2037
2038BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2039HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2040
2041 * Major bug fixes
2042
2043Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2044
2045We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2046printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2047
2048We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2049for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2050release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2051
2052You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2053will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2054
2055We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2056for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2057especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2058libraries.
2059
2060The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2061information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2062command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2063any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2064when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2065
2066 * Internal improvements
2067
2068GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2069debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2070
2071GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2072Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2073symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2074contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2075shared code that handles any of them.
2076
2077 * New command line options
2078
2079We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2080
2081 * Mmalloc licensing
2082
2083The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2084General Public License.
2085
2086*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2087
2088 * Host/native/target split
2089
2090GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2091hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2092target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2093local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2094ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2095
2096The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2097GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2098is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2099code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2100any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2101built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2102handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2103
2104GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2105It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2106plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2107
2108 * New hosts supported
2109
2110HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2111386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2112386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2113
2114 * New targets supported
2115
2116Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
211768030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2118
2119 * New native hosts supported
2120
2121386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2122 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2123386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2124
2125 * New file formats supported
2126
2127BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2128supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2129format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2130
2131 * New commands
2132
2133`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2134`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2135These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2136
2137`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2138
2139You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2140scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2141prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2142executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2143
2144 * C++ improvements
2145
2146We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2147info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2148symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2149
2150Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2151
2152 * Major bug fixes
2153
2154The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2155fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2156by the compiler.
2157
2158We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2159support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2160
2161John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2162slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2163that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2164purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2165the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2166mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2167
2168Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2169about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2170completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2171we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2172
2173 * AMD 29k support
2174
2175A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2176specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2177calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2178usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2179in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2180
2181We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2182Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2183of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2184resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2185
2186 * Remote interfaces
2187
2188We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2189with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2190message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2191This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2192needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2193breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2194each instruction being stepped through.
2195
2196The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2197registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2198
2199There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2200find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2201Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2202processor with a serial port.
2203
2204 * Configuration
2205
2206Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2207`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2208supported, and what files each one uses.
2209
2210 * Library changes
2211
2212There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2213disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2214Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2215disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2216
2217The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2218Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2219can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2220grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2221
2222 * Documentation
2223
2224The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2225reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2226as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2227encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2228system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2229bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2230
2231And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2232
2233
2234*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2235
2236 * Better support for C++ function names
2237
2238GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2239names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2240(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2241single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2242Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2243
2244GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2245the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2246You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2247lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2248for the list of formats.
2249
2250 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2251
2252Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2253C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2254directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2255can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2256usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2257about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2258this problem.)
2259
2260 * New 'maintenance' command
2261
2262All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2263the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2264can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2265
2266 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2267 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2268 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2269 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2270 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2271 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2272
2273The following commands are new:
2274
2275 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2276 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2277 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2278
2279 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2280
2281We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2282(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2283be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2284read after argv processing.
2285
2286 * New hosts supported
2287
2288Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2289
55241689 2290GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2291
2292We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2293is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2294for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2295masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2296fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2297It costs extra.
2298
2299 * New targets supported
2300
2301Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2302
2303 * More smarts about finding #include files
2304
2305GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2306all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2307greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2308especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2309the one that contains your sources.
2310
2311We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2312breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2313try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2314
2315 * Interesting infernals change
2316
2317GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2318section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2319target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2320stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2321
2322 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2323
2324There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2325 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2326 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2327
2328See the ChangeLog for details.
2329
2330*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2331
2332 * New machines supported (host and target)
2333
2334IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2335
2336SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2337
2338 * New malloc package
2339
2340GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2341Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2342capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2343This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2344pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2345more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2346
2347 * info proc
2348
2349The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2350'help info proc' for details.
2351
2352 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2353
2354The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2355Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2356possible.
2357
2358 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2359
2360Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2361support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2362conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2363environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2364that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2365in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2366
2367 * Cross byte order fixes
2368
2369Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2370targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2371
2372 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2373
2374If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2375system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2376`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2377program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2378called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2379Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2380and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2381the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2382option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2383starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2384
2385You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2386the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2387information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2388slower, but makes future operations faster.
2389
2390The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2391build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2392A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2393use is:
2394
2395 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2396
2397The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2398It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2399shared across multiple host platforms.
2400
2401 * longjmp() handling
2402
2403GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2404siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2405all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2406platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2407
2408 * Solaris 2.0
2409
2410Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2411this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2412reading symbols.
2413
2414 * Bug fixes
2415
2416As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2417People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2418crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2419
2420*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2421
2422 * New machines supported (host and target)
2423
2424SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2425 (except core files)
2426BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2427Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2428
2429 * New machines supported (target)
2430
2431AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2432
2433 * C++ support
2434
2435GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2436The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2437per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2438
2439GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2440`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2441extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2442good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2443will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2444released.
2445
2446 * New features for SVR4
2447
2448GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2449shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2450only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2451
2452The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2453on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2454it prints the address mappings of the process.
2455
2456If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2457bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2458
2459 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2460
2461Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2462now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2463skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2464make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2465same code linked statically.
2466
2467 * New Getopt
2468
2469GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2470version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2471continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2472Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2473added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2474future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2475
2476 * Bugs fixed
2477
2478The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2479Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2480See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2481
2482
2483*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2484
2485 * New machines supported (host and target)
2486
2487Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2488NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2489Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2490
2491 * Almost SCO Unix support
2492
2493We had hoped to support:
2494SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2495(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2496that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2497about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2498
2499 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2500
2501GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2502debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2503is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2504send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2505reqired (if any).
2506
2507 * New Readline
2508
2509GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2510is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2511required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2512
2513 * Bugs fixed
2514
2515The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2516Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2517See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2518
2519 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2520
2521GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2522supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2523symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2524
2525Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2526mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2527debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2528mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2529version 2.
2530
2531Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2532really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2533line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2534variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2535situation somewhat.
2536
2537When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2538However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2539methods.
2540
2541We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2542DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2543encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2544
2545
2546*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2547
2548 * Improved configuration
2549
2550Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2551Porting BFD is simpler.
2552
2553 * Stepping improved
2554
2555The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2556of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2557in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2558function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2559
2560 * Bug fixing
2561
2562Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2563
2564 * New host supported (not target)
2565
2566Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2567
2568
2569*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2570
2571 * Multiple source language support
2572
2573GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2574It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2575and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2576language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2577You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2578`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2579
2580 * GDB and Modula-2
2581
2582GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2583currently under development at the State University of New York at
2584Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2585continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2586
2587Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2588debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2589symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2590
2591There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2592in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2593
2594 * set write on/off
2595
2596GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2597a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2598the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2599by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2600effect immediately.
2601
2602 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2603
2604When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2605shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2606The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2607examining core files.
2608
2609 * set listsize
2610
2611You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2612The default is 10.
2613
2614 * New machines supported (host and target)
2615
2616SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2617Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2618Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2619
2620 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2621
2622IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2623
2624 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2625
2626AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2627AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2628Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2629
2630 * New remote interfaces
2631
2632AMD 29000 Adapt
2633AMD 29000 Minimon
2634
2635
2636*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2637
2638 * New Facilities
2639
2640Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2641
2642Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2643target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2644is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2645remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2646remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2647also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2648using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2649stub on the target system.
2650
2651New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2652
2653GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2654library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2655object file types such as a.out and coff.
2656
2657There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2658refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2659
2660
2661 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2662
2663All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2664by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2665
2666For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2667``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2668Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2669
2670What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2671print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2672will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2673all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2674
2675confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2676 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2677 it is already running. Default is ON.
2678
2679editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2680 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2681 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2682 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2683 Default is ON.
2684
2685history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2686 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2687 or the value of the environment variable
2688 GDBHISTFILE.
2689
2690history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2691 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2692 HISTSIZE.
2693
2694history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2695 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2696 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2697
2698history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2699 history expansion will be performed on
2700 command line input. The default is OFF.
2701
2702radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2703 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2704 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2705
2706height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2707 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2708 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2709 variable TERM.
2710
2711width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2712 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2713 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2714 variable TERM.
2715
2716Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2717``set width'' instead.
2718
2719print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2720 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2721 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2722 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2723
2724print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2725 is OFF.
2726
2727print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2728 "raw" form if off.
2729
2730print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2731 like instructions.
2732
2733print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2734
2735
2736 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2737
2738The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2739new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2740are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2741window.
2742
2743
2744 * Support for Shared Libraries
2745
2746GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2747Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2748before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2749happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2750At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2751from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2752shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2753It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2754
2755sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2756 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2757 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2758
2759info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2760
2761
2762 * Watchpoints
2763
2764A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2765expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2766tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2767quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2768problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2769more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2770
2771watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2772
2773info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2774
2775delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2776disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2777enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2778
2779
2780 * C++ multiple inheritance
2781
2782When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2783for C++ programs.
2784
2785 * C++ exception handling
2786
2787Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2788ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2789the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2790handler's context).
2791
2792catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2793 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2794 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2795
2796info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2797 current stack frame.
2798
2799
2800 * Minor command changes
2801
2802The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2803command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2804is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2805
2806The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2807at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2808frames without printing.
2809
2810 * New directory command
2811
2812'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2813The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2814about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2815with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2816find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2817
2818 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2819
2820For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2821for more details.
2822
2823GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2824two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2825Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2826where the program that you are debugging will run.
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