* i387-fp.c (struct i387_fsave, struct i387_fxsave): Make 16-bit
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
SS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
6dd09645
JB
4*** Changes since GDB 6.6
5
6* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
7frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
8
c9bb8148
DJ
9* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
1032-bit or 64-bit register values.
11
0d5de010
DJ
12* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
13
23181151
DJ
14* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
15target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
16a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
17
e1f48ead
JK
18* Arrays of explicitly SIGNED or UNSIGNED CHARs are now printed as arrays
19 of numbers.
20
123dc839
DJ
21* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
22for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
23only ARM).
24
05a4558a
DJ
25* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
26iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 27
c9bb8148
DJ
28* New commands
29
30set mem inaccessible-by-default
31show mem inaccessible-by-default
32 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
33 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
34 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
35 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
36 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
37
38set breakpoint auto-hw
39show breakpoint auto-hw
40 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
41 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
42 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
43 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
44 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
45 including "next" and "finish".
46
0e420bd8
JB
47catch exception
48catch exception unhandled
49 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
50
51catch assert
52 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
53
f822c95b
DJ
54set sysroot
55show sysroot
56 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
57 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
58 an alias to "set sysroot".
59
bd372731
MK
60* New native configurations
61
62OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
63
23181151
DJ
64set tdesc filename
65unset tdesc filename
66show tdesc filename
67 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
68 not query the target for its built-in description.
69
c9bb8148
DJ
70* New targets
71
54fe9172 72OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 73MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 74Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 75
6dd09645
JB
76* New remote packets
77
78QPassSignals:
79 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
80 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
81
23181151
DJ
82qXfer:features:read:
83 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
84 features.
6dd09645 85
483367ee
DJ
86* Removed targets
87
88Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
89
90hppa*-*-hiux*
91i[34567]86-ncr-*
92i[34567]86-*-dgux*
93i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
94i[34567]86-*-netware*
95i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
96i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
97i[34567]86-*-sco*
98i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
99i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
100i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
101i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
102i[34567]86-*-unixware*
103i[34567]86-*-sysv*
104i[34567]86-*-isc*
105m68*-cisco*-*
106m68*-tandem-*
107rs6000-*-lynxos*
108
6dd09645 109*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 110
ca3bf3bd
DJ
111* New targets
112
113Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 114Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 115
6aec2e11
DJ
116* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
117(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
118running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
119
120* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
121Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
122supported.
123
17218d91
DJ
124* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
125broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
126
9ebce043
DJ
127* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
128stub provides the required support.
129
7d3d3ece
DJ
130* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
131longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
132
4f8253f3
JB
133* New commands
134
135set substitute-path
136unset substitute-path
137show substitute-path
138 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
139 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
140 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
141 between compilation and debugging.
142
9fa66fd7
AS
143set trace-commands
144show trace-commands
145 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
146 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
147 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
148
1f5befc1
DJ
149* REMOVED features
150
151The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
152
2ec3381a
DJ
153Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
154an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
155
3d00d119
DJ
156The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
157
be2a5f71
DJ
158* New remote packets
159
160qSupported:
161 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
162 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
163 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
164 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
165 target.
166
0876f84a
DJ
167qXfer:auxv:read:
168 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
169 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
170
9ebce043
DJ
171qXfer:memory-map:read:
172 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
173 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
174
175vFlashErase:
176vFlashWrite:
177vFlashDone:
178 Erase and program a flash memory device.
179
0876f84a
DJ
180* Removed remote packets
181
182qPart:auxv:read:
183 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
184 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
185
e374b601 186*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 187
96309189
MS
188* New targets
189
190Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
191
192Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
193
53e5f3cf
AS
194* New commands
195
196init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
197 only if it doesn't already have a value.
198
ac264b3b
MS
199The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
200
201checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
202
203restart <n> Return the program state to a
204 previously saved state.
205
206info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
207
208delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
209
210set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
211 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
212
213info forks List forks of the user program that
214 are available to be debugged.
215
216fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
217 forks of the user program that are
218 available to be debugged.
219
220delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
221 that are available to be debugged (and
222 kill the forked process).
223
224detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
225 that are available to be debugged (and
226 allow the process to continue).
227
3950dc3f
NS
228* New architecture
229
230Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
231
0ea3f30e
DJ
232* Improved Windows host support
233
234GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
235native console support, and remote communications using either
236network sockets or serial ports.
237
f79daebb
GM
238* Improved Modula-2 language support
239
240GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
241basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
242pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
243printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
244written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
245GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
246
acab6ab2
MM
247* REMOVED features
248
249The ARM rdi-share module.
250
f4267320
DJ
251The Netware NLM debug server.
252
53e5f3cf 253*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 254
e0ecbda1
MK
255* New native configurations
256
02a677ac 257OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
258OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
259
d64a6579
KB
260* New targets
261
262Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
263
b33a6190
AS
264* New command line options
265
266--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
267--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
268 the child (debugged) program exited with.
269--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
270 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
271 specified multiple times and in conjunction
272 with the --command (-x) option.
273
11dced61
AC
274* Deprecated commands removed
275
276The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
277removed:
278
279 Command Replacement
280 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
281 othernames set arm disassembler
282 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
283 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
284 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
285 regs info registers
286
6fe85783
MK
287* New BSD user-level threads support
288
289It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
290library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
291configurations are:
292
293FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
294FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
295OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
296
297Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
298are not yet supported.
299
5260ca71
MS
300* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
301(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
302
e84ecc99
AC
303* REMOVED configurations and files
304
305VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 306Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 307National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 308
31e35378
JB
309* New "set print array-indexes" command
310
311After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
312when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
313behavior.
314
e85e5c83
MK
315* VAX floating point support
316
317GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
318
d91e9901
AS
319* User-defined command support
320
321In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
322to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
323section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
324
f2cb65ca
MC
325*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
326
f47b1503
AS
327* New command line option
328
329GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
330debugging.
331
f2cb65ca
MC
332* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
333
334GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
335information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
336by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
337proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
338to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 339
d08c0230
AC
340* Internationalization
341
342When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
343internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
344continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
345
117ea3cf
PH
346* Ada
347
348Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
349implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
350into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
351
d08c0230
AC
352* New native configurations
353
354GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
355
356* Remote 'p' packet
357
358GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
359packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
360
361* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
362
363GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
364The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
365features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
366i386 application).
367
368GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
369compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
370continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
371configurations:
372
373hppa-*-hpux
374ia64-*-aix
375mips-*-irix*
376*-*-lynx
377mips-*-linux-gnu
378sds protocol
379xdr protocol
380powerpc bdm protocol
381
382Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
383made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
384
385* OBSOLETE configurations and files
386
387Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
388been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
389configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
390permanently REMOVED.
391
392h8300-*-*
393mcore-*-*
394mn10300-*-*
395ns32k-*-*
396sh64-*-*
397v850-*-*
398
ebb7c577
AC
399*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
400
401* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
402
403When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
404heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
405been fixed.
406
407* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
408
409When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
410fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
411IRIX long double values).
412
413* VAX and "next"
414
415A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
416command. This problem has been fixed.
417
860660cb 418*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 419
0dea2468
AC
420* Fix for ``many threads''
421
422On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
423rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
424error message:
425
426 ptrace: No such process.
427 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
428
429This problem has been fixed.
430
2c07db7a
AC
431* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
432
433Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
434GDB to dump core).
435
c23968a2
JB
436* New ``start'' command.
437
438This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
439
71009278
MK
440* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
441
442Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
443live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
444platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
445
446FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
447FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
448NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
449NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
450NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
451OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
452OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
453OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
454OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
455
3c0b7db2
AC
456* Signal trampoline code overhauled
457
458Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
459These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
460of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
461call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
462signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
463
73cc75f3
AC
464Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
465features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
466include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 467
7243600a
BF
468* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
469
6f606e1c
MK
470* New native configurations
471
97dc871c 472GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 473OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
474OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
475OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 476OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 477NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 478OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 479
a1b461bf
AC
480* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
481
482GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
483The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
484including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
485migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
486compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
487work, was also included.
488
489GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
490module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
491
492h8300-*-*
493mcore-*-*
494mn10300-*-*
495ns32k-*-*
496sh64-*-*
497v850-*-*
498xstormy16-*-*
499
500Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
501made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
502
3c7012f5
AC
503* REMOVED configurations and files
504
505Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
506Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
507Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
508Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
509Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
510AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
511Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
512decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
513riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
514sonymips mips-sony-*
515sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
516
e5fe55f7
AC
517*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
518
519* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
520
521The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
522GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
523command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
524program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
525with GDB".
526
527* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
528
529Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
530libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
531cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
532GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
533shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
534the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
535are created.
536
537Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
538
539* Fixed ISO-C build problems
540
541The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
542non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
543compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
544
545* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
546
547Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
548wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
549
550* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
551
552The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
553permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
554systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
555
556* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
557
558Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
559has been updated to use constant array sizes.
560
561* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
562
563GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
564its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
565panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
566
567* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
568
569When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
570by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
571not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
572
faae5abe 573*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 574
9175c9a3
MC
575* Removed --with-mmalloc
576
577Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
578conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
579
3cc87ec0
MK
580* Changes in AMD64 configurations
581
582The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
583the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
584and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
585you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
586
f0424ef6
MK
587* Revised SPARC target
588
589The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
590FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
591support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
592from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
593(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 594
59659be2
ILT
595* New C++ demangler
596
597GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
598names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
599with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
600programs.
601
9e08b29b
DJ
602* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
603
604GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
605arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
606encountered these.
607
8dfe8985
DC
608* C++ nested types and namespaces
609
610GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
611improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
612is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
613Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
614namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
615"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
616frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
617if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
618GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
619
cced5e27
MK
620* New native configurations
621
622NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 623OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 624OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
625OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
626OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 627
b4b4b794
KI
628* New debugging protocols
629
630M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
631
7989c619
AC
632* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
633
634The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
635and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
636tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
637
5994185b
AC
638* OBSOLETE configurations and files
639
640Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
641been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
642configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
643permanently REMOVED.
644
645Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
646Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
647Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
648Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
649Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
650AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
651Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
652decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
653riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
654sonymips mips-sony-*
655sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 656
0ddabb4c
AC
657* REMOVED configurations and files
658
659SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
660SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
661Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
662Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
663H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
664HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
665HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
666HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
667PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 668386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
669Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
670 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
671 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
672SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
673SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
674Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
675Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 676
c7f1390e
DJ
677*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
678
1fe43d45
AC
679* Objective-C
680
681Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
682integrated into GDB.
683
e6beb428
AC
684* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
685
686DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
687information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
688By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
689backtraces.
690
691The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
692have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
693DWARF 2 CFI support.
694
695* Hosted file I/O.
696
697GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
698file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
699remote protocol documentation for details.
700
701* All targets using the new architecture framework.
702
703All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
704architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
705to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
706ppc32 on ppc64).
707
708* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
709
710GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
711per-thread variables.
712
713* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
714
715GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
716GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
717
718* Separate debug info.
719
720GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
721automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
722of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
723system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
724and optional debug files.
725
726* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
727
728DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
729describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
730debugger.
731
732GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
733for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
734
735* Java
736
737A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
738Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
739considered "useable".
740
85f8f974
DJ
741* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
742
743The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
744commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
745kernel.
746
0fac0b41
DJ
747* GDB supports logging output to a file
748
749There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
750used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 751
6ad8ae5c
DJ
752* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
753
754The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
755disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
756command.
757
e286caf2 758* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
759
760The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
761registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
762
d28f9cdf
DJ
763* Profiling support
764
765A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
766be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
767session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
768"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
769data, for more informative profiling results.
770
da0f9dcd
AC
771* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
772
773The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
774option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 775"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
776
777Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
778removed.
779
fb9b6b35
JJ
780Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
781Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
782Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
783 in a subsequent -var-update.
784
954a4db8
MK
785* New native configurations.
786
787FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
788
6760f9e6
JB
789* Multi-arched targets.
790
b4263afa 791HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 792Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 793
1b831c93
AC
794* OBSOLETE configurations and files
795
796Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
797been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
798configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
799permanently REMOVED.
800
8b0e5691 801Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 802Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 803H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
804HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
805HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
806HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 807PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
808Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
809 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
810 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
811Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
812Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 813
5835abe7
NC
814* REMOVED configurations and files
815
816V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
817Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
818IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
819i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
820i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
821i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
823 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
824 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
825Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
826Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
827Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
828OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
829I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 830
a094c6fb
AC
831* MIPS $fp behavior changed
832
833The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
834the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
835context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
836address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
837The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
838
299ffc64 839*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 840
46248966
AC
841* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
842
843When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
844`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
845in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
846library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
847shared libs like mad''.
848
b9d14705 849* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 850
b9d14705
DJ
851Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
852the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
853arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
854powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 855
e0e9281e
JB
856* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
857
858GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
859and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
860they expand.
861
dd73b9bb
AC
862The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
863invocations in expression, and shows the result.
864
865The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
866macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
867
e0e9281e
JB
868Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
869information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
870your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
871information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
872
2250ee0c
CV
873* Multi-arched targets.
874
6e3ba3b8
JT
875DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
876DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 877NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 878National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
879Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
880Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 881
cd9bfe15 882* New targets.
e33ce519 883
456f8b9d
DB
884Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
885
e33ce519 886
da8ca43d
JT
887* New native configurations
888
889Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 890SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 891MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 892UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 893
cd9bfe15
AC
894* OBSOLETE configurations and files
895
896Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
897been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
898configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
899permanently REMOVED.
900
92eb23c5 901Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 902OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 903IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 904Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 905Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 906Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
907i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
908i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
909i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
910HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
911 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
912 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 913I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 914
db034ac5
AC
915* OBSOLETE languages
916
917CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
918
cd9bfe15
AC
919* REMOVED configurations and files
920
921AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
922A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
923AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
924AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
925AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
926
927testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
928
20f01a46
DH
929* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
930
931This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
932commands. The default is 1024.
933
a5941fbf
MK
934* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
935
936Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
937
89743e04
MS
938* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
939
940These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
941to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
942from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 943
9fb14e79
JB
944* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
945
946The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
947including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
948of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
949
2037aebb
AC
950*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
951
952* New targets.
953
954Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
955
956* Bug fixes
957
958gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
959mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
960Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
961
962gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
963dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
964Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
965
966Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
967Surprisingly enough, it works now.
968By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
969
970i386 hardware watchpoint support:
971avoid misses on second run for some targets.
972By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
973
37057839 974*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 975
1a703748
MS
976* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
977
978This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
979really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
980In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
981target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
982This can be a significant performance improvement on some
983(notably embedded) targets.
984
cefd4ef5
MS
985* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
986
55241689
AC
987This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
988process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
989GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
990hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 991
352ed7b4
MS
992* New command line option
993
994GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
995
996* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
997
998There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
999command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1000a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1001be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1002open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1003issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1004a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1005it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1006GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1007is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1008
fe419ffc
RE
1009* Changes in ARM configurations.
1010
1011Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1012configuration is fully multi-arch.
1013
eb7cedd9
MK
1014* New native configurations
1015
fe419ffc 1016ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 1017x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 1018AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 1019Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 1020
c9f63e6b
CV
1021* New targets
1022
1023Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1024
9b4ff276
AC
1025* OBSOLETE configurations and files
1026
1027Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1028been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1029configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1030permanently REMOVED.
1031
1032AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1033A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1034AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1035AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1036AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1037
b4ceaee6 1038testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 1039
e2caac18
AC
1040* REMOVED configurations and files
1041
1042TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 1043WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
1044PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1045PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1046PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 1047Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
1048Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1049 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 1050SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 1051Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
1052Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1053ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 1054Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 1055
c2a727fa
TT
1056* Changes to command line processing
1057
1058The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1059for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1060
467d8519
TT
1061* Changes to key bindings
1062
1063There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1064
7072a954
AC
1065*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1066
1067Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1068
1069Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1070corrupted.
1071
1072Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1073
1074Numerous documentation fixes.
1075
1076Numerous testsuite fixes.
1077
34f47bc4 1078*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
1079
1080* New native configurations
1081
1082Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1083x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 1084MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
1085MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1086ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 1087s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 1088
bf64bfd6
AC
1089* New targets
1090
def90278 1091Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 1092CRIS cris-axis
55241689 1093UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 1094
17e78a56 1095* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
1096
1097x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 1098Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
1099Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1100 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
1101TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1102WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 1103Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
1104PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1105PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1106PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 1107SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
1108Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1109ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 1110Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 1111
17e78a56
AC
1112stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1113kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1114
7fcca85b
AC
1115Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1116been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1117configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1118permanently REMOVED.
1119
a196c81c 1120* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
1121
1122Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1123Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1124Pyramid pyramid-*-*
1125ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1126Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 1127ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 1128
6d6b80e5 1129* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 1130
6d6b80e5 1131GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
1132sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1133present.
1134
bf64bfd6
AC
1135* Other news:
1136
e23194cb
EZ
1137* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1138
1139* The MI enabled by default.
1140
1141The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1142revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1143engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1144using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1145which is now deprecated.
1146
1147* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1148
1149GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1150main features are supported:
1151
1152 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1153
1154 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1155 extension;
1156
1157 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1158
1159 - a Pascal expression parser.
1160
1161However, some important features are not yet supported.
1162
1163 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1164
1165 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1166
1167 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1168 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1169
1170 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1171
1172 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1173
1174* Changes in completion.
1175
1176Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1177to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1178users expect at the shell prompt.
1179
1180Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1181`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1182program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1183files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1184be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1185considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1186name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1187
1188`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1189
1190* New platform-independent commands:
1191
1192It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1193hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1194documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1195
1196* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1197
d7275149
MK
1198Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1199revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1200many threads as your system allows you to have.
1201
e23194cb
EZ
1202Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1203
d7275149
MK
1204Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1205multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1206
1207* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1208
1209Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1210
e23194cb
EZ
1211GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1212debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1213supported.)
1214
1215* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1216
1217Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1218breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1219implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1220put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1221and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1222registers.
1223
1224The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1225debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1226watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1227
1228* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1229
1230New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1231the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1232
1233New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1234display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1235IDT.
1236
1237New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1238from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1239New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1240a given linear address.
1241
1242GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1243program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1244which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1245
1246DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1247
6c56c069
EZ
1248It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1249
e23194cb
EZ
1250* Changes in documentation.
1251
1252All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1253Documentation License.
1254
1255Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1256manual.
1257
1258TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1259
1260Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1261manual.
1262
1263The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1264documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1265hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1266
5d6640b1
AC
1267* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1268
1269The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1270``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1271contents of this file.
1272
1a1d8446
AC
1273* gdba.el deleted
1274
1275GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1276
9debab2f 1277*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1278
c63ce875
EZ
1279* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1280
1281Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1282programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1283displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1284greater level of detail.
1285
1286* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1287
1288It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1289bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1290on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1291written.
1292
1293* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1294
1295The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1296necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1297machines ``out of the box''.
1298
1299The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1300possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1301signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1302would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1303interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1304
1305It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1306standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1307even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1308and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1309terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1310
1311The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1312enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1313also works.
1314
1315DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1316GDB.
1317
1318It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1319directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1320times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1321breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1322
ed9a39eb
JM
1323* New native configurations
1324
1325ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1326PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1327
7a292a7a
SS
1328* New targets
1329
96baa820 1330Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1331x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1332PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1333TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1334
085dd6e6
JM
1335* OBSOLETE configurations
1336
1337Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1338Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1339Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1340ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1341Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1342
9debab2f
AC
1343Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1344but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1345these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1346be permanently REMOVED.
1347
5330533d
SS
1348* Gould support removed
1349
1350Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1351
bc9e5bbf
AC
1352* New features for SVR4
1353
1354On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1355without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1356load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1357
1358* Many C++ enhancements
1359
1360C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1361in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1362
adf40b2e
JM
1363* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1364
1365A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1366sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1367with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1368``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1369
1370 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1371 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1372
43e526b9
JM
1373* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1374
1375A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1376expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1377instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1378
1379The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1380added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1381
96baa820
JM
1382* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1383
1384The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1385``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1386include ``set remote P-packet''.
1387
11cf8741
JM
1388* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1389
1390The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1391accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1392``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1393
7876dd43
DB
1394* ``apropos'' command added.
1395
1396The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1397documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1398try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1399
bc9e5bbf
AC
1400* New MI interface
1401
1402A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1403interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1404process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1405"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1406enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1407
1408 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1409
c906108c
SS
1410*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1411
1412* New native configurations
1413
1414HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1415HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1416M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1417
1418* New targets
1419
1420Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1421Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1422Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1423
1424* OBSOLETE configurations
1425
1426Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1427
1428Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1429but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1430these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1431be permanently REMOVED.
1432
1433* ANSI/ISO C
1434
1435As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1436buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1437containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1438use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1439available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1440configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1441information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1442already.
1443
1444* Readline 2.2
1445
1446GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1447
1448* set extension-language
1449
1450You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1451languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1452you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1453 set extension-language .c c++
1454The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1455and their associated languages.
1456
1457* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1458
1459When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1460you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1461PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1462
1463 set processor NAME
1464
1465sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1466following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1467
1468 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1469 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1470 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1471 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1472 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1473 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1474 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1475 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1476 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1477 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1478 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1479
1480At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1481special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1482registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1483only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1484
1485* HP-UX support
1486
1487Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1488more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1489library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1490support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1491for xdb and dbx commands.
1492
1493* Catchpoints
1494
1495HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1496generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1497to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1498
1499This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1500argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1501output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1502
1503* Debugging across forks
1504
1505On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1506in the inferior.
1507
1508* TUI
1509
1510HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1511it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1512configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1513
1514* GDB remote protocol additions
1515
1516A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1517Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1518fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1519allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1520
1521For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1522full 64-bit address. The command
1523
1524 set remoteaddresssize 32
1525
1526can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1527the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1528will be discarded.
1529
1530In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1531command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1532
1533 maint packet heythere
1534
1535sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1536disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1537time.
1538
1539The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1540target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1541downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1542
1543* Tracing can collect general expressions
1544
1545You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1546further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1547doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1548
1549* mask-address variable for Mips
1550
1551For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1552a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1553of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1554
1555* Higher serial baud rates
1556
1557GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1558230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1559to achieve all of these rates.)
1560
1561* i960 simulator
1562
1563The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1564builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1565
1566
1567*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1568
1569* New native configurations
1570
1571Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1572Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1573Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1574PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1575PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1576Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1577Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1578
1579* New targets
1580
1581Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1582Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1583Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1584Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1585MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1586MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1587MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1588Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1589Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1590Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1591NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1592
1593* New debugging protocols
1594
1595ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1596M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1597DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1598PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1599PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1600Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1601
1602* DWARF 2
1603
1604All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1605format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1606information.
1607
1608* Java frontend
1609
1610GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1611only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1612
1613* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1614
1615For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1616loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1617locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1618
1619* Live range splitting
1620
1621GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1622range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1623more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1624
1625* Hurd support
1626
1627GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1628updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1629
1630* ARM Thumb support
1631
1632GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1633instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1634instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1635accordingly.
1636
1637* MIPS16 support
1638
1639GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1640instruction set.
1641
1642* Overlay support
1643
1644GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1645linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1646will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1647control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1648additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1649in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1650
1651* info symbol
1652
1653The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1654the symbol at the specified address.
1655
1656* Trace support
1657
1658The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1659asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1660extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1661includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1662file tracepoint.c for more details.
1663
1664* MIPS simulator
1665
1666Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1667by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1668of most MIPS variants.
1669
1670* Sparc simulator
1671
1672Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1673by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1674Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1675
1676* set architecture
1677
1678For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1679basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1680architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1681the possible architectures.
1682
1683*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1684
1685* New native configurations
1686
1687Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1688M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1689PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1690PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1691PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1692RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1693
1694* New targets
1695
1696ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1697I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1698MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1699MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1700PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1701Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1702Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1703
1704* PowerPC simulator
1705
1706The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1707contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1708PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1709basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1710performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1711
1712* Solaris 2.5
1713
1714GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1715
1716* Windows 95/NT native
1717
1718GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1719To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1720which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1721Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1722ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1723
1724* dont-repeat command
1725
1726If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1727command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1728useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1729extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1730
1731* Send break instead of ^C
1732
1733The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1734rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1735GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1736
1737* Remote protocol timeout
1738
1739The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1740that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1741to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1742
1743* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1744
1745By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1746loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1747stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1748when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1749in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1750
1751Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1752/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1753automatically on hpux10.
1754
1755* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1756
1757Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1758
1759* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1760
1761When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1762may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1763the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1764every character. The default value is 1050.
1765
1766* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1767
1768If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1769a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1770replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1771details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1772remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1773to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1774
1775* Speedups for remote debugging
1776
1777GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1778the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1779and more efficient S-record downloading.
1780
1781* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1782
1783GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1784Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1785
1786*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1787
1788* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1789
1790The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1791can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1792
1793* Remote targets use caching
1794
1795Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1796remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1797it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1798debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1799off' turns the the data cache off.
1800
1801* Remote targets may have threads
1802
1803The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1804in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1805gdb/remote.c for details.
1806
1807* NetROM support
1808
1809If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1810support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1811acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1812write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1813support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1814another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1815sequence is something like
1816
1817 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1818 load <prog>
1819 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1820
1821* Macintosh host
1822
1823GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1824may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1825it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1826available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1827device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1828directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1829scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1830mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1831
1832* Autoconf
1833
1834GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1835but does simplify configuration and building.
1836
1837* hpux10
1838
1839GDB now supports hpux10.
1840
1841*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1842
1843* New native configurations
1844
1845x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1846x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1847NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1848Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1849
1850* New targets
1851
1852A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1853HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1854CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1855PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1856WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1857
1858* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1859
1860GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1861possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1862filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1863the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1864if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1865
1866* Arguments to user-defined commands
1867
1868User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1869Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1870trivial example:
1871define adder
1872 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1873
1874To execute the command use:
1875adder 1 2 3
1876
1877Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1878Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1879use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1880
1881* New `if' and `while' commands
1882
1883This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1884commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1885expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1886execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1887terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1888`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1889if the expression is zero.
1890
1891* Fortran source language mode
1892
1893GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1894Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1895variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1896with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1897Fortran compilers.
1898
1899* Better HPUX support
1900
1901Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1902running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1903processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1904for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1905that behavior do the following before running the program:
1906
1907 adb -w a.out
1908 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1909 control-d
1910
1911This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1912To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1913
1914 adb -w a.out
1915 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1916 control-d
1917
1918You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1919the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1920external linkage.
1921
1922GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1923HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1924
1925* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1926
1927You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1928commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1929current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1930"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1931associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1932configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1933
1934* New DOS host serial code
1935
1936This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1937no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1938a PC's serial port.
1939
1940*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1941
1942* New "complete" command
1943
1944This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1945were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1946
1947* Trailing space optional in prompt
1948
1949"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1950allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1951
1952* Breakpoint hit counts
1953
1954"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1955has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1956can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1957to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1958less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1959that breakpoint.
1960
1961* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1962
1963"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1964an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1965arrays actually contain only short strings.
1966
1967* Shared library breakpoints
1968
1969In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1970breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1971
1972* Hardware watchpoints
1973
1974There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1975targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1976
55241689 1977Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1978
1979* Annotations
1980
1981Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1982and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1983
1984* Improved Irix 5 support
1985
1986GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1987
1988* Improved HPPA support
1989
1990GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1991
1992* New native configurations
1993
1994Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1995HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1996Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1997RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1998
1999* New targets
2000
2001OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2002MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2003Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
2004
2005* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2006
2007There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2008This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2009
2010* Fixes
2011
2012As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2013and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2014
2015*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2016
2017* Irix 5 is now supported
2018
2019* HPPA support
2020
2021GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2022to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2023GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2024of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2025can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2026
2027
2028*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2029
2030* User visible changes:
2031
2032* Remote Debugging
2033
2034The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2035target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2036debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2037integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2038debugging info for the mips target).
2039
2040* DEC Alpha native support
2041
2042GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2043debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2044work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2045Alpha-specific notes.
2046
2047* Preliminary thread implementation
2048
2049GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2050
2051* LynxOS native and target support for 386
2052
2053This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2054to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2055for details).
2056
2057* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2058
2059This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2060mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2061call methods, ...etc.
2062
2063*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2064
2065 * User visible changes:
2066
2067Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2068supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2069other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2070somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2071
2072Filename completion now works.
2073
2074When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2075arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2076addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2077
2078All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2079vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2080should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2081your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2082to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2083
2084 * DEC alpha support
2085
2086This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2087cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2088
2089
2090*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2091
2092 * Testsuite
2093
2094This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2095The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2096via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2097
2098 * C++ demangling
2099
2100'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2101emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2102Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2103disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2104use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2105
2106 * Simulators
2107
2108GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2109So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2110Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2111
2112 * New targets supported
2113
2114H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2115H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2116SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2117Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2118IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2119
2120Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2121version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2122GO32 memory extender.
2123
2124 * New remote protocols
2125
2126MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2127
2128 * New source languages supported
2129
2130This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2131used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2132into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2133
2134
2135*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2136
2137 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2138
2139GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2140version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2141University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2142compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2143format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2144(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2145
2146Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2147
2148 * Faster and better demangling
2149
2150We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2151demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2152character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2153only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2154This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2155increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2156symbol lookups.
2157
2158`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2159from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2160compiler does not actually implement.
2161
2162 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2163
2164In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2165inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2166recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2167very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2168The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2169circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2170fix.
2171
2172The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2173release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2174
2175 * Improved configure script
2176
2177The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2178you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2179host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2180done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2181
2182We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2183version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2184`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2185The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2186only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2187We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2188
2189 * Documentation improvements
2190
2191There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2192produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2193before submitting changes.
2194
2195The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2196M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2197`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2198you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2199a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2200
2201*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2202We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2203been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2204or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2205`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2206around this problem.
2207
2208 * New features
2209
2210GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2211the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2212`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2213the target program.
2214
2215The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2216how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2217
2218 * New native hosts supported
2219
2220HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2221386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2222
2223 * New targets supported
2224
2225AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2226
2227 * New file formats supported
2228
2229BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2230HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2231
2232 * Major bug fixes
2233
2234Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2235
2236We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2237printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2238
2239We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2240for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2241release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2242
2243You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2244will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2245
2246We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2247for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2248especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2249libraries.
2250
2251The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2252information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2253command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2254any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2255when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2256
2257 * Internal improvements
2258
2259GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2260debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2261
2262GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2263Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2264symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2265contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2266shared code that handles any of them.
2267
2268 * New command line options
2269
2270We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2271
2272 * Mmalloc licensing
2273
2274The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2275General Public License.
2276
2277*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2278
2279 * Host/native/target split
2280
2281GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2282hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2283target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2284local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2285ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2286
2287The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2288GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2289is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2290code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2291any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2292built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2293handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2294
2295GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2296It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2297plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2298
2299 * New hosts supported
2300
2301HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2302386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2303386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2304
2305 * New targets supported
2306
2307Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
230868030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2309
2310 * New native hosts supported
2311
2312386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2313 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2314386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2315
2316 * New file formats supported
2317
2318BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2319supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2320format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2321
2322 * New commands
2323
2324`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2325`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2326These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2327
2328`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2329
2330You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2331scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2332prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2333executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2334
2335 * C++ improvements
2336
2337We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2338info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2339symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2340
2341Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2342
2343 * Major bug fixes
2344
2345The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2346fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2347by the compiler.
2348
2349We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2350support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2351
2352John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2353slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2354that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2355purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2356the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2357mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2358
2359Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2360about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2361completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2362we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2363
2364 * AMD 29k support
2365
2366A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2367specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2368calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2369usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2370in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2371
2372We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2373Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2374of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2375resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2376
2377 * Remote interfaces
2378
2379We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2380with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2381message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2382This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2383needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2384breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2385each instruction being stepped through.
2386
2387The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2388registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2389
2390There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2391find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2392Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2393processor with a serial port.
2394
2395 * Configuration
2396
2397Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2398`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2399supported, and what files each one uses.
2400
2401 * Library changes
2402
2403There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2404disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2405Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2406disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2407
2408The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2409Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2410can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2411grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2412
2413 * Documentation
2414
2415The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2416reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2417as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2418encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2419system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2420bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2421
2422And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2423
2424
2425*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2426
2427 * Better support for C++ function names
2428
2429GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2430names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2431(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2432single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2433Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2434
2435GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2436the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2437You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2438lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2439for the list of formats.
2440
2441 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2442
2443Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2444C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2445directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2446can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2447usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2448about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2449this problem.)
2450
2451 * New 'maintenance' command
2452
2453All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2454the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2455can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2456
2457 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2458 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2459 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2460 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2461 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2462 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2463
2464The following commands are new:
2465
2466 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2467 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2468 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2469
2470 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2471
2472We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2473(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2474be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2475read after argv processing.
2476
2477 * New hosts supported
2478
2479Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2480
55241689 2481GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2482
2483We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2484is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2485for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2486masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2487fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2488It costs extra.
2489
2490 * New targets supported
2491
2492Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2493
2494 * More smarts about finding #include files
2495
2496GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2497all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2498greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2499especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2500the one that contains your sources.
2501
2502We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2503breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2504try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2505
2506 * Interesting infernals change
2507
2508GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2509section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2510target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2511stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2512
2513 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2514
2515There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2516 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2517 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2518
2519See the ChangeLog for details.
2520
2521*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2522
2523 * New machines supported (host and target)
2524
2525IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2526
2527SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2528
2529 * New malloc package
2530
2531GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2532Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2533capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2534This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2535pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2536more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2537
2538 * info proc
2539
2540The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2541'help info proc' for details.
2542
2543 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2544
2545The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2546Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2547possible.
2548
2549 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2550
2551Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2552support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2553conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2554environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2555that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2556in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2557
2558 * Cross byte order fixes
2559
2560Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2561targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2562
2563 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2564
2565If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2566system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2567`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2568program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2569called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2570Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2571and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2572the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2573option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2574starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2575
2576You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2577the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2578information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2579slower, but makes future operations faster.
2580
2581The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2582build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2583A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2584use is:
2585
2586 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2587
2588The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2589It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2590shared across multiple host platforms.
2591
2592 * longjmp() handling
2593
2594GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2595siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2596all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2597platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2598
2599 * Solaris 2.0
2600
2601Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2602this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2603reading symbols.
2604
2605 * Bug fixes
2606
2607As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2608People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2609crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2610
2611*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2612
2613 * New machines supported (host and target)
2614
2615SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2616 (except core files)
2617BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2618Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2619
2620 * New machines supported (target)
2621
2622AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2623
2624 * C++ support
2625
2626GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2627The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2628per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2629
2630GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2631`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2632extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2633good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2634will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2635released.
2636
2637 * New features for SVR4
2638
2639GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2640shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2641only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2642
2643The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2644on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2645it prints the address mappings of the process.
2646
2647If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2648bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2649
2650 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2651
2652Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2653now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2654skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2655make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2656same code linked statically.
2657
2658 * New Getopt
2659
2660GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2661version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2662continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2663Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2664added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2665future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2666
2667 * Bugs fixed
2668
2669The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2670Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2671See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2672
2673
2674*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2675
2676 * New machines supported (host and target)
2677
2678Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2679NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2680Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2681
2682 * Almost SCO Unix support
2683
2684We had hoped to support:
2685SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2686(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2687that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2688about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2689
2690 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2691
2692GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2693debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2694is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2695send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2696reqired (if any).
2697
2698 * New Readline
2699
2700GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2701is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2702required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2703
2704 * Bugs fixed
2705
2706The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2707Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2708See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2709
2710 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2711
2712GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2713supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2714symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2715
2716Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2717mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2718debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2719mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2720version 2.
2721
2722Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2723really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2724line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2725variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2726situation somewhat.
2727
2728When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2729However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2730methods.
2731
2732We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2733DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2734encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2735
2736
2737*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2738
2739 * Improved configuration
2740
2741Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2742Porting BFD is simpler.
2743
2744 * Stepping improved
2745
2746The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2747of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2748in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2749function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2750
2751 * Bug fixing
2752
2753Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2754
2755 * New host supported (not target)
2756
2757Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2758
2759
2760*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2761
2762 * Multiple source language support
2763
2764GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2765It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2766and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2767language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2768You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2769`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2770
2771 * GDB and Modula-2
2772
2773GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2774currently under development at the State University of New York at
2775Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2776continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2777
2778Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2779debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2780symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2781
2782There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2783in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2784
2785 * set write on/off
2786
2787GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2788a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2789the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2790by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2791effect immediately.
2792
2793 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2794
2795When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2796shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2797The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2798examining core files.
2799
2800 * set listsize
2801
2802You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2803The default is 10.
2804
2805 * New machines supported (host and target)
2806
2807SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2808Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2809Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2810
2811 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2812
2813IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2814
2815 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2816
2817AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2818AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2819Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2820
2821 * New remote interfaces
2822
2823AMD 29000 Adapt
2824AMD 29000 Minimon
2825
2826
2827*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2828
2829 * New Facilities
2830
2831Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2832
2833Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2834target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2835is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2836remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2837remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2838also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2839using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2840stub on the target system.
2841
2842New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2843
2844GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2845library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2846object file types such as a.out and coff.
2847
2848There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2849refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2850
2851
2852 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2853
2854All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2855by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2856
2857For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2858``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2859Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2860
2861What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2862print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2863will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2864all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2865
2866confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2867 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2868 it is already running. Default is ON.
2869
2870editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2871 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2872 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2873 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2874 Default is ON.
2875
2876history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2877 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2878 or the value of the environment variable
2879 GDBHISTFILE.
2880
2881history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2882 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2883 HISTSIZE.
2884
2885history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2886 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2887 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2888
2889history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2890 history expansion will be performed on
2891 command line input. The default is OFF.
2892
2893radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2894 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2895 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2896
2897height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2898 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2899 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2900 variable TERM.
2901
2902width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2903 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2904 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2905 variable TERM.
2906
2907Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2908``set width'' instead.
2909
2910print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2911 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2912 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2913 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2914
2915print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2916 is OFF.
2917
2918print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2919 "raw" form if off.
2920
2921print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2922 like instructions.
2923
2924print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2925
2926
2927 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2928
2929The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2930new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2931are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2932window.
2933
2934
2935 * Support for Shared Libraries
2936
2937GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2938Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2939before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2940happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2941At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2942from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2943shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2944It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2945
2946sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2947 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2948 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2949
2950info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2951
2952
2953 * Watchpoints
2954
2955A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2956expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2957tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2958quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2959problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2960more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2961
2962watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2963
2964info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2965
2966delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2967disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2968enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2969
2970
2971 * C++ multiple inheritance
2972
2973When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2974for C++ programs.
2975
2976 * C++ exception handling
2977
2978Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2979ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2980the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2981handler's context).
2982
2983catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2984 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2985 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2986
2987info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2988 current stack frame.
2989
2990
2991 * Minor command changes
2992
2993The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2994command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2995is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2996
2997The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2998at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2999frames without printing.
3000
3001 * New directory command
3002
3003'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3004The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3005about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3006with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3007find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3008
3009 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3010
3011For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3012for more details.
3013
3014GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3015two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3016Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3017where the program that you are debugging will run.
This page took 0.630056 seconds and 4 git commands to generate.