Make sure test names are unique in gdb.base/gdbinit-history.exp
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
3b2f13ff 4*** Changes since GDB 7.9
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5
6* GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
7 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
8 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
9 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
10 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
11 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
12 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
3b2f13ff 13
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14* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
15 cpu information :
16 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
17
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18* GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
19 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
20 remote serial I/O.
21
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22* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
23 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
24 and may include things like its command line arguments.
25
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26* The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
27 is now available on all platforms.
28
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29* Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
30 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
31 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
32 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
33 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
34 backward compatibility.
35
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36* The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
37 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
38 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
39 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
40
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41* GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
42 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
43 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
44 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
45 packets" below.
46
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47* The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
48
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49* GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
50
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51* Guile Scripting
52
53 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
54
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55* Python Scripting
56
57 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
58 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
59 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
d11916aa 60 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
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61 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
62 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
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63 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
64 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
65 "const" version of the value respectively.
3a8b707a 66
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67* New commands
68
69maint print symbol-cache
70 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
71
72maint print symbol-cache-statistics
73 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
74
75maint flush-symbol-cache
76 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
77
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78record btrace bts
79record bts
80 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
81
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82compile print
83 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
84
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85* New options
86
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87set max-completions
88show max-completions
89 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
90 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
91 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
92 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
93
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94maint set symbol-cache-size
95maint show symbol-cache-size
96 Control the size of the symbol cache.
97
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98set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
99 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
100 BTS format.
101 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
102 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
103
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104* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
105 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
106
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107* Python/Guile scripting
108
109 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
110 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
111
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112* New remote packets
113
114qXfer:btrace-conf:read
115 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
116
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117Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
118 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
119
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120swbreak stop reason
121 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
122 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
123 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
124 mode operation.
125
126hwbreak stop reason
127 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
128 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
129
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130vFile:fstat:
131 Return information about files on the remote system.
132
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133qXfer:exec-file:read
134 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
135 create a process running on the remote system.
136
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137fork stop reason
138 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
139
140vfork stop reason
141 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
142
143vforkdone stop reason
144 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
145 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
146
147fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
148 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
149 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
150 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
151 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
152 whether these features are enabled.
153
154* Extended-remote fork events
155
156 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
157 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
158 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
159 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
160
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161* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
162 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
163 the btrace record target.
164 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
165
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166* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
167 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
168
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169* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
170 targets.
171
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172* Removed command line options
173
174-xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
175
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176* Removed targets and native configurations
177
178HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
179Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
180
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181*** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
182
183* Python Scripting
184
185 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
186
3b2f13ff 187*** Changes in GDB 7.9
919b9a93 188
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189* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
190
5f3b99cf 191* Python Scripting
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192
193 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
194 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
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195 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
196 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
a0be3e44 197 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
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198 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
199 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
86e4ed39 200 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
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201 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
202 selecting a new file to debug.
02be9a71 203 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
6dddd6a5 204 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
5f3b99cf 205
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206 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
207 inferior.
208
209 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
210 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
211 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
212 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
213
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214* New Python-based convenience functions:
215
216 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
217 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
218 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
219 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
220
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221* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
222 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
223 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
224 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
225 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
226 interface with this new feature are:
227
228 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
229 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
230
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231* New commands
232
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233demangle [-l language] [--] name
234 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
235 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
236 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
237 as "maint demangler-warning".
238
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239queue-signal signal-name-or-number
240 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
241
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242add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
243 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
244 scripts.
245
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246maint print user-registers
247 List all currently available "user" registers.
248
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249compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
250 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
251 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
252
253compile file [-r|-raw] filename
254 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
255 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
256 provided.
257
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258* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
259 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
260 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
261 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
262 at resume time.
263
264* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
265 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
266 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
267 switched threads meanwhile.
268
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269* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
270
271 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
272 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
273 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
274 is now the default mode.
275
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276* New options
277
278set debug symbol-lookup
279show debug symbol-lookup
280 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
281
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282* MI changes
283
284 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
285 inferiors that have exited.
286
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287* New targets
288
289MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
290
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291* Removed targets
292
293Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
294
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295Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
296SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
297SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
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298VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
299VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
3831839c 300
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301* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
302 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
303 its alias "share", instead.
304
919b9a93 305*** Changes in GDB 7.8
e9475ead 306
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307* New command line options
308
309-D data-directory
310 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
311
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312* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
313 as specified in ISO C99.
314
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315* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
316 with or without disassembly.
b7bba001 317
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318* Guile scripting
319
320 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
321 available is determined at configure time.
322 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
323 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
324
325* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
326
327guile [code]
328gu [code]
329 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
330
331guile-repl
332gr
333 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
334
335info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
336 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
337
338* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
339 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
340
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341* New options
342
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343set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
344show print symbol-loading
345 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
346 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
347 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
348 becomes less useful.
349
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350set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
351show guile print-stack
352 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
353
354set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
355show auto-load guile-scripts
356 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
357
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358maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
359maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
360 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
361 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
362 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
363 usage of this option.
364
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365set auto-connect-native-target
366
367 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
368 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
369 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
370
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371set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
372show record btrace replay-memory-access
373 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
374
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375maint set target-async (on|off)
376maint show target-async
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377 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
378 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
329ea579 379 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
5784b3ca 380 occurring only in synchronous mode.
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381
382set mi-async (on|off)
383show mi-async
384 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
385 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
386
387* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
388 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
389
390* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
391 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
392 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
393 "set target-async on" command.
394
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395* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
396
397 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
398 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
399 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
400 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
401 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
402
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403* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
404 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
405 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
406
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407* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
408 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
409 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
410 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
411 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
412 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
413 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
414
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415* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
416 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
417
066ce621 418* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
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419 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
420 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
066ce621 421
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422* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
423 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
424 memory or registers.
425
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426* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
427
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428* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
429 remote. It now works with all targets.
430
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431* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
432 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
433 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
434 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
435 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
436 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
437 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
438 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
439 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
440 target-stack".
441
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442* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
443 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
444 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
445
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446* GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
447
448* Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
449 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
450 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
451
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452* New remote packets
453
454qXfer:btrace:read's annex
455 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
456 branch trace incrementally.
457
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458* Python Scripting
459
460 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
461 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
462 available.
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463 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
464 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
465 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
466 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
467 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
f7bd0f78 468
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469* New targets
470PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
471
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472* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
473 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
474 its alias "share", instead.
475
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476* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
477 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
478 instead.
479
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480* MI changes
481
482 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
483 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
484 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
485 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
486 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
487 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
488 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
489 commands and CLI execution commands.
490
b7bba001 491*** Changes in GDB 7.7
2d450646 492
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493* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
494 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
495 recording has been added.
496
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497* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
498
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499* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
500 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
501
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502* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
503 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
504 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
505 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
506 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
507 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
508 "void".
509
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510* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
511
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512* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
513
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514* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
515 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
516 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
517 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
518
519 (gdb) p $rax
520 $1 = <not saved>
521
522 (gdb) info registers rax
523 rax <not saved>
524
525 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
526 "*value not available*".
527
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528* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
529 to binaries.
530
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531* Python scripting
532
533 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
f76c27b5 534 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
bc79de95 535 ** Line tables representation has been added.
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536 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
537 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
c0d48811 538 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1e611234 539
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540* New targets
541
542Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
543Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 544Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 545
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546* Removed native configurations
547
548Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
549been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
550
551arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
552i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
553i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
554i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
555m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
556sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
557vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
558
bd712aed 559* New commands:
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560catch rethrow
561 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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562maint check-psymtabs
563 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
564maint check-symtabs
565 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
566maint expand-symtabs
567 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 568
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569show configuration
570 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
571
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572maint set|show per-command
573maint set|show per-command space
574maint set|show per-command time
575maint set|show per-command symtab
576 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
577
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578remove-symbol-file FILENAME
579remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
580 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
581 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
582 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
583
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584info exceptions
585info exceptions REGEXP
586 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
587 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
588 are listed.
589
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590* New options
591
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592set debug symfile off|on
593show debug symfile
594 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
595 symbol tables within those files
596
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597set print raw frame-arguments
598show print raw frame-arguments
599 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
600 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
601
bd3eecc3
PA
602set remote trace-status-packet
603show remote trace-status-packet
604 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
605
a1217d97
SL
606set debug nios2
607show debug nios2
608 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
609
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PA
610set range-stepping
611show range-stepping
612 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
613
98882a26
PA
614set startup-with-shell
615show startup-with-shell
616 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
617 directly.
618
29453a14
YQ
619set code-cache
620show code-cache
621 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
622 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
623
1c2e4450
PA
624* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
625 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
626 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
627 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
628 "set height 0".
629
db0fec5c
DE
630* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
631 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
632 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
633
dccca75d
EZ
634* New command-line options
635--configuration
636 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
637
d0353e76
YQ
638* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
639 buffer in Common Trace Format.
640
b292c783
JK
641* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
642 GDB command gcore.
643
6e72ca20
TT
644* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
645
b340913d
TT
646* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
647 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
648
649* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
650 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
651
0c557179
SDJ
652* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
653 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
654 due to an uncaught signal.
655
d0353e76
YQ
656* MI changes
657
403cb6b1 658 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
4e35e808
JB
659 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
660 command, which should contain "language-option".
403cb6b1 661
6b7cbff1
JB
662 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
663 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
664
2ea126fa
JB
665 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
666 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
667 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
668 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
669 "undefined-command-error-code".
670
d0353e76
YQ
671 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
672 Trace Format now.
673
c5867ab6
HZ
674 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
675
c898adb7
YQ
676 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
677 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
678 are displayed.
679
dc673c81
YQ
680 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
681 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
682
6211c335
YQ
683 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
684 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
685 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
686
5713b9b5
JB
687 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
688 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
689 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
72bfa06c
JB
690 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
691 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
692 "exec-run-start-option".
5713b9b5 693
40555925
JB
694 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
695 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
696
58d06528
JB
697 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
698 the new "info exceptions" command.
699
0201faac
JB
700* New system-wide configuration scripts
701 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
702 configuration scripts for the following systems:
703 ** ElinOS
704 ** Wind River Linux
705
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PA
706* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
707 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
708 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
709 below.
710
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YQ
711* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
712 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
713
4ac33720
UW
714* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
715 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
716 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
717
c1e36e3e
PA
718* New remote packets
719
720vCont;r
721
722 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
723 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
724 involvemement at each single-step.
725
7f91dbec
GB
726qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
727 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
728 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
729 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
730 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
731 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
732 speedup.
733
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PA
734* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
735
736 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
737 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
738
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YQ
739 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
740 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
741 trace state variables.
742
7a60ad40
YQ
743 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
744 target.
745
6fbe845e
AB
746* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
747 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
748
9058cc3a
TG
749* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
750
0d12017b
JB
751* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
752 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
753 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
754 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
755
2d450646 756*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 757
59ea5688
MM
758* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
759 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
760 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
761 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
762
763set|show record full insn-number-max
764set|show record full stop-at-limit
765set|show record full memory-query
766
767* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
768 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
769 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
770 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
771 This new recording method can be enabled using:
772
773record btrace
774
775 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
776 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
777
778* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
779 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
780 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
781
782record instruction-history prints the execution history at
783 instruction granularity
784
785record function-call-history prints the execution history at
786 function granularity
787
543bf33d
AT
788* New native configurations
789
51d66578 790ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 791FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 792x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 793Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 794
249729c4
JB
795* New targets
796
51d66578
MS
797ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
798ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 799Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 800x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 801Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 802
e64e0392
DE
803* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
804 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
805 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
806 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
807 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
808 --data-directory command-line option.
809
07540c15
DE
810* New command line options:
811
812-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
813 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
814
e93a8774
TT
815* Removed command line options
816
817-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
818 Emacs.
819
53342f27
TT
820* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
821 type formatting.
822
451b7c33
TT
823* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
824
a72c3253
DE
825* Python scripting
826
827 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
828
d7de8e3c
TT
829 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
830
18a9fc12
TT
831 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
832
9a27f2c6
PK
833 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
834
bea883fd
SCR
835 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
836 of architecture in the Python API.
837
838 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
839 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
840
a72c3253
DE
841* New Python-based convenience functions:
842
843 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
844 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
845 ** $_strlen(str)
846 ** $_regex(str, regex)
847
f3c8a52a
JK
848* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
849 given an argument.
850
1605ef26
TT
851* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
852 default for GCC since November 2000.
853
504b36fd
YQ
854* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
855
f2a8bc8a
YQ
856* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
857 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
858
23a80689
JB
859* New configure options
860
861--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
862 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
863 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
864 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
865 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
866 options allow the user to override that default.
393fd4c3
YQ
867--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
868 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
869 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 870
d6b28940
TT
871* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
872
ab04a2af
TT
873catch signal
874 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
875 conditions to be attached.
876
d6b28940
TT
877maint info bfds
878 List the BFDs known to GDB.
879
8315665e
YPK
880python-interactive [command]
881pi [command]
882 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
883 and print the result of expressions.
884
885py [command]
886 "py" is a new alias for "python".
887
18a9fc12
TT
888enable type-printer [name]...
889disable type-printer [name]...
890 Enable or disable type printers.
891
aa9259cc
TS
892* Removed commands
893
894 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
895 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
896 instead.
897
53342f27
TT
898* New options
899
900set print type methods (on|off)
901show print type methods
902 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
903 The default is to show them.
904
905set print type typedefs (on|off)
906show print type typedefs
907 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
908 The default is to show them.
909
1b56eb55
JK
910set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
911show filename-display
912 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
913 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
914
e9f1758d
PA
915set trace-buffer-size
916show trace-buffer-size
917 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
918
a46c1e42
PA
919set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
920show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
921 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
922
be9a8770
PA
923set debug aarch64
924show debug aarch64
925 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
926 The default is off.
927
928set debug coff-pe-read
929show debug coff-pe-read
930 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
931 exported symbols.
932
933set debug mach-o
934show debug mach-o
935 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
936 processing.
937
938set debug notification
939show debug notification
940 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
941
5b9afe8a
YQ
942* MI changes
943
944 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
945 "=cmd-param-changed".
201b4506
YQ
946 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
947 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
134a2066
YQ
948 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
949 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
950 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
82a90ccf
YQ
951 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
952 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
8de0566d
YQ
953 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
954 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 955 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 956 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
62747a60
TT
957 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
958 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
3fa7bf06
MG
959 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
960 library load/unload events.
f2a8bc8a
YQ
961 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
962 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
963 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
f5911ea1
HAQ
964 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
965 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
966 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
ec83d211
JK
967 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
968 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 969
608e2dbb
TT
970* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
971 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
972 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
973 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
974
f6f899bf
HAQ
975* New remote packets
976
977QTBuffer:size
978 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
979 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
980
10782d74
MM
981Qbtrace:bts
982 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
983 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
984 qSupported query.
985
986Qbtrace:off
987 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
988 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
989
990qXfer:btrace:read
991 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
992 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
993
80c8d323 994*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 995
1b3371b1
L
996* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
997 for more x32 ABI info.
998
d0e64392
MR
999* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1000
4cc0665f
MR
1001* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1002
85d4a676
SS
1003* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1004 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1005 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1006 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1007 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1008 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1009 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1010 "info os msg" lists message queues
1011 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1012
55aa24fb
SDJ
1013* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1014 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1015 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1016 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1017 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1018 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1019
72508ac0
PO
1020* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1021 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1022 record/replay support.
1023
16899756
DE
1024* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1025
4795f398
DE
1026* Python scripting
1027
7d74f244
DE
1028 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1029 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1030
4795f398
DE
1031 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1032
50897289
TT
1033 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1034 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1035
64e7d9dd
TT
1036 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1037
1038 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1039 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1040
f0823d2c
TT
1041 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1042 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1043 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1044 symbol's value.
1045
7b282c5a
SCR
1046 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1047 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1048
a20ee7a4
SCR
1049 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1050 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1051 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1052
7efc75aa
SCR
1053 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1054 object associated with a PC value.
1055
ee0bf529
SCR
1056 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1057 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1058
a766d390
DE
1059* Go language support.
1060 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1061 language.
1062
e0f9f062
DE
1063* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1064 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1065
217bff3e
JK
1066* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1067 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1068
cafec441
TT
1069* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1070 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1071 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1072 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1073 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1074 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1075
4aac40c8
TT
1076* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1077 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1078 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1079 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1080
d99bd577
UW
1081* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1082 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1083
53fe1783
GB
1084* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1085 since December 2007.
1086
e41eec66
JB
1087* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1088 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1089 command does. For instance:
1090
1091 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1092
1093 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1094 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1095 created, using the "condition" command.
1096
5808517f
YQ
1097* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1098 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1099
481860b3
GB
1100* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1101
1102* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1103 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1104 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
e615022a
DE
1105 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1106 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1107 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1108 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1109 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 1110
156942c7
DE
1111 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1112 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1113 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1114 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1115 the .gdb_index section.
1116
927fbba6
JB
1117* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1118
20388dd6
YQ
1119* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1120 target.
1121
f3e0e960
SS
1122* MI changes
1123
1124 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1125
37ce89eb
SS
1126 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1127
edcc5120
TT
1128* New commands
1129
e615022a
DE
1130 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1131 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1132 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1133
edcc5120
TT
1134 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1135 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1136
816338b5
SS
1137 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1138 several hits.
1139
57651221 1140 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
c4aeac85
TT
1141 C++ and Java objects.
1142
06fc020f 1143 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
6ea71545 1144 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
06fc020f
SCR
1145 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1146 configured with '--with-python'.
1147
bf88dd68
JK
1148 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1149 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1150 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1151 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1152 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1153 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1154 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1155
1156 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1157 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1158 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1159 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1160
e7e0cddf
SS
1161 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1162 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1163 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1164 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1165
9cb709b6
TT
1166 ** "set print symbol"
1167 "show print symbol"
1168 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1169 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1170 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1171
2d4c29c5
TS
1172* Deprecated commands
1173
1174 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1175 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1176
a58b110a
KB
1177* New targets
1178
1179Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 1180HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 1181
72895ff6
LM
1182* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1183 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1184 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1185 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1186 evaluates to true.
1187
1188* New options
1189
4cc0665f
MR
1190set mips compression
1191show mips compression
1192 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1193 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1194 mips16
1195 micromips
1196 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1197
72895ff6
LM
1198set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1199show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 1200 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
5b43fab2
JK
1201 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1202 available mode.
72895ff6
LM
1203 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1204 target.
1205
bf88dd68
JK
1206set auto-load off
1207 Disable auto-loading globally.
1208
1209show auto-load
1210 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1211
1212set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1213show auto-load gdb-scripts
1214 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1215
1216set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1217show auto-load python-scripts
1218 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1219
1220set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1221show auto-load local-gdbinit
1222 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1223
1224set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1225show auto-load libthread-db
1226 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1227
7349ff92 1228set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 1229show auto-load scripts-directory
7349ff92
JK
1230 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1231 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1232 of the directories listed by this option.
1233 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1234
bccbefd2
JK
1235set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1236show auto-load safe-path
1237 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1238 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1239
4dc84fd1
JK
1240set debug auto-load on|off
1241show debug auto-load
1242 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1243
d3ce09f5 1244set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 1245show dprintf-style
d3ce09f5
SS
1246 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1247 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1248 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1249 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
e7e0cddf
SS
1250
1251set dprintf-function <expr>
1252show dprintf-function
1253set dprintf-channel <expr>
1254show dprintf-channel
1255 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1256 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1257
d3ce09f5
SS
1258set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1259show disconnected-dprintf
1260 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1261 after GDB disconnects.
1262
6dea1fbd
JK
1263* New configure options
1264
7349ff92
JK
1265--with-auto-load-dir
1266 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1564a261
JK
1267 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1268 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1269 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1270 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 1271
6dea1fbd
JK
1272--with-auto-load-safe-path
1273 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 1274 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
6dea1fbd
JK
1275
1276--without-auto-load-safe-path
1277 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1278 security feature.
1279
72895ff6
LM
1280* New remote packets
1281
74c48cbb
PA
1282z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1283
72895ff6
LM
1284 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1285 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1286 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1287 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1288
9b224c5e
PA
1289QProgramSignals:
1290
1291 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1292 program without GDB involvement.
1293
8320cc4f
JK
1294* New command line options
1295
1296--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1297 before loading inferior.
1298--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1299 execute it before loading inferior.
1300
8837a20f
JB
1301*** Changes in GDB 7.4
1302
f8eba3c6
TT
1303* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1304 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1305 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1306 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1307 inferior changes.
1308
1bfeeb0f
JL
1309* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1310 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1311
480a3f21
PW
1312* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1313 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1314 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1315 target hardware watchpoint.
1316
1317 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1318 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1319 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1320 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1321
3a7bf607
PM
1322* Python scripting
1323
32d1c362 1324 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 1325 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
1326 existing one.
1327
3a7bf607 1328 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
4795f398
DE
1329 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1330 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1331 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1332 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1333 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 1334
baacfb07 1335 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 1336 Python API.
713389e0 1337
fa3a4f15
PM
1338 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1339 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 1340 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
fa3a4f15
PM
1341 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1342 corresponding value.
1343
5e239b84
PM
1344 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1345 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1346 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1347 on GDB start-up.
1348
9df2fbc4
PM
1349 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1350 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1351 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1352 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1353
457e09f0
DE
1354 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1355
6839b47f
KP
1356 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1357 "gdb.breakpoints".
1358
cc72b2a2
KP
1359 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1360 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1361 available in the CLI.
1362
84ad80e6
PK
1363 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1364 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1365 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1366 "some_type.items()".
1367
20c168b5
KP
1368 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1369 new object file.
1370
03c3051a
PK
1371 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1372 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1373 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1374 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1375 any anonymous fields.
1376
7376e450
TT
1377* MI changes
1378
1379 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1380 "solib-event".
1381
1382 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1383 "=breakpoint-modified".
1384
1385 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1386
98a5dd13
DE
1387* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1388 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1389 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1390 lives.
1391
1392 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1393 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1394 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1395 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1396 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1397
1398 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1399 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1400
478aac75
DE
1401* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1402 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1403 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1404 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1405 use this option to specify where to find it.
1406
9c06b0b4
TJB
1407* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1408 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1409 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1410 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1411 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1412 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1413 section in the user manual for more details.
1414
03f2bd59
JK
1415* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1416 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1417 become available after that.
1418
71eba9c2 1419* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 1420
2bda9cc5
JK
1421* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1422 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1423 gcc version 4.7.
1424
ed59ded5
DE
1425* New commands
1426
1427!SHELL COMMAND
1428 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1429 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1430
9c06b0b4
TJB
1431* Changed commands
1432
1433watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1434 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1435 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1436
dbaefcf7
DE
1437info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1438 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1439 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1440
71eba9c2 1441info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1442 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1443 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1444 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1445 name starts with a hyphen.
1446
3065dfb6
SS
1447collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1448 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1449 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1450 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1451 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1452 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1453 number of bytes that will be collected.
1454
f196051f
SS
1455tstart [NOTES]
1456 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1457 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1458 setting the variable trace-notes.
1459
1460tstop [NOTES]
1461 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1462 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1463 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1464 trace-stop-notes.
1465
d248b706
KY
1466* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1467 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1468 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1469 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1470 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1471 is running.
1472
405f8e94
SS
1473* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1474 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1475 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1476
2bda9cc5
JK
1477* New options
1478
45cfd468
DE
1479set debug dwarf2-read
1480show debug dwarf2-read
1481 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1482 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1483
1484set debug symtab-create
1485show debug symtab-create
1486 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1487 creation. The default is off.
1488
baacfb07
PM
1489set extended-prompt
1490show extended-prompt
1491 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1492 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1493 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1494 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1495 prompt is displayed.
1496
2bda9cc5
JK
1497set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1498show print entry-values
1499 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1500 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1501 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1502
1503set debug entry-values
1504show debug entry-values
1505 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1506 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1507
c011a4f4
DE
1508set basenames-may-differ
1509show basenames-may-differ
1510 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1511 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1512 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1513 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1514 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1515 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1516 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1517 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1518
f196051f
SS
1519set trace-user
1520show trace-user
1521set trace-notes
1522show trace-notes
1523 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1524 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1525 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1526 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1527
1528set trace-stop-notes
1529show trace-stop-notes
1530 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1531 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1532 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1533 started by someone else.
1534
d248b706
KY
1535* New remote packets
1536
1537QTEnable
1538
1539 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1540
1541QTDisable
1542
1543 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1544
f196051f
SS
1545QTNotes
1546
1547 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1548
1549qTP
1550
1551 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1552
405f8e94
SS
1553qTMinFTPILen
1554
1555 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1556 be placed.
1557
1a532630
PP
1558* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1559 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1560
11315641
YQ
1561* New targets
1562
1563Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1564
87326c78
DD
1565* New Simulators
1566
1567Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1568
e8d56f18
JB
1569*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1570
1571* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1572
d6e00af6 1573*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1574
60f98dde
MS
1575* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1576 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1577 matches the given regular expression.
1578
eee5b35e
DD
1579* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1580
b716877b
AB
1581* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1582 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1583
aae1c79a
DE
1584* New command line options
1585
1586-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1587 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1588
a86caf66
DE
1589* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1590 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1591
99e7ae30
DE
1592* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1593 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1594 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1595
4694da01
TT
1596* GDB now understands thread names.
1597
1598 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1599 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1600
1601 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1602 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1603
f4b8a18d
KW
1604* OpenCL C
1605 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1606 has been integrated into GDB.
1607
585d1eb8
PM
1608* Python scripting
1609
da5d4055
PM
1610 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1611 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1612 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1613
9a6f1302
PM
1614 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1615 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1616 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1617 and allows for more dynamic content.
1618
29703da4
PM
1619 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1620 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1621 have an is_valid method.
1622
350c6c65
PM
1623 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1624 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1625 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1626
6e6fbe60
DE
1627 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1628
585d1eb8
PM
1629 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1630 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1631 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1632 that function like so:
1633
1634 result = some_value (10,20)
1635
0e3509db
DE
1636 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1637 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1638 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1639
7b51bc51
DE
1640 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1641 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1642 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1643 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1644 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1645
1646 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1647 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1648
99e7ae30
DE
1649 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1650
d8e22779
TT
1651 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1652 selected thread.
1653
4694da01
TT
1654 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1655 holds the thread's name.
1656
505500db
SW
1657 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1658 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1659 occurring in the process being debugged.
c17a9e46
HZ
1660 The following events are currently supported:
1661 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1662 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1663 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1664
def98928
TT
1665* C++ Improvements:
1666
1667 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1668 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1669
1670 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1671
1672 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1673 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1674 was added to GCC 4.5.
1675
66cb8159
TT
1676 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1677 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1678 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1679 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1680 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1681 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1682
4aac0db7
UW
1683* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1684 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1685 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1686 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1687 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1688
283e6a52
TT
1689* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1690 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1691 execution to a label.
1692
1693* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1694 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1695 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1696 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1697
b56df873 1698* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1699 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1700 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1701 of scope.
1702
ae53ffa4
PA
1703* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1704
1705 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1706 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1707 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1708 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1709 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1710 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1711
1712 (gdb) info threads
1713 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1714
1715 While now you see this:
1716
1717 (gdb) info threads
1718 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1719
1720 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1721 dumps.
1722
1723 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1724 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1725 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1726 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1727
f1310107
TJB
1728* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1729 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1730 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1731 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1732 section in the user manual for more details.
1733
248c9dbc
JB
1734* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1735
1aee7009
JB
1736 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1737 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1738
eb826dc6
MF
1739 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1740
44603653
JB
1741* New native configurations
1742
1743ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1744
91021223
MF
1745* New targets:
1746
1747Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1748
6e1bb179
JB
1749* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1750 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1751 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1752 in the GDB user manual.
1753
50c97f38
TT
1754* Guile support was removed.
1755
448a92bf
MF
1756* New features in the GNU simulator
1757
1758 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1759
66ee2731
MF
1760 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1761
76b8507d 1762*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1763
ba25b921
PA
1764* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1765
1766 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1767 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1768 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1769 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1770 was always disabled for such configurations.
1771
4656f5c6
SW
1772* C++ Improvements:
1773
1774 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1775
1776 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1777 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1778 For example:
1779 namespace A
1780 {
1781 class B { };
1782 void foo (B) { }
1783 }
1784 ...
1785 A::B b
1786 foo(b)
1787 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1788 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1789 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1790
1791 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1792
1793 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1794 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1795 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1796 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1797 entry.
1798 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1799 mentioned flavors of operators.
1800
254e6b9e
DE
1801 ** static const class members
1802
1803 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1804 class definition has been fixed.
1805
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PM
1806* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1807
1808 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1809 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1810 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1811 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1812 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1813 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1814
0fb4aa4b
PA
1815* Static tracepoints
1816
1817 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1818 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1819 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1820 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1821 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1822 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1823 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1824 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1825 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1826 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1827 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1828 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1829 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1830 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1831 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1832 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1833 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1834 the "New remote packets" section below.
1835
ca11e899
SS
1836* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1837
1838 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1839 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1840 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1841 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1842
1843* Observer mode
1844
1845 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1846 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1847 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1848 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1849 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1850 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1851 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1852
1853* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1854 current thread.
1855
711e434b
PM
1856* New remote packets
1857
1858qGetTIBAddr
1859
1860 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1861
dde08ee1
PA
1862qRelocInsn
1863
1864 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1865 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1866 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1867 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1868 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1869 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1870
0fb4aa4b
PA
1871qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1872
1873 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1874
1875qTSTMat
1876
1877 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1878 program.
1879
1880qXfer:statictrace:read
1881
1882 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1883 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1884 to gdb's qSupported query.
1885
ca11e899
SS
1886QAllow
1887
1888 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1889
1890QTDPsrc
1891
1892 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1893 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1894
3f7b2faa
DE
1895* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1896 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1897 a directory.
1898
d337e9f0
PA
1899* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1900
0fb4aa4b
PA
1901 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1902 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1903 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1904 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1905
1906 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1907 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1908 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1909 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1910 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1911 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1912 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1913
1914 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1915 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1916
c24d0242
PM
1917 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1918
c8d5aac9
L
1919* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1920 it understands register description.
1921
7c953934
TT
1922* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1923
8685c86f
L
1924* X86 general purpose registers
1925
1926 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1927 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1928 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1929 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1930 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1931
95a42b64 1932* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1933 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1934 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1935 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1936 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1937 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1938
8bd10a10
CM
1939* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1940 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1941 in the specified file.
1942
ab38a727
PA
1943* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1944 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1945 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1946 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1947 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1948 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1949 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1950 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1951 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1952 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1953
6149aea9
PA
1954* New commands
1955
f1421989
HZ
1956eval template, expressions...
1957 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1958 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1959
ab38a727
PA
1960set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1961show target-file-system-kind
1962 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1963 names.
1964
6149aea9
PA
1965save breakpoints <filename>
1966 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1967 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1968 definitions, use the `source' command.
1969
1970`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1971is now deprecated.
1972
0fb4aa4b
PA
1973info static-tracepoint-markers
1974 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1975
1976strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1977 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1978 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1979
ca11e899
SS
1980set observer on|off
1981show observer
1982 Enable and disable observer mode.
1983
1984set may-write-registers on|off
1985set may-write-memory on|off
1986set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1987set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1988set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1989set may-interrupt on|off
1990 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1991 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1992 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1993 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1994 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1995 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1996 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1997
1998set record memory-query on|off
1999show record memory-query
2000 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2001 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2002
53a71c06
CR
2003* Changed commands
2004
2005disassemble
2006 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2007
f3e9a817
PM
2008* Python scripting
2009
9279c692
JB
2010** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2011 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2012 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2013 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2014 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2015
adc36818 2016** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
2017 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2018 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2019 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 2020
fa33c3cd 2021** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
2022 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2023
2024** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
2025
2026** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 2027
967cf477
DE
2028** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2029
8a1ea21f
DE
2030** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2031 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2032 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2033
a7bdde9e
VP
2034* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2035there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2036tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2037regular breakpoints.
2038
05071a4d
PA
2039* New targets
2040
2041ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2042
6aecb9c2
JB
2043* D language support.
2044 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2045 language.
2046
431e49aa
TJB
2047* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2048 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2049 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2050 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2051 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2052
2053* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2054 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2055 conditions of the form:
2056
2057 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2058
2059 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2060 interface mentioned above.
2061
bfbf3774 2062*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 2063
4eef138c
TT
2064* C++ Improvements
2065
2066 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
2067
2068 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2069 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2070 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2071 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2072 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2073
4eef138c
TT
2074 ** Bug Fixes
2075
2076 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2077 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2078 qualified name.
2079
2080 ** Cast Operators
2081
2082 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2083 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2084
2d1c1221
ME
2085* New targets
2086
2087Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 2088Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
2089
2090* New Simulators
2091
2092Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 2093Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 2094
6c95b8df
PA
2095* Multi-program debugging.
2096
2097 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2098 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2099 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2100 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2101 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2102 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2103 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2104 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2105
d5551862
SS
2106* New tracing features
2107
2108 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2109
2110 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
2111
2112 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2113 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2114 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2115 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2116 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2117 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2118 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2119 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2120 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2121 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 2122
d5551862 2123 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
2124
2125 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2126 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2127 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2128 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2129 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2130 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2131 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2132 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2133 the regular trace command.
2134
d5551862
SS
2135 ** Disconnected tracing
2136
2137 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2138 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2139 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2140 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2141 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2142
00bf0b85
SS
2143 ** Trace files
2144
2145 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2146 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2147 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2148 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2149 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2150 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2151 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
2152
2153 ** Circular trace buffer
2154
2155 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2156 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2157 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2158 not be available for all target agents.
2159
21a0512e
PP
2160* Changed commands
2161
2162disassemble
2163 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2164 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2165
0fe7935b
DJ
2166info variables
2167 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2168 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2169
fb2e7cb4
JB
2170source
2171 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2172 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2173 support.
2174
2175 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2176 "set script-extension" (see below).
2177
6c95b8df
PA
2178* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2179
399cd161
MS
2180record save [<FILENAME>]
2181 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2182 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2183
2184record restore <FILENAME>
2185 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2186 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2187
6c95b8df
PA
2188add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2189 Add a new inferior.
2190
2191clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2192 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2193 inferior has loaded.
2194
2195remove-inferior ID
2196 Remove an inferior.
2197
2198maint info program-spaces
2199 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2200
9a7071a8
JB
2201set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2202show remote interrupt-sequence
2203 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2204 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2205 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2206 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2207 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2208
2209set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2210show remote interrupt-on-connect
2211 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2212 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2213 Linux kernel.
2214
2215set remotebreak [on | off]
2216show remotebreak
2217Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2218
f61e138d
SS
2219tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2220 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2221
2222info tvariables
2223 List trace state variables and their values.
2224
2225delete tvariable $NAME ...
2226 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2227
6da95a67
SS
2228teval EXPR, ...
2229 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2230 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2231
7a697b8d
SS
2232ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2233 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2234
b0f02ee9
JK
2235* New expression syntax
2236
2237 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2238 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2239
6c95b8df
PA
2240* New options
2241
2242set follow-exec-mode new|same
2243show follow-exec-mode
2244 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2245 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2246 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2247
236f1d4d
SS
2248set default-collect EXPR, ...
2249show default-collect
2250 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2251 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2252 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2253
d5551862
SS
2254set disconnected-tracing
2255show disconnected-tracing
2256 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2257 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2258 upon disconnection.
2259
4daf5ac0
SS
2260set circular-trace-buffer
2261show circular-trace-buffer
2262 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2263 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2264 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2265 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2266
fb2e7cb4
JB
2267set script-extension off|soft|strict
2268show script-extension
2269 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2270 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2271 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2272 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2273 evaluation failed.
2274 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2275
2b71fc8e
JB
2276set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2277show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2278 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2279 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2280 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2281 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2282 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2283 is on.
2284
de2e5182
TT
2285* Python API Improvements
2286
2287 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2288 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2289 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2290
2291 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2292 `is_base_class' attribute.
2293
2294 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2295
2296 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2297 evaluate an expression.
2298
f61e138d
SS
2299* New remote packets
2300
2301QTDV
2302 Define a trace state variable.
2303
2304qTV
2305 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2306
d5551862
SS
2307QTDisconnected
2308 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2309
4daf5ac0
SS
2310QTBuffer:circular
2311 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2312
d5551862
SS
2313qTfP, qTsP
2314 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2315
2d483d34
MS
2316* Bug fixes
2317
2318Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2319
6e0e5977
JB
2320Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2321much more reliable. In particular:
2322 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2323 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2324 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2325 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2326 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2327 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2328 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2329 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2330 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2331 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2332 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2333 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2334 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2335 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2336 non-threaded programs.
2337
93c26624
JK
2338PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2339This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2340libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2341executable program.
2342
abc7453d 2343*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 2344
4efc6507
DE
2345* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2346dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2347them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2348for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2349"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2350
782b2b07
SS
2351* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2352breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2353or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2354the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2355for tracepoint actions.
2356
53a71c06
CR
2357* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2358raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2359modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 2360
e7a8dbfb
HZ
2361* Process record and replay
2362
2363 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2364 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2365 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2366 execute commands.
2367
64644d9b
MS
2368* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2369step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2370set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2371reverse execution.
2372
b9412953
DD
2373* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2374feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
23752.6.28 or later.
2376
6c7a06a3
TT
2377* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2378target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2379char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2380literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2381U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2382`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2383system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2384the installation instructions for more information.
2385
f1838a98
UW
2386* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2387remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2388with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2389the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2390
55333a84
DE
2391* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2392and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2393
7f6a6314
PM
2394* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2395now complete on file names.
2396
65d12d83
TT
2397* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2398completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2399For instance, consider:
2400
2401 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2402 # struct example variable;
2403 (gdb) p variable.
2404
2405If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2406completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2407
edb3359d
DJ
2408* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2409the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2410
2fae03e8
TT
2411* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2412operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2413macros.
2414
47a3467a 2415* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
2416the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2417implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2418
2419* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2420registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2421can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2422and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 2423
08388c79
DE
2424* New remote packets
2425
2426qSearch:memory:
2427 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2428
a6f3e723
SL
2429QStartNoAckMode
2430 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2431 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2432 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2433
d7713ae0
EZ
2434vKill
2435 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2436 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2437
07e059b5
VP
2438qXfer:osdata:read
2439 Obtains additional operating system information
2440
47a3467a
PA
2441qXfer:siginfo:read
2442qXfer:siginfo:write
2443 Read or write additional signal information.
2444
060871df
PA
2445* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2446
2447 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2448 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2449 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2450
c055b101 2451* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 2452DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
2453
2454* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
2455and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2456`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 2457
31fffb02
CS
2458* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2459with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2460
88d8a8e0
JB
2461* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2462
7f99b190
JB
2463* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2464
ccd213ac
DJ
2465* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2466which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2467
1fddbabb 2468* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 2469list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 2470
a0ef4274
DJ
2471* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2472conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2473have also been fixed.
2474
bfb8797a 2475* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
2476From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2477are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 2478
71c25dea
TT
2479* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2480example, given:
2481
2482 template<typename T> class C { };
2483 C<char const *> c;
2484
2485GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2486
2487 ptype C<char const *>
2488 ptype C<char const*>
2489 ptype C<const char *>
2490 ptype C<const char*>
2491
ccd213ac
DJ
2492* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2493
2494 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2495 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2496
7ae0e2a2
UW
2497 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2498 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2499 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2500
a6f3e723
SL
2501 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2502 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2503
da8bd9a3
DJ
2504 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2505 gdbserver.
2506
d70e31dd
DE
2507 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2508 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2509
2510 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2511 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2512 as appropriate.
2513
d57a3c85
TJB
2514* Python scripting
2515
2516 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2517 available is determined at configure time.
2518
d8906c6f
TJB
2519 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2520
aadc346a
JB
2521* Ada tasking support
2522
2523 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2524 been introduced:
2525
2526 info tasks
2527 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2528 info task N
2529 Print detailed information about task number N.
2530 task
2531 Print the task number of the current task.
2532 task N
2533 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2534
adb483fe
DJ
2535* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2536add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2537
2277426b
PA
2538* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2539
2540 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2541 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2542 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2543 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2544 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2545 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2546 below.
2547
08d16641
PA
2548* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2549"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2550information.
2551
e35359c5
UW
2552* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2553to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2554architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2555See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2556more information.
2557
85e747d2
UW
2558* Multi-architecture debugging.
2559
2560 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2561 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2562 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2563 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2564 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2565
2566* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2567use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2568Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2569powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2570--enable-targets configure option.
2571
11ade57a
PA
2572* Non-stop mode debugging.
2573
2574 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2575 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2576 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2577 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2578 section in the user manual for more information.
2579
2580 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2581 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2582 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2583 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2584 extensions on linux targets.
2585
d7713ae0 2586* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2587
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2588catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2589 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2590 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2591 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2592 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2593 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2594 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2595 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2596 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2597
08388c79
DE
2598find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2599 val1 [, val2, ...]
2600 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2601
d57a3c85
TJB
2602maint set python print-stack
2603maint show python print-stack
2604 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2605
2606python [CODE]
2607 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2608
d7713ae0
EZ
2609macro define
2610macro list
2611macro undef
2612 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2613 interactively.
2614
2615info os processes
2616 Show operating system information about processes.
2617
2277426b
PA
2618info inferiors
2619 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2620
2621inferior NUM
2622 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2623
2624detach inferior NUM
2625 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2626
2627kill inferior NUM
2628 Kill inferior number NUM.
2629
d7713ae0
EZ
2630* New options
2631
3285f3fe
UW
2632set spu stop-on-load
2633show spu stop-on-load
2634 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2635
ff1a52c6
UW
2636set spu auto-flush-cache
2637show spu auto-flush-cache
2638 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2639 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2640
d7713ae0
EZ
2641set sh calling-convention
2642show sh calling-convention
2643 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2644
e0a3ce09 2645set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2646show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2647 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2648
2649set disassemble-next-line
2650show disassemble-next-line
2651 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2652 the debuggee stops.
2653
2654set remote noack-packet
2655show remote noack-packet
2656 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2657 under "New remote packets."
2658
2659set remote query-attached-packet
2660show remote query-attached-packet
2661 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2662
2663set remote read-siginfo-object
2664show remote read-siginfo-object
2665 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2666 packet.
2667
2668set remote write-siginfo-object
2669show remote write-siginfo-object
2670 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2671 packet.
2672
40ab02ce
MS
2673set remote reverse-continue
2674show remote reverse-continue
2675 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2676
2677set remote reverse-step
2678show remote reverse-step
2679 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2680
d7713ae0
EZ
2681set displaced-stepping
2682show displaced-stepping
2683 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2684 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2685 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2686
2687set debug displaced
2688show debug displaced
2689 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2690
2691maint set internal-error
2692maint show internal-error
2693 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2694
2695maint set internal-warning
2696maint show internal-warning
2697 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2698
ccd213ac
DJ
2699set exec-wrapper
2700show exec-wrapper
2701unset exec-wrapper
2702 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2703
aad4b048
JB
2704set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2705show multiple-symbols
2706 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2707 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2708 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2709
74960c60
VP
2710set breakpoint always-inserted
2711show breakpoint always-inserted
2712 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2713 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2714 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2715
0428b8f5
DJ
2716set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2717show arm fallback-mode
2718set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2719show arm force-mode
2720 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2721 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2722 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2723 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2724
10568435
JK
2725set disable-randomization
2726show disable-randomization
2727 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2728 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2729 multiple debugging sessions.
2730
d7713ae0
EZ
2731set non-stop
2732show non-stop
2733 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2734 a breakpoint.
2735
b3eb342c 2736set target-async
d7713ae0 2737show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2738 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2739 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2740 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2741 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2742
6c7a06a3
TT
2743set target-wide-charset
2744show target-wide-charset
2745 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2746 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2747
84603566
SL
2748set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2749show tcp auto-retry
2750set tcp connect-timeout
2751show tcp connect-timeout
2752 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2753 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2754 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2755
17a37d48
PP
2756set libthread-db-search-path
2757show libthread-db-search-path
2758 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2759 libthread_db.
2760
d4db2f36
PA
2761set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2762show schedule-multiple
2763 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2764 the current process.
2765
4e5d721f
DE
2766set stack-cache
2767show stack-cache
2768 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2769 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2770 affecting correctness.
2771
910c5da8
JB
2772set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2773show interactive-mode
2774 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2775 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2776 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2777 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2778 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2779
2277426b
PA
2780* Removed commands
2781
2782info forks
2783 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2784 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2785 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2786 command.
2787
2788fork NUM
2789 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2790 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2791 alias for the `fork' command.
2792
2793process PID
2794 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2795 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2796 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2797
2798delete fork NUM
2799 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2800 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2801 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2802 fork' command.
2803
2804detach fork NUM
2805 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2806 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2807 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2808 fork' command.
2809
a80b95ba
TG
2810* New native configurations
2811
2812x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2813
b8bfd3ed
JB
2814x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2815
75a2d5e7
TT
2816* New targets
2817
c28c63d8 2818Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2819x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2820x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2821S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2822
6de3146c
PA
2823* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2824 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2825
d5cbbe6e
JB
2826* Removed commands
2827
2828catch load
2829catch unload
2830 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2831
75feb17d 2832*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2833
af5ca30d
NH
2834* New native configurations
2835
2836NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2837Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2838
2839* New targets
2840
2841NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2842Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2843
7a404eba
PA
2844* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2845
2846 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2847 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2848 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2849 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2850
430ebac9
PA
2851* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2852(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2853
fe6fbf8b 2854* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2855is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2856
2857* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2858including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2859and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2860
10665d76
JB
2861* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2862accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2863more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2864
7cc46491
DJ
2865* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2866
d71340b8
DJ
2867* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2868registers on PowerPC targets.
2869
523c4513
DJ
2870* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2871targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2872
a6b151f1
DJ
2873* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2874commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2875
2d717e4f
DJ
2876* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2877extended-remote mode.
2878
24a836bd 2879* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2880The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2881error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2882The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2883
d0c678e6
UW
2884* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2885building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2886target architectures.
2887
d64a946d
TJB
2888* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2889Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2890now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2891stored in two consecutive float registers.
2892
ee163bf5
VP
2893* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2894breakpoints now.
2895
b93b6ca7 2896* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2897Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2898include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2899 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2900 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2901 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2902 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2903 of an assignment
2904 - Improved command completion in Ada
2905 - Several bug fixes
2906
d001be7a
DJ
2907* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2908process.
2909
a6b151f1
DJ
2910* New commands
2911
6d53d0af
JB
2912set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2913show print frame-arguments
2914 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2915 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2916
a6b151f1
DJ
2917remote put
2918remote get
2919remote delete
2920 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2921
2922* New MI commands
2923
2924-target-file-put
2925-target-file-get
2926-target-file-delete
2927 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2928
2929* New remote packets
2930
2931vFile:open:
2932vFile:close:
2933vFile:pread:
2934vFile:pwrite:
2935vFile:unlink:
2936 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2937
2d717e4f
DJ
2938vAttach
2939 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2940 mode.
2941
2942vRun
2943 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2944
8d5f9c6f 2945*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2946
19d378fc
MS
2947* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2948bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2949Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2950
3a40aaa0
UW
2951* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2952symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2953-Bsymbolic linker option.
2954
a6ec25f2
BW
2955* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2956recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2957is not supported.
2958
6dd09645
JB
2959* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2960frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2961
c9bb8148
DJ
2962* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
296332-bit or 64-bit register values.
2964
0d5de010
DJ
2965* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2966
23181151
DJ
2967* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2968target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2969a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2970
ea37ba09
DJ
2971* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2972automatically displayed as character or string data.
2973
2974* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2975arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2976as strings.
e1f48ead 2977
123dc839
DJ
2978* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2979for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2980only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2981
05a4558a
DJ
2982* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2983iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2984
7c963485
PA
2985* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2986ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2987has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2988
b18be20d
DJ
2989* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2990
0ca420ce
UW
2991* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2992
31d99776
DJ
2993* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2994layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2995segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2996
a4642986
MR
2997* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2998immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2999
cfa9d6d9
DJ
3000* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3001"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3002packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3003where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3004Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
3005
3006* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3007(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
3008
3009* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3010according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 3011
c9bb8148
DJ
3012* New commands
3013
23776285
MR
3014set remoteflow
3015show remoteflow
3016 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3017 when debugging using remote targets.
3018
c9bb8148
DJ
3019set mem inaccessible-by-default
3020show mem inaccessible-by-default
3021 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3022 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3023 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3024 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3025 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3026
3027set breakpoint auto-hw
3028show breakpoint auto-hw
3029 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3030 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3031 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3032 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3033 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3034 including "next" and "finish".
3035
0e420bd8
JB
3036catch exception
3037catch exception unhandled
3038 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3039
3040catch assert
3041 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3042
f822c95b
DJ
3043set sysroot
3044show sysroot
3045 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3046 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3047 an alias to "set sysroot".
3048
83cc5c53
UW
3049info spu
3050 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3051 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3052 architecture.
3053
bd372731
MK
3054* New native configurations
3055
3056OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3057
23181151
DJ
3058set tdesc filename
3059unset tdesc filename
3060show tdesc filename
3061 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3062 not query the target for its built-in description.
3063
c9bb8148
DJ
3064* New targets
3065
54fe9172 3066OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 3067MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 3068Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 3069
6dd09645
JB
3070* New remote packets
3071
3072QPassSignals:
3073 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3074 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3075
23181151
DJ
3076qXfer:features:read:
3077 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3078 features.
6dd09645 3079
83cc5c53
UW
3080qXfer:spu:read:
3081qXfer:spu:write:
3082 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3083 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3084
cfa9d6d9
DJ
3085qXfer:libraries:read:
3086 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3087 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3088 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3089 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3090
483367ee
DJ
3091* Removed targets
3092
3093Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3094
d08950c4
UW
3095alpha*-*-osf1*
3096alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 3097d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
3098hppa*-*-hiux*
3099i[34567]86-ncr-*
3100i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3101i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3102i[34567]86-*-netware*
3103i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3104i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3105i[34567]86-*-sco*
3106i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3107i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3108i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3109i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3110i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3111i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3112i[34567]86-*-isc*
3113m68*-cisco*-*
3114m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 3115mips*-*-pe
483367ee 3116rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 3117sh*-*-pe
483367ee 3118
7ce59000
DJ
3119* Other removed features
3120
3121target abug
3122target cpu32bug
3123target est
3124target rom68k
3125
3126 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3127
ea35711c
DJ
3128target hms
3129target e7000
3130target sh3
3131target sh3e
3132
3133 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3134 H8/300.
3135
3136target ocd
3137
3138 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3139 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3140 interfaces.
3141
7ce59000
DJ
3142DWARF 1 support
3143
3144 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3145 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3146
54d61198
DJ
3147Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3148
3149 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3150 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3151 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3152 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3153
ea35711c
DJ
3154MIPS ".pdr" sections
3155
3156 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3157 in debugging information.
3158
3159Scheme support
3160
3161 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3162 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3163
1a69e1e4
DJ
3164set mips stack-arg-size
3165set mips saved-gpreg-size
3166
3167 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3168
6dd09645 3169*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 3170
ca3bf3bd
DJ
3171* New targets
3172
3173Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 3174Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 3175
6aec2e11
DJ
3176* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3177(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3178running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3179
3180* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3181Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3182supported.
3183
17218d91
DJ
3184* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3185broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3186
9ebce043
DJ
3187* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3188stub provides the required support.
3189
7d3d3ece
DJ
3190* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3191longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3192
4f8253f3
JB
3193* New commands
3194
3195set substitute-path
3196unset substitute-path
3197show substitute-path
3198 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3199 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3200 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3201 between compilation and debugging.
3202
9fa66fd7
AS
3203set trace-commands
3204show trace-commands
3205 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3206 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3207 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3208
1f5befc1
DJ
3209* REMOVED features
3210
3211The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3212
2ec3381a
DJ
3213Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3214an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3215
3d00d119
DJ
3216The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3217
be2a5f71
DJ
3218* New remote packets
3219
3220qSupported:
3221 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3222 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3223 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3224 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3225 target.
3226
0876f84a
DJ
3227qXfer:auxv:read:
3228 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3229 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3230
9ebce043
DJ
3231qXfer:memory-map:read:
3232 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3233 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3234
3235vFlashErase:
3236vFlashWrite:
3237vFlashDone:
3238 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3239
0876f84a
DJ
3240* Removed remote packets
3241
3242qPart:auxv:read:
3243 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3244 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3245
e374b601 3246*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 3247
96309189
MS
3248* New targets
3249
3250Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3251
3252Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3253
53e5f3cf
AS
3254* New commands
3255
3256init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3257 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3258
ac264b3b
MS
3259The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3260
3261checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3262
3263restart <n> Return the program state to a
3264 previously saved state.
3265
3266info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3267
3268delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3269
3270set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3271 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3272
3273info forks List forks of the user program that
3274 are available to be debugged.
3275
3276fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3277 forks of the user program that are
3278 available to be debugged.
3279
3280delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3281 that are available to be debugged (and
3282 kill the forked process).
3283
3284detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3285 that are available to be debugged (and
3286 allow the process to continue).
3287
3950dc3f
NS
3288* New architecture
3289
3290Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3291
0ea3f30e
DJ
3292* Improved Windows host support
3293
3294GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3295native console support, and remote communications using either
3296network sockets or serial ports.
3297
f79daebb
GM
3298* Improved Modula-2 language support
3299
3300GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3301basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3302pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3303printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3304written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3305GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3306
acab6ab2
MM
3307* REMOVED features
3308
3309The ARM rdi-share module.
3310
f4267320
DJ
3311The Netware NLM debug server.
3312
53e5f3cf 3313*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 3314
e0ecbda1
MK
3315* New native configurations
3316
02a677ac 3317OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
3318OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3319
d64a6579
KB
3320* New targets
3321
3322Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3323
b33a6190
AS
3324* New command line options
3325
3326--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3327--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3328 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3329--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3330 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3331 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3332 with the --command (-x) option.
3333
11dced61
AC
3334* Deprecated commands removed
3335
3336The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3337removed:
3338
3339 Command Replacement
3340 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3341 othernames set arm disassembler
3342 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3343 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3344 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3345 regs info registers
3346
6fe85783
MK
3347* New BSD user-level threads support
3348
3349It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3350library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3351configurations are:
3352
3353FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3354FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3355OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3356
3357Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3358are not yet supported.
3359
5260ca71
MS
3360* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3361(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3362
e84ecc99
AC
3363* REMOVED configurations and files
3364
3365VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 3366Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 3367National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 3368
31e35378
JB
3369* New "set print array-indexes" command
3370
3371After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3372when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3373behavior.
3374
e85e5c83
MK
3375* VAX floating point support
3376
3377GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3378
d91e9901
AS
3379* User-defined command support
3380
3381In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3382to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3383section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3384
f2cb65ca
MC
3385*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3386
f47b1503
AS
3387* New command line option
3388
3389GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3390debugging.
3391
f2cb65ca
MC
3392* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3393
3394GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3395information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3396by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3397proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3398to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 3399
d08c0230
AC
3400* Internationalization
3401
3402When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3403internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3404continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3405
117ea3cf
PH
3406* Ada
3407
3408Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3409implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3410into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3411
d08c0230
AC
3412* New native configurations
3413
3414GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3415
3416* Remote 'p' packet
3417
3418GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3419packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3420
3421* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3422
3423GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3424The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3425features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3426i386 application).
3427
3428GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3429compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3430continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3431configurations:
3432
3433hppa-*-hpux
3434ia64-*-aix
3435mips-*-irix*
3436*-*-lynx
3437mips-*-linux-gnu
3438sds protocol
3439xdr protocol
3440powerpc bdm protocol
3441
3442Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3443made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3444
3445* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3446
3447Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3448been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3449configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3450permanently REMOVED.
3451
3452h8300-*-*
3453mcore-*-*
3454mn10300-*-*
3455ns32k-*-*
3456sh64-*-*
3457v850-*-*
3458
ebb7c577
AC
3459*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3460
3461* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3462
3463When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3464heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3465been fixed.
3466
3467* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3468
3469When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3470fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3471IRIX long double values).
3472
3473* VAX and "next"
3474
3475A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3476command. This problem has been fixed.
3477
860660cb 3478*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 3479
0dea2468
AC
3480* Fix for ``many threads''
3481
3482On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3483rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3484error message:
3485
3486 ptrace: No such process.
3487 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3488
3489This problem has been fixed.
3490
2c07db7a
AC
3491* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3492
3493Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3494GDB to dump core).
3495
c23968a2
JB
3496* New ``start'' command.
3497
3498This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3499
71009278
MK
3500* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3501
3502Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3503live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3504platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3505
3506FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3507FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3508NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3509NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3510NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3511OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3512OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3513OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3514OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3515
3c0b7db2
AC
3516* Signal trampoline code overhauled
3517
3518Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3519These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3520of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3521call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3522signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3523
73cc75f3
AC
3524Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3525features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3526include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 3527
7243600a
BF
3528* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3529
6f606e1c
MK
3530* New native configurations
3531
97dc871c 3532GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 3533OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
3534OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3535OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 3536OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3537NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 3538OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 3539
a1b461bf
AC
3540* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3541
3542GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3543The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3544including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3545migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3546compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3547work, was also included.
3548
3549GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3550module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3551
3552h8300-*-*
3553mcore-*-*
3554mn10300-*-*
3555ns32k-*-*
3556sh64-*-*
3557v850-*-*
3558xstormy16-*-*
3559
3560Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3561made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3562
3c7012f5
AC
3563* REMOVED configurations and files
3564
3565Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3566Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3567Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3568Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3569Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3570AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3571Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3572decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3573riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3574sonymips mips-sony-*
3575sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3576
e5fe55f7
AC
3577*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3578
3579* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3580
3581The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3582GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3583command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3584program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3585with GDB".
3586
3587* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3588
3589Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3590libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3591cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3592GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3593shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3594the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3595are created.
3596
3597Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3598
3599* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3600
3601The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3602non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3603compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3604
3605* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3606
3607Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3608wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3609
3610* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3611
3612The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3613permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3614systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3615
3616* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3617
3618Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3619has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3620
3621* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3622
3623GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3624its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3625panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3626
3627* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3628
3629When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3630by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3631not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3632
faae5abe 3633*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3634
9175c9a3
MC
3635* Removed --with-mmalloc
3636
3637Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3638conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3639
3cc87ec0
MK
3640* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3641
3642The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3643the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3644and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3645you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3646
f0424ef6
MK
3647* Revised SPARC target
3648
3649The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3650FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3651support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3652from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3653(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3654
59659be2
ILT
3655* New C++ demangler
3656
3657GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3658names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3659with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3660programs.
3661
9e08b29b
DJ
3662* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3663
3664GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3665arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3666encountered these.
3667
8dfe8985
DC
3668* C++ nested types and namespaces
3669
3670GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3671improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3672is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3673Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3674namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3675"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3676frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3677if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3678GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3679
cced5e27
MK
3680* New native configurations
3681
3682NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3683OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3684OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3685OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3686OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3687
b4b4b794
KI
3688* New debugging protocols
3689
3690M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3691
7989c619
AC
3692* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3693
3694The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3695and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3696tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3697
5994185b
AC
3698* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3699
3700Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3701been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3702configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3703permanently REMOVED.
3704
3705Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3706Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3707Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3708Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3709Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3710AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3711Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3712decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3713riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3714sonymips mips-sony-*
3715sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3716
0ddabb4c
AC
3717* REMOVED configurations and files
3718
3719SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3720SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3721Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3722Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3723H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3724HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3725HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3726HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3727PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3728386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3729Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3730 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3731 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3732SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3733SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3734Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3735Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3736
c7f1390e
DJ
3737*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3738
1fe43d45
AC
3739* Objective-C
3740
3741Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3742integrated into GDB.
3743
e6beb428
AC
3744* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3745
3746DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3747information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3748By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3749backtraces.
3750
3751The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3752have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3753DWARF 2 CFI support.
3754
3755* Hosted file I/O.
3756
3757GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3758file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3759remote protocol documentation for details.
3760
3761* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3762
3763All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3764architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3765to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3766ppc32 on ppc64).
3767
3768* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3769
3770GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3771per-thread variables.
3772
3773* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3774
3775GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3776GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3777
3778* Separate debug info.
3779
3780GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3781automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3782of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3783system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3784and optional debug files.
3785
3786* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3787
3788DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3789describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3790debugger.
3791
3792GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3793for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3794
3795* Java
3796
3797A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3798Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3799considered "useable".
3800
85f8f974
DJ
3801* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3802
3803The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3804commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3805kernel.
3806
0fac0b41
DJ
3807* GDB supports logging output to a file
3808
3809There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3810used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3811
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3812* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3813
3814The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3815disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3816command.
3817
e286caf2 3818* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3819
3820The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3821registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3822
d28f9cdf
DJ
3823* Profiling support
3824
3825A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3826be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3827session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3828"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3829data, for more informative profiling results.
3830
da0f9dcd
AC
3831* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3832
3833The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3834option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3835"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3836
3837Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3838removed.
3839
fb9b6b35
JJ
3840Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3841Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3842Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3843 in a subsequent -var-update.
3844
954a4db8
MK
3845* New native configurations.
3846
3847FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3848
6760f9e6
JB
3849* Multi-arched targets.
3850
b4263afa 3851HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3852Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3853
1b831c93
AC
3854* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3855
3856Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3857been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3858configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3859permanently REMOVED.
3860
8b0e5691 3861Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3862Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3863H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3864HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3865HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3866HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3867PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3868Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3869 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3870 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3871Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3872Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3873
5835abe7
NC
3874* REMOVED configurations and files
3875
3876V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3877Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3878IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3879i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3880i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3881i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3882HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3883 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3884 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3885Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3886Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3887Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3888OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3889I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3890
a094c6fb
AC
3891* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3892
3893The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3894the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3895context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3896address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3897The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3898
299ffc64 3899*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3900
46248966
AC
3901* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3902
3903When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3904`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3905in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3906library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3907shared libs like mad''.
3908
b9d14705 3909* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3910
b9d14705
DJ
3911Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3912the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3913arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3914powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3915
e0e9281e
JB
3916* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3917
3918GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3919and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3920they expand.
3921
dd73b9bb
AC
3922The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3923invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3924
3925The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3926macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3927
e0e9281e
JB
3928Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3929information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3930your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3931information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3932
2250ee0c
CV
3933* Multi-arched targets.
3934
6e3ba3b8
JT
3935DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3936DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3937NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3938National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3939Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3940Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3941
cd9bfe15 3942* New targets.
e33ce519 3943
456f8b9d
DB
3944Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3945
e33ce519 3946
da8ca43d
JT
3947* New native configurations
3948
3949Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3950SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3951MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3952UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3953
cd9bfe15
AC
3954* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3955
3956Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3957been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3958configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3959permanently REMOVED.
3960
92eb23c5 3961Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3962OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3963IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3964Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3965Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3966Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3967i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3968i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3969i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3970HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3971 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3972 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3973I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3974
db034ac5
AC
3975* OBSOLETE languages
3976
3977CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3978
cd9bfe15
AC
3979* REMOVED configurations and files
3980
3981AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3982A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3983AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3984AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3985AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3986
3987testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3988
20f01a46
DH
3989* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3990
3991This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3992commands. The default is 1024.
3993
a5941fbf
MK
3994* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3995
3996Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3997
89743e04
MS
3998* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3999
4000These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4001to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4002from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 4003
9fb14e79
JB
4004* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4005
4006The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4007including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4008of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4009
2037aebb
AC
4010*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4011
4012* New targets.
4013
4014Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4015
4016* Bug fixes
4017
4018gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4019mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4020Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4021
4022gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4023dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4024Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4025
4026Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4027Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4028By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4029
4030i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4031avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4032By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4033
37057839 4034*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 4035
1a703748
MS
4036* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4037
4038This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4039really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4040In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4041target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4042This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4043(notably embedded) targets.
4044
cefd4ef5
MS
4045* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4046
55241689
AC
4047This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4048process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4049GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4050hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 4051
352ed7b4
MS
4052* New command line option
4053
4054GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4055
4056* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4057
4058There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4059command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4060a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4061be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4062open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4063issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4064a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4065it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4066GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4067is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4068
fe419ffc
RE
4069* Changes in ARM configurations.
4070
4071Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4072configuration is fully multi-arch.
4073
eb7cedd9
MK
4074* New native configurations
4075
fe419ffc 4076ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 4077x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 4078AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 4079Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 4080
c9f63e6b
CV
4081* New targets
4082
4083Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4084
9b4ff276
AC
4085* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4086
4087Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4088been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4089configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4090permanently REMOVED.
4091
4092AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4093A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4094AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4095AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4096AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4097
b4ceaee6 4098testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 4099
e2caac18
AC
4100* REMOVED configurations and files
4101
4102TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 4103WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
4104PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4105PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4106PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 4107Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
4108Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4109 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 4110SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 4111Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
4112Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4113ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 4114Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 4115
c2a727fa
TT
4116* Changes to command line processing
4117
4118The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4119for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4120
467d8519
TT
4121* Changes to key bindings
4122
4123There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4124
7072a954
AC
4125*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4126
4127Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4128
4129Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4130corrupted.
4131
4132Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4133
4134Numerous documentation fixes.
4135
4136Numerous testsuite fixes.
4137
34f47bc4 4138*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
4139
4140* New native configurations
4141
4142Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4143x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 4144MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
4145MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4146ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 4147s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 4148
bf64bfd6
AC
4149* New targets
4150
def90278 4151Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 4152CRIS cris-axis
55241689 4153UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 4154
17e78a56 4155* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
4156
4157x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 4158Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
4159Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4160 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
4161TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4162WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 4163Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
4164PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4165PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4166PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 4167SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
4168Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4169ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 4170Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 4171
17e78a56
AC
4172stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4173kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4174
7fcca85b
AC
4175Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4176been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4177configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4178permanently REMOVED.
4179
a196c81c 4180* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
4181
4182Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4183Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4184Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4185ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4186Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 4187ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 4188
6d6b80e5 4189* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 4190
6d6b80e5 4191GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
4192sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4193present.
4194
bf64bfd6
AC
4195* Other news:
4196
e23194cb
EZ
4197* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4198
4199* The MI enabled by default.
4200
4201The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4202revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4203engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4204using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4205which is now deprecated.
4206
4207* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4208
4209GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4210main features are supported:
4211
4212 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4213
4214 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4215 extension;
4216
4217 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4218
4219 - a Pascal expression parser.
4220
4221However, some important features are not yet supported.
4222
4223 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4224
4225 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4226
4227 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4228 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4229
4230 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4231
4232 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4233
4234* Changes in completion.
4235
4236Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4237to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4238users expect at the shell prompt.
4239
4240Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4241`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4242program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4243files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4244be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4245considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4246name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4247
4248`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4249
4250* New platform-independent commands:
4251
4252It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4253hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4254documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4255
4256* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4257
d7275149
MK
4258Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4259revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4260many threads as your system allows you to have.
4261
e23194cb
EZ
4262Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4263
d7275149
MK
4264Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4265multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
4266
4267* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
4268
4269Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4270
e23194cb
EZ
4271GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4272debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4273supported.)
4274
4275* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4276
4277Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4278breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4279implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4280put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4281and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4282registers.
4283
4284The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4285debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4286watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4287
4288* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4289
4290New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4291the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4292
4293New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4294display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4295IDT.
4296
4297New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4298from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4299New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4300a given linear address.
4301
4302GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4303program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4304which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4305
4306DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4307
6c56c069
EZ
4308It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4309
e23194cb
EZ
4310* Changes in documentation.
4311
4312All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4313Documentation License.
4314
4315Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4316manual.
4317
4318TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4319
4320Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4321manual.
4322
4323The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4324documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4325hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4326
5d6640b1
AC
4327* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4328
4329The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4330``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4331contents of this file.
4332
1a1d8446
AC
4333* gdba.el deleted
4334
4335GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 4336
9debab2f 4337*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 4338
c63ce875
EZ
4339* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4340
4341Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4342programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4343displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4344greater level of detail.
4345
4346* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4347
4348It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4349bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4350on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4351written.
4352
4353* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4354
4355The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4356necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4357machines ``out of the box''.
4358
4359The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4360possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4361signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4362would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4363interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4364
4365It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4366standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4367even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4368and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4369terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4370
4371The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4372enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4373also works.
4374
4375DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4376GDB.
4377
4378It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4379directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4380times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4381breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4382
ed9a39eb
JM
4383* New native configurations
4384
4385ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 4386PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 4387
7a292a7a
SS
4388* New targets
4389
96baa820 4390Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
4391x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4392PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
4393TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4394
085dd6e6
JM
4395* OBSOLETE configurations
4396
4397Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4398Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 4399Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 4400ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 4401Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 4402
9debab2f
AC
4403Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4404but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4405these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4406be permanently REMOVED.
4407
5330533d
SS
4408* Gould support removed
4409
4410Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4411
bc9e5bbf
AC
4412* New features for SVR4
4413
4414On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4415without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4416load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4417
4418* Many C++ enhancements
4419
4420C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4421in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4422
adf40b2e
JM
4423* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4424
4425A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4426sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4427with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4428``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4429
4430 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4431 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4432
43e526b9
JM
4433* MIPS 64 remote protocol
4434
4435A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4436expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4437instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4438
4439The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4440added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4441
96baa820
JM
4442* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4443
4444The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4445``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4446include ``set remote P-packet''.
4447
11cf8741
JM
4448* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4449
4450The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4451accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4452``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4453
7876dd43
DB
4454* ``apropos'' command added.
4455
4456The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4457documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4458try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4459
bc9e5bbf
AC
4460* New MI interface
4461
4462A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4463interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
4464process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4465"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4466enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
4467
4468 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4469
c906108c
SS
4470*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4471
4472* New native configurations
4473
4474HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4475HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 4476M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
4477
4478* New targets
4479
4480Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4481Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4482Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4483
4484* OBSOLETE configurations
4485
4486Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4487
4488Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4489but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4490these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4491be permanently REMOVED.
4492
4493* ANSI/ISO C
4494
4495As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4496buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4497containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4498use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4499available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4500configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4501information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4502already.
4503
4504* Readline 2.2
4505
4506GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4507
4508* set extension-language
4509
4510You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4511languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4512you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4513 set extension-language .c c++
4514The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4515and their associated languages.
4516
4517* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4518
4519When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4520you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4521PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4522
4523 set processor NAME
4524
4525sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4526following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4527
4528 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4529 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4530 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4531 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4532 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4533 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4534 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4535 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4536 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4537 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4538 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4539
4540At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4541special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4542registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4543only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4544
4545* HP-UX support
4546
4547Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4548more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4549library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4550support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4551for xdb and dbx commands.
4552
4553* Catchpoints
4554
4555HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4556generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4557to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4558
4559This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4560argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4561output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4562
4563* Debugging across forks
4564
4565On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4566in the inferior.
4567
4568* TUI
4569
4570HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4571it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4572configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4573
4574* GDB remote protocol additions
4575
4576A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4577Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4578fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4579allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4580
4581For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4582full 64-bit address. The command
4583
4584 set remoteaddresssize 32
4585
4586can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4587the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4588will be discarded.
4589
4590In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4591command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4592
4593 maint packet heythere
4594
4595sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4596disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4597time.
4598
4599The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4600target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4601downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4602
4603* Tracing can collect general expressions
4604
4605You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4606further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4607doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4608
4609* mask-address variable for Mips
4610
4611For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4612a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4613of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4614
4615* Higher serial baud rates
4616
4617GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4618230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4619to achieve all of these rates.)
4620
4621* i960 simulator
4622
4623The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4624builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4625
4626
4627*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4628
4629* New native configurations
4630
4631Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4632Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4633Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4634PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4635PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4636Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4637Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4638
4639* New targets
4640
4641Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4642Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4643Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4644Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4645MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4646MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4647MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4648Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4649Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4650Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4651NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4652
4653* New debugging protocols
4654
4655ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4656M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4657DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4658PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4659PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4660Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4661
4662* DWARF 2
4663
4664All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4665format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4666information.
4667
4668* Java frontend
4669
4670GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4671only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4672
4673* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4674
4675For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4676loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4677locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4678
4679* Live range splitting
4680
4681GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4682range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4683more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4684
4685* Hurd support
4686
4687GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4688updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4689
4690* ARM Thumb support
4691
4692GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4693instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4694instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4695accordingly.
4696
4697* MIPS16 support
4698
4699GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4700instruction set.
4701
4702* Overlay support
4703
4704GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4705linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4706will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4707control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4708additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4709in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4710
4711* info symbol
4712
4713The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4714the symbol at the specified address.
4715
4716* Trace support
4717
4718The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4719asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4720extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4721includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4722file tracepoint.c for more details.
4723
4724* MIPS simulator
4725
4726Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4727by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4728of most MIPS variants.
4729
4730* Sparc simulator
4731
4732Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4733by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4734Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4735
4736* set architecture
4737
4738For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4739basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4740architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4741the possible architectures.
4742
4743*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4744
4745* New native configurations
4746
4747Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4748M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4749PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4750PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4751PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4752RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4753
4754* New targets
4755
4756ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4757I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4758MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4759MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4760PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4761Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4762Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4763
4764* PowerPC simulator
4765
4766The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4767contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4768PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4769basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4770performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4771
4772* Solaris 2.5
4773
4774GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4775
4776* Windows 95/NT native
4777
4778GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4779To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4780which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4781Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4782ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4783
4784* dont-repeat command
4785
4786If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4787command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4788useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4789extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4790
4791* Send break instead of ^C
4792
4793The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4794rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4795GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4796
4797* Remote protocol timeout
4798
4799The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4800that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4801to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4802
4803* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4804
4805By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4806loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4807stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4808when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4809in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4810
4811Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4812/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4813automatically on hpux10.
4814
4815* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4816
4817Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4818
4819* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4820
4821When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4822may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4823the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4824every character. The default value is 1050.
4825
4826* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4827
4828If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4829a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4830replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4831details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4832remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4833to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4834
4835* Speedups for remote debugging
4836
4837GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4838the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4839and more efficient S-record downloading.
4840
4841* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4842
4843GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4844Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4845
4846*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4847
4848* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4849
4850The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4851can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4852
4853* Remote targets use caching
4854
4855Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4856remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4857it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4858debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4859off' turns the the data cache off.
4860
4861* Remote targets may have threads
4862
4863The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4864in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4865gdb/remote.c for details.
4866
4867* NetROM support
4868
4869If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4870support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4871acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4872write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4873support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4874another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4875sequence is something like
4876
4877 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4878 load <prog>
4879 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4880
4881* Macintosh host
4882
4883GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4884may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4885it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4886available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4887device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4888directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4889scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4890mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4891
4892* Autoconf
4893
4894GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4895but does simplify configuration and building.
4896
4897* hpux10
4898
4899GDB now supports hpux10.
4900
4901*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4902
4903* New native configurations
4904
4905x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4906x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4907NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4908Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4909
4910* New targets
4911
4912A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4913HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4914CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4915PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4916WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4917
4918* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4919
4920GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4921possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4922filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4923the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4924if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4925
4926* Arguments to user-defined commands
4927
4928User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4929Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4930trivial example:
4931define adder
4932 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4933
4934To execute the command use:
4935adder 1 2 3
4936
4937Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4938Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4939use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4940
4941* New `if' and `while' commands
4942
4943This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4944commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4945expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4946execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4947terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4948`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4949if the expression is zero.
4950
4951* Fortran source language mode
4952
4953GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4954Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4955variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4956with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4957Fortran compilers.
4958
4959* Better HPUX support
4960
4961Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4962running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4963processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4964for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4965that behavior do the following before running the program:
4966
4967 adb -w a.out
4968 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4969 control-d
4970
4971This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4972To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4973
4974 adb -w a.out
4975 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4976 control-d
4977
4978You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4979the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4980external linkage.
4981
4982GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4983HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4984
4985* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4986
4987You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4988commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4989current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4990"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4991associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4992configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4993
4994* New DOS host serial code
4995
4996This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4997no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4998a PC's serial port.
4999
5000*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5001
5002* New "complete" command
5003
5004This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5005were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5006
5007* Trailing space optional in prompt
5008
5009"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5010allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5011
5012* Breakpoint hit counts
5013
5014"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5015has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5016can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5017to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5018less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5019that breakpoint.
5020
5021* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5022
5023"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5024an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5025arrays actually contain only short strings.
5026
5027* Shared library breakpoints
5028
5029In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5030breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5031
5032* Hardware watchpoints
5033
5034There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5035targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5036
55241689 5037Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
5038
5039* Annotations
5040
5041Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5042and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5043
5044* Improved Irix 5 support
5045
5046GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5047
5048* Improved HPPA support
5049
5050GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5051
5052* New native configurations
5053
5054Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5055HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5056Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5057RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5058
5059* New targets
5060
5061OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5062MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5063Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5064
5065* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5066
5067There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5068This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5069
5070* Fixes
5071
5072As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5073and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5074
5075*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5076
5077* Irix 5 is now supported
5078
5079* HPPA support
5080
5081GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5082to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5083GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5084of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5085can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5086
5087
5088*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5089
5090* User visible changes:
5091
5092* Remote Debugging
5093
5094The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5095target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5096debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5097integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5098debugging info for the mips target).
5099
5100* DEC Alpha native support
5101
5102GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5103debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5104work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5105Alpha-specific notes.
5106
5107* Preliminary thread implementation
5108
5109GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5110
5111* LynxOS native and target support for 386
5112
5113This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5114to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5115for details).
5116
5117* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5118
5119This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5120mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5121call methods, ...etc.
5122
5123*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5124
5125 * User visible changes:
5126
5127Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5128supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5129other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5130somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5131
5132Filename completion now works.
5133
5134When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5135arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5136addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5137
5138All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5139vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5140should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5141your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5142to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5143
5144 * DEC alpha support
5145
5146This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5147cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5148
5149
5150*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5151
5152 * Testsuite
5153
5154This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5155The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5156via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5157
5158 * C++ demangling
5159
5160'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5161emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5162Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5163disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5164use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5165
5166 * Simulators
5167
5168GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5169So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5170Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5171
5172 * New targets supported
5173
5174H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5175H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5176SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5177Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5178IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5179
5180Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5181version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5182GO32 memory extender.
5183
5184 * New remote protocols
5185
5186MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5187
5188 * New source languages supported
5189
5190This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5191used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5192into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5193
5194
5195*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5196
5197 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5198
5199GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5200version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5201University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5202compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5203format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5204(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5205
5206Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5207
5208 * Faster and better demangling
5209
5210We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5211demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5212character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5213only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5214This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5215increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5216symbol lookups.
5217
5218`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5219from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5220compiler does not actually implement.
5221
5222 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5223
5224In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5225inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5226recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5227very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5228The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5229circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5230fix.
5231
5232The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5233release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5234
5235 * Improved configure script
5236
5237The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5238you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5239host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5240done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5241
5242We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5243version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5244`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5245The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5246only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5247We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5248
5249 * Documentation improvements
5250
5251There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5252produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5253before submitting changes.
5254
5255The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5256M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5257`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5258you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5259a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5260
5261*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5262We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5263been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5264or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5265`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5266around this problem.
5267
5268 * New features
5269
5270GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5271the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5272`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5273the target program.
5274
5275The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5276how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5277
5278 * New native hosts supported
5279
5280HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5281386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5282
5283 * New targets supported
5284
5285AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5286
5287 * New file formats supported
5288
5289BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5290HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5291
5292 * Major bug fixes
5293
5294Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5295
5296We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5297printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5298
5299We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5300for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5301release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5302
5303You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5304will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5305
5306We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5307for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5308especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5309libraries.
5310
5311The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5312information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5313command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5314any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5315when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5316
5317 * Internal improvements
5318
5319GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5320debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5321
5322GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5323Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5324symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5325contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5326shared code that handles any of them.
5327
5328 * New command line options
5329
5330We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5331
5332 * Mmalloc licensing
5333
5334The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5335General Public License.
5336
5337*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5338
5339 * Host/native/target split
5340
5341GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5342hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5343target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5344local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5345ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5346
5347The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5348GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5349is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5350code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5351any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5352built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5353handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5354
5355GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5356It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5357plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5358
5359 * New hosts supported
5360
5361HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5362386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5363386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5364
5365 * New targets supported
5366
5367Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
536868030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5369
5370 * New native hosts supported
5371
5372386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5373 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5374386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5375
5376 * New file formats supported
5377
5378BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5379supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5380format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5381
5382 * New commands
5383
5384`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5385`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5386These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5387
5388`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5389
5390You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5391scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5392prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5393executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5394
5395 * C++ improvements
5396
5397We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5398info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5399symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5400
5401Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5402
5403 * Major bug fixes
5404
5405The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5406fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5407by the compiler.
5408
5409We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5410support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5411
5412John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5413slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5414that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5415purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5416the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5417mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5418
5419Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5420about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5421completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5422we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5423
5424 * AMD 29k support
5425
5426A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5427specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5428calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5429usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5430in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5431
5432We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5433Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5434of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5435resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5436
5437 * Remote interfaces
5438
5439We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5440with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5441message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5442This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5443needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5444breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5445each instruction being stepped through.
5446
5447The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5448registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5449
5450There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5451find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5452Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5453processor with a serial port.
5454
5455 * Configuration
5456
5457Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5458`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5459supported, and what files each one uses.
5460
5461 * Library changes
5462
5463There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5464disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5465Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5466disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5467
5468The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5469Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5470can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5471grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5472
5473 * Documentation
5474
5475The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5476reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5477as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5478encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5479system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5480bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5481
5482And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5483
5484
5485*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5486
5487 * Better support for C++ function names
5488
5489GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5490names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5491(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5492single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5493Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5494
5495GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5496the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5497You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5498lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5499for the list of formats.
5500
5501 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5502
5503Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5504C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5505directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5506can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5507usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5508about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5509this problem.)
5510
5511 * New 'maintenance' command
5512
5513All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5514the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5515can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5516
5517 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5518 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5519 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5520 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5521 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5522 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5523
5524The following commands are new:
5525
5526 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5527 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5528 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5529
5530 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5531
5532We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5533(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5534be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5535read after argv processing.
5536
5537 * New hosts supported
5538
5539Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5540
55241689 5541GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
5542
5543We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5544is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5545for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5546masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5547fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5548It costs extra.
5549
5550 * New targets supported
5551
5552Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5553
5554 * More smarts about finding #include files
5555
5556GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5557all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5558greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5559especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5560the one that contains your sources.
5561
5562We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5563breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5564try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5565
5566 * Interesting infernals change
5567
5568GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5569section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5570target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5571stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5572
5573 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5574
5575There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5576 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5577 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5578
5579See the ChangeLog for details.
5580
5581*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5582
5583 * New machines supported (host and target)
5584
5585IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5586
5587SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5588
5589 * New malloc package
5590
5591GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5592Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5593capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5594This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5595pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5596more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5597
5598 * info proc
5599
5600The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5601'help info proc' for details.
5602
5603 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5604
5605The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5606Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5607possible.
5608
5609 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5610
5611Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5612support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5613conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5614environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5615that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5616in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5617
5618 * Cross byte order fixes
5619
5620Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5621targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5622
5623 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5624
5625If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5626system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5627`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5628program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5629called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5630Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5631and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5632the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5633option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5634starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5635
5636You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5637the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5638information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5639slower, but makes future operations faster.
5640
5641The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5642build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5643A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5644use is:
5645
5646 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5647
5648The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5649It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5650shared across multiple host platforms.
5651
5652 * longjmp() handling
5653
5654GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5655siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5656all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5657platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5658
5659 * Solaris 2.0
5660
5661Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5662this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5663reading symbols.
5664
5665 * Bug fixes
5666
5667As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5668People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5669crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5670
5671*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5672
5673 * New machines supported (host and target)
5674
5675SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5676 (except core files)
5677BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5678Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5679
5680 * New machines supported (target)
5681
5682AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5683
5684 * C++ support
5685
5686GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5687The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5688per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5689
5690GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5691`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5692extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5693good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5694will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5695released.
5696
5697 * New features for SVR4
5698
5699GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5700shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5701only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5702
5703The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5704on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5705it prints the address mappings of the process.
5706
5707If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5708bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5709
5710 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5711
5712Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5713now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5714skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5715make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5716same code linked statically.
5717
5718 * New Getopt
5719
5720GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5721version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5722continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5723Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5724added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5725future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5726
5727 * Bugs fixed
5728
5729The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5730Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5731See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5732
5733
5734*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5735
5736 * New machines supported (host and target)
5737
5738Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5739NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5740Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5741
5742 * Almost SCO Unix support
5743
5744We had hoped to support:
5745SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5746(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5747that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5748about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5749
5750 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5751
5752GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5753debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5754is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5755send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5756reqired (if any).
5757
5758 * New Readline
5759
5760GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5761is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5762required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5763
5764 * Bugs fixed
5765
5766The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5767Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5768See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5769
5770 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5771
5772GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5773supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5774symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5775
5776Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5777mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5778debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5779mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5780version 2.
5781
5782Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5783really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5784line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5785variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5786situation somewhat.
5787
5788When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5789However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5790methods.
5791
5792We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5793DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5794encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5795
5796
5797*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5798
5799 * Improved configuration
5800
5801Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5802Porting BFD is simpler.
5803
5804 * Stepping improved
5805
5806The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5807of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5808in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5809function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5810
5811 * Bug fixing
5812
5813Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5814
5815 * New host supported (not target)
5816
5817Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5818
5819
5820*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5821
5822 * Multiple source language support
5823
5824GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5825It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5826and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5827language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5828You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5829`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5830
5831 * GDB and Modula-2
5832
5833GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5834currently under development at the State University of New York at
5835Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5836continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5837
5838Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5839debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5840symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5841
5842There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5843in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5844
5845 * set write on/off
5846
5847GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5848a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5849the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5850by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5851effect immediately.
5852
5853 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5854
5855When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5856shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5857The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5858examining core files.
5859
5860 * set listsize
5861
5862You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5863The default is 10.
5864
5865 * New machines supported (host and target)
5866
5867SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5868Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5869Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5870
5871 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5872
5873IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5874
5875 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5876
5877AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5878AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5879Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5880
5881 * New remote interfaces
5882
5883AMD 29000 Adapt
5884AMD 29000 Minimon
5885
5886
5887*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5888
5889 * New Facilities
5890
5891Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5892
5893Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5894target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5895is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5896remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5897remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5898also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5899using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5900stub on the target system.
5901
5902New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5903
5904GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5905library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5906object file types such as a.out and coff.
5907
5908There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5909refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5910
5911
5912 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5913
5914All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5915by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5916
5917For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5918``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5919Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5920
5921What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5922print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5923will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5924all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5925
5926confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5927 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5928 it is already running. Default is ON.
5929
5930editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5931 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5932 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5933 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5934 Default is ON.
5935
5936history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5937 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5938 or the value of the environment variable
5939 GDBHISTFILE.
5940
5941history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5942 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5943 HISTSIZE.
5944
5945history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5946 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5947 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5948
5949history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5950 history expansion will be performed on
5951 command line input. The default is OFF.
5952
5953radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5954 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5955 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5956
5957height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5958 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5959 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5960 variable TERM.
5961
5962width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5963 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5964 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5965 variable TERM.
5966
5967Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5968``set width'' instead.
5969
5970print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5971 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5972 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5973 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5974
5975print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5976 is OFF.
5977
5978print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5979 "raw" form if off.
5980
5981print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5982 like instructions.
5983
5984print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5985
5986
5987 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5988
5989The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5990new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5991are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5992window.
5993
5994
5995 * Support for Shared Libraries
5996
5997GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5998Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5999before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6000happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6001At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6002from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6003shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6004It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6005
6006sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6007 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6008 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6009
6010info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6011
6012
6013 * Watchpoints
6014
6015A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6016expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6017tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6018quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6019problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6020more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6021
6022watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6023
6024info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6025
6026delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6027disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6028enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6029
6030
6031 * C++ multiple inheritance
6032
6033When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6034for C++ programs.
6035
6036 * C++ exception handling
6037
6038Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6039ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6040the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6041handler's context).
6042
6043catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6044 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6045 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6046
6047info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6048 current stack frame.
6049
6050
6051 * Minor command changes
6052
6053The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6054command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6055is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6056
6057The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6058at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6059frames without printing.
6060
6061 * New directory command
6062
6063'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6064The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6065about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6066with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6067find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6068
6069 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6070
6071For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6072for more details.
6073
6074GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6075two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6076Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6077where the program that you are debugging will run.
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