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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5
6* New native configurations
7
8HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
9HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
10M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
11
12* New targets
13
14Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
15Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
16Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
17
18* OBSOLETE configurations
19
20Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
21
22Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
23but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
24these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
25be permanently REMOVED.
26
27* ANSI/ISO C
28
29As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
30buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
31containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
32use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
33available. If this is not true, please report the affected
34configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
35information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
36already.
37
38* Readline 2.2
39
40GDB now uses readline 2.2.
41
42* set extension-language
43
44You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
45languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
46you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
47 set extension-language .c c++
48The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
49and their associated languages.
50
51* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
52
53When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
54you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
55PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
56
57 set processor NAME
58
59sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
60following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
61
62 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
63 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
64 403 IBM PowerPC 403
65 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
66 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
67 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
68 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
69 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
70 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
71 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
72 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
73
74At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
75special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
76registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
77only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
78
79* HP-UX support
80
81Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
82more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
83library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
84support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
85for xdb and dbx commands.
86
87* Catchpoints
88
89HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
90generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
91to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
92
93This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
94argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
95output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
96
97* Debugging across forks
98
99On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
100in the inferior.
101
102* TUI
103
104HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
105it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
106configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
107
108* GDB remote protocol additions
109
110A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
111Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
112fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
113allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
114
115For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
116full 64-bit address. The command
117
118 set remoteaddresssize 32
119
120can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
121the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
122will be discarded.
123
124In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
125command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
126
127 maint packet heythere
128
129sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
130disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
131time.
132
133The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
134target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
135downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
136
137* Tracing can collect general expressions
138
139You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
140further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
141doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
142
143* mask-address variable for Mips
144
145For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
146a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
147of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
148
149* Higher serial baud rates
150
151GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
152230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
153to achieve all of these rates.)
154
155* i960 simulator
156
157The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
158builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
159
160
161*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
162
163* New native configurations
164
165Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
166Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
167Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
168PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
169PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
170Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
171Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
172
173* New targets
174
175Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
176Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
177Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
178Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
179MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
180MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
181MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
182Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
183Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
184Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
185NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
186
187* New debugging protocols
188
189ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
190M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
191DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
192PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
193PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
194Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
195
196* DWARF 2
197
198All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
199format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
200information.
201
202* Java frontend
203
204GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
205only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
206
207* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
208
209For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
210loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
211locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
212
213* Live range splitting
214
215GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
216range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
217more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
218
219* Hurd support
220
221GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
222updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
223
224* ARM Thumb support
225
226GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
227instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
228instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
229accordingly.
230
231* MIPS16 support
232
233GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
234instruction set.
235
236* Overlay support
237
238GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
239linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
240will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
241control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
242additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
243in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
244
245* info symbol
246
247The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
248the symbol at the specified address.
249
250* Trace support
251
252The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
253asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
254extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
255includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
256file tracepoint.c for more details.
257
258* MIPS simulator
259
260Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
261by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
262of most MIPS variants.
263
264* Sparc simulator
265
266Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
267by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
268Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
269
270* set architecture
271
272For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
273basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
274architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
275the possible architectures.
276
277*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
278
279* New native configurations
280
281Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
282M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
283PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
284PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
285PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
286RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
287
288* New targets
289
290ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
291I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
292MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
293MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
294PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
295Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
296Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
297
298* PowerPC simulator
299
300The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
301contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
302PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
303basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
304performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
305
306* Solaris 2.5
307
308GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
309
310* Windows 95/NT native
311
312GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
313To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
314which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
315Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
316ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
317
318* dont-repeat command
319
320If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
321command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
322useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
323extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
324
325* Send break instead of ^C
326
327The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
328rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
329GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
330
331* Remote protocol timeout
332
333The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
334that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
335to read from the target. The default value is 2.
336
337* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
338
339By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
340loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
341stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
342when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
343in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
344
345Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
346/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
347automatically on hpux10.
348
349* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
350
351Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
352
353* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
354
355When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
356may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
357the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
358every character. The default value is 1050.
359
360* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
361
362If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
363a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
364replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
365details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
366remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
367to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
368
369* Speedups for remote debugging
370
371GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
372the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
373and more efficient S-record downloading.
374
375* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
376
377GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
378Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
379
380*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
381
382* Psymtabs for XCOFF
383
384The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
385can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
386
387* Remote targets use caching
388
389Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
390remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
391it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
392debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
393off' turns the the data cache off.
394
395* Remote targets may have threads
396
397The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
398in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
399gdb/remote.c for details.
400
401* NetROM support
402
403If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
404support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
405acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
406write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
407support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
408another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
409sequence is something like
410
411 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
412 load <prog>
413 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
414
415* Macintosh host
416
417GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
418may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
419it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
420available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
421device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
422directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
423scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
424mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
425
426* Autoconf
427
428GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
429but does simplify configuration and building.
430
431* hpux10
432
433GDB now supports hpux10.
434
435*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
436
437* New native configurations
438
439x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
440x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
441NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
442Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
443
444* New targets
445
446A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
447HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
448CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
449PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
450WDC 65816 w65-*-*
451
452* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
453
454GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
455possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
456filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
457the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
458if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
459
460* Arguments to user-defined commands
461
462User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
463Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
464trivial example:
465define adder
466 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
467
468To execute the command use:
469adder 1 2 3
470
471Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
472Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
473use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
474
475* New `if' and `while' commands
476
477This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
478commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
479expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
480execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
481terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
482`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
483if the expression is zero.
484
485* Fortran source language mode
486
487GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
488Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
489variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
490with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
491Fortran compilers.
492
493* Better HPUX support
494
495Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
496running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
497processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
498for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
499that behavior do the following before running the program:
500
501 adb -w a.out
502 __dld_flags?W 0x5
503 control-d
504
505This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
506To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
507
508 adb -w a.out
509 __dld_flags?W 0x4
510 control-d
511
512You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
513the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
514external linkage.
515
516GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
517HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
518
519* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
520
521You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
522commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
523current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
524"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
525associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
526configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
527
528* New DOS host serial code
529
530This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
531no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
532a PC's serial port.
533
534*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
535
536* New "complete" command
537
538This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
539were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
540
541* Trailing space optional in prompt
542
543"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
544allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
545
546* Breakpoint hit counts
547
548"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
549has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
550can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
551to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
552less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
553that breakpoint.
554
555* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
556
557"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
558an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
559arrays actually contain only short strings.
560
561* Shared library breakpoints
562
563In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
564breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
565
566* Hardware watchpoints
567
568There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
569targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
570
571Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
572
573* Annotations
574
575Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
576and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
577
578* Improved Irix 5 support
579
580GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
581
582* Improved HPPA support
583
584GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
585
586* New native configurations
587
588Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
589HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
590Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
591RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
592
593* New targets
594
595OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
596MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
597Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
598
599* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
600
601There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
602This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
603
604* Fixes
605
606As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
607and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
608
609*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
610
611* Irix 5 is now supported
612
613* HPPA support
614
615GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
616to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
617GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
618of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
619can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
620
621
622*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
623
624* User visible changes:
625
626* Remote Debugging
627
628The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
629target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
630debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
631integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
632debugging info for the mips target).
633
634* DEC Alpha native support
635
636GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
637debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
638work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
639Alpha-specific notes.
640
641* Preliminary thread implementation
642
643GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
644
645* LynxOS native and target support for 386
646
647This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
648to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
649for details).
650
651* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
652
653This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
654mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
655call methods, ...etc.
656
657*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
658
659 * User visible changes:
660
661Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
662supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
663other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
664somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
665
666Filename completion now works.
667
668When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
669arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
670addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
671
672All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
673vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
674should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
675your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
676to be on the far side of a thin network line.
677
678 * DEC alpha support
679
680This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
681cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
682
683
684*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
685
686 * Testsuite
687
688This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
689The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
690via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
691
692 * C++ demangling
693
694'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
695emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
696Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
697disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
698use gdb with AT&T cfront.
699
700 * Simulators
701
702GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
703So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
704Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
705
706 * New targets supported
707
708H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
709H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
710SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
711Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
712IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
713
714Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
715version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
716GO32 memory extender.
717
718 * New remote protocols
719
720MIPS remote debugging protocol.
721
722 * New source languages supported
723
724This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
725used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
726into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
727
728
729*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
730
731 * HP Precision Architecture supported
732
733GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
734version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
735University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
736compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
737format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
738(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
739
740Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
741
742 * Faster and better demangling
743
744We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
745demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
746character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
747only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
748This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
749increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
750symbol lookups.
751
752`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
753from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
754compiler does not actually implement.
755
756 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
757
758In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
759inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
760recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
761very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
762The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
763circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
764fix.
765
766The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
767release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
768
769 * Improved configure script
770
771The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
772you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
773host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
774done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
775
776We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
777version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
778`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
779The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
780only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
781We hope to make this the default in a future release.
782
783 * Documentation improvements
784
785There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
786produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
787before submitting changes.
788
789The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
790M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
791`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
792you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
793a future texinfo-X.Y release.
794
795*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
796We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
797been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
798or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
799`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
800around this problem.
801
802 * New features
803
804GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
805the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
806`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
807the target program.
808
809The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
810how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
811
812 * New native hosts supported
813
814HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
815386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
816
817 * New targets supported
818
819AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
820
821 * New file formats supported
822
823BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
824HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
825
826 * Major bug fixes
827
828Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
829
830We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
831printf_filtered("%s") problems.
832
833We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
834for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
835release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
836
837You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
838will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
839
840We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
841for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
842especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
843libraries.
844
845The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
846information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
847command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
848any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
849when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
850
851 * Internal improvements
852
853GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
854debugging of multiple languages in the future.
855
856GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
857Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
858symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
859contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
860shared code that handles any of them.
861
862 * New command line options
863
864We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
865
866 * Mmalloc licensing
867
868The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
869General Public License.
870
871*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
872
873 * Host/native/target split
874
875GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
876hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
877target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
878local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
879ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
880
881The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
882GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
883is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
884code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
885any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
886built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
887handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
888
889GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
890It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
891plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
892
893 * New hosts supported
894
895HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
896386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
897386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
898
899 * New targets supported
900
901Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
90268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
903
904 * New native hosts supported
905
906386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
907 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
908386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
909
910 * New file formats supported
911
912BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
913supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
914format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
915
916 * New commands
917
918`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
919`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
920These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
921
922`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
923
924You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
925scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
926prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
927executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
928
929 * C++ improvements
930
931We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
932info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
933symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
934
935Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
936
937 * Major bug fixes
938
939The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
940fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
941by the compiler.
942
943We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
944support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
945
946John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
947slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
948that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
949purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
950the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
951mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
952
953Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
954about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
955completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
956we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
957
958 * AMD 29k support
959
960A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
961specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
962calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
963usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
964in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
965
966We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
967Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
968of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
969resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
970
971 * Remote interfaces
972
973We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
974with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
975message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
976This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
977needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
978breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
979each instruction being stepped through.
980
981The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
982registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
983
984There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
985find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
986Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
987processor with a serial port.
988
989 * Configuration
990
991Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
992`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
993supported, and what files each one uses.
994
995 * Library changes
996
997There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
998disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
999Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1000disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1001
1002The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1003Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1004can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1005grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1006
1007 * Documentation
1008
1009The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1010reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1011as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1012encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1013system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1014bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1015
1016And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1017
1018
1019*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1020
1021 * Better support for C++ function names
1022
1023GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1024names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1025(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1026single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1027Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1028
1029GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1030the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1031You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1032lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1033for the list of formats.
1034
1035 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1036
1037Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1038C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1039directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1040can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1041usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1042about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1043this problem.)
1044
1045 * New 'maintenance' command
1046
1047All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1048the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1049can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1050
1051 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1052 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1053 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1054 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1055 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1056 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1057
1058The following commands are new:
1059
1060 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1061 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1062 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1063
1064 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1065
1066We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1067(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1068be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1069read after argv processing.
1070
1071 * New hosts supported
1072
1073Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1074
1075Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1076
1077We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1078is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1079for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1080masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1081fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1082It costs extra.
1083
1084 * New targets supported
1085
1086Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1087
1088 * More smarts about finding #include files
1089
1090GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1091all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1092greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1093especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1094the one that contains your sources.
1095
1096We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1097breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1098try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1099
1100 * Interesting infernals change
1101
1102GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1103section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1104target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1105stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1106
1107 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1108
1109There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1110 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1111 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1112
1113See the ChangeLog for details.
1114
1115*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1116
1117 * New machines supported (host and target)
1118
1119IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1120
1121SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1122
1123 * New malloc package
1124
1125GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1126Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1127capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1128This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1129pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1130more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1131
1132 * info proc
1133
1134The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1135'help info proc' for details.
1136
1137 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1138
1139The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1140Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1141possible.
1142
1143 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1144
1145Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1146support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1147conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1148environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1149that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1150in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1151
1152 * Cross byte order fixes
1153
1154Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1155targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1156
1157 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1158
1159If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1160system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1161`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1162program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1163called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1164Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1165and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1166the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1167option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1168starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1169
1170You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1171the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1172information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1173slower, but makes future operations faster.
1174
1175The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1176build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1177A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1178use is:
1179
1180 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1181
1182The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1183It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1184shared across multiple host platforms.
1185
1186 * longjmp() handling
1187
1188GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1189siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1190all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1191platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1192
1193 * Solaris 2.0
1194
1195Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1196this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1197reading symbols.
1198
1199 * Bug fixes
1200
1201As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1202People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1203crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1204
1205*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1206
1207 * New machines supported (host and target)
1208
1209SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1210 (except core files)
1211BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1212Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1213
1214 * New machines supported (target)
1215
1216AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1217
1218 * C++ support
1219
1220GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1221The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1222per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1223
1224GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1225`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1226extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1227good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1228will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1229released.
1230
1231 * New features for SVR4
1232
1233GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1234shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1235only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1236
1237The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1238on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1239it prints the address mappings of the process.
1240
1241If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1242bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1243
1244 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1245
1246Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1247now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1248skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1249make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1250same code linked statically.
1251
1252 * New Getopt
1253
1254GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1255version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1256continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1257Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1258added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1259future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1260
1261 * Bugs fixed
1262
1263The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1264Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1265See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1266
1267
1268*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1269
1270 * New machines supported (host and target)
1271
1272Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1273NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1274Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1275
1276 * Almost SCO Unix support
1277
1278We had hoped to support:
1279SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1280(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1281that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1282about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1283
1284 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1285
1286GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1287debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1288is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1289send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1290reqired (if any).
1291
1292 * New Readline
1293
1294GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1295is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1296required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1297
1298 * Bugs fixed
1299
1300The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1301Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1302See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1303
1304 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1305
1306GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1307supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1308symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1309
1310Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1311mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1312debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1313mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1314version 2.
1315
1316Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1317really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1318line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1319variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1320situation somewhat.
1321
1322When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1323However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1324methods.
1325
1326We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1327DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1328encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1329
1330
1331*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1332
1333 * Improved configuration
1334
1335Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1336Porting BFD is simpler.
1337
1338 * Stepping improved
1339
1340The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1341of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1342in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1343function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1344
1345 * Bug fixing
1346
1347Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1348
1349 * New host supported (not target)
1350
1351Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1352
1353
1354*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1355
1356 * Multiple source language support
1357
1358GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1359It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1360and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1361language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1362You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1363`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1364
1365 * GDB and Modula-2
1366
1367GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1368currently under development at the State University of New York at
1369Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1370continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1371
1372Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1373debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1374symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1375
1376There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1377in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1378
1379 * set write on/off
1380
1381GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1382a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1383the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1384by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1385effect immediately.
1386
1387 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1388
1389When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1390shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1391The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1392examining core files.
1393
1394 * set listsize
1395
1396You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1397The default is 10.
1398
1399 * New machines supported (host and target)
1400
1401SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1402Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1403Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1404
1405 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1406
1407IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1408
1409 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1410
1411AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1412AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1413Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1414
1415 * New remote interfaces
1416
1417AMD 29000 Adapt
1418AMD 29000 Minimon
1419
1420
1421*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1422
1423 * New Facilities
1424
1425Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1426
1427Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1428target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1429is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1430remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1431remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1432also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1433using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1434stub on the target system.
1435
1436New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1437
1438GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1439library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1440object file types such as a.out and coff.
1441
1442There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1443refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1444
1445
1446 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1447
1448All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1449by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1450
1451For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1452``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1453Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1454
1455What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1456print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1457will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1458all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1459
1460confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1461 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1462 it is already running. Default is ON.
1463
1464editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1465 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1466 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1467 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1468 Default is ON.
1469
1470history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1471 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1472 or the value of the environment variable
1473 GDBHISTFILE.
1474
1475history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1476 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1477 HISTSIZE.
1478
1479history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1480 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1481 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1482
1483history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1484 history expansion will be performed on
1485 command line input. The default is OFF.
1486
1487radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1488 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1489 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1490
1491height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1492 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1493 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1494 variable TERM.
1495
1496width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1497 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1498 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1499 variable TERM.
1500
1501Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1502``set width'' instead.
1503
1504print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1505 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1506 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1507 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1508
1509print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1510 is OFF.
1511
1512print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1513 "raw" form if off.
1514
1515print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1516 like instructions.
1517
1518print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1519
1520
1521 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1522
1523The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1524new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1525are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1526window.
1527
1528
1529 * Support for Shared Libraries
1530
1531GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1532Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1533before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1534happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1535At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1536from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1537shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1538It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1539
1540sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1541 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1542 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1543
1544info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1545
1546
1547 * Watchpoints
1548
1549A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1550expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1551tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1552quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1553problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1554more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1555
1556watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1557
1558info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1559
1560delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1561disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1562enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1563
1564
1565 * C++ multiple inheritance
1566
1567When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1568for C++ programs.
1569
1570 * C++ exception handling
1571
1572Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1573ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1574the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1575handler's context).
1576
1577catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1578 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1579 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1580
1581info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1582 current stack frame.
1583
1584
1585 * Minor command changes
1586
1587The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1588command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1589is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1590
1591The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1592at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1593frames without printing.
1594
1595 * New directory command
1596
1597'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1598The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1599about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1600with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1601find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1602
1603 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1604
1605For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1606for more details.
1607
1608GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1609two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1610Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1611where the program that you are debugging will run.
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