* NEWS: Add entry for new substitute-path commands.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.5
5
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6* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
7(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
8running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
9
10* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
11Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
12supported.
13
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14* New commands
15
16set substitute-path
17unset substitute-path
18show substitute-path
19 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
20 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
21 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
22 between compilation and debugging.
23
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24* REMOVED features
25
26The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
27
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28Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
29an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
30
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31The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
32
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33* New remote packets
34
35qSupported:
36 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
37 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
38 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
39 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
40 target.
41
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42qXfer:auxv:read:
43 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
44 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
45
46* Removed remote packets
47
48qPart:auxv:read:
49 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
50 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
51
e374b601 52*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 53
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54* New targets
55
56Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
57
58Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
59
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60* New commands
61
62init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
63 only if it doesn't already have a value.
64
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65The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
66
67checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
68
69restart <n> Return the program state to a
70 previously saved state.
71
72info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
73
74delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
75
76set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
77 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
78
79info forks List forks of the user program that
80 are available to be debugged.
81
82fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
83 forks of the user program that are
84 available to be debugged.
85
86delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
87 that are available to be debugged (and
88 kill the forked process).
89
90detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
91 that are available to be debugged (and
92 allow the process to continue).
93
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94* New architecture
95
96Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
97
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98* Improved Windows host support
99
100GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
101native console support, and remote communications using either
102network sockets or serial ports.
103
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104* Improved Modula-2 language support
105
106GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
107basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
108pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
109printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
110written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
111GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
112
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113* REMOVED features
114
115The ARM rdi-share module.
116
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117The Netware NLM debug server.
118
53e5f3cf 119*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 120
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121* New native configurations
122
02a677ac 123OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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124OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
125
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126* New targets
127
128Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
129
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130* New command line options
131
132--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
133--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
134 the child (debugged) program exited with.
135--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
136 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
137 specified multiple times and in conjunction
138 with the --command (-x) option.
139
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140* Deprecated commands removed
141
142The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
143removed:
144
145 Command Replacement
146 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
147 othernames set arm disassembler
148 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
149 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
150 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
151 regs info registers
152
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153* New BSD user-level threads support
154
155It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
156library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
157configurations are:
158
159FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
160FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
161OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
162
163Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
164are not yet supported.
165
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166* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
167(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
168
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169* REMOVED configurations and files
170
171VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 172Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 173National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 174
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175* New "set print array-indexes" command
176
177After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
178when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
179behavior.
180
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181* VAX floating point support
182
183GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
184
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185* User-defined command support
186
187In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
188to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
189section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
190
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191*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
192
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193* New command line option
194
195GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
196debugging.
197
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198* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
199
200GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
201information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
202by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
203proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
204to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 205
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206* Internationalization
207
208When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
209internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
210continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
211
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212* Ada
213
214Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
215implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
216into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
217
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218* New native configurations
219
220GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
221
222* Remote 'p' packet
223
224GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
225packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
226
227* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
228
229GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
230The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
231features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
232i386 application).
233
234GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
235compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
236continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
237configurations:
238
239hppa-*-hpux
240ia64-*-aix
241mips-*-irix*
242*-*-lynx
243mips-*-linux-gnu
244sds protocol
245xdr protocol
246powerpc bdm protocol
247
248Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
249made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
250
251* OBSOLETE configurations and files
252
253Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
254been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
255configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
256permanently REMOVED.
257
258h8300-*-*
259mcore-*-*
260mn10300-*-*
261ns32k-*-*
262sh64-*-*
263v850-*-*
264
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265*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
266
267* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
268
269When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
270heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
271been fixed.
272
273* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
274
275When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
276fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
277IRIX long double values).
278
279* VAX and "next"
280
281A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
282command. This problem has been fixed.
283
860660cb 284*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 285
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286* Fix for ``many threads''
287
288On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
289rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
290error message:
291
292 ptrace: No such process.
293 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
294
295This problem has been fixed.
296
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297* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
298
299Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
300GDB to dump core).
301
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302* New ``start'' command.
303
304This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
305
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306* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
307
308Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
309live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
310platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
311
312FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
313FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
314NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
315NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
316NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
317OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
318OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
319OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
320OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
321
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322* Signal trampoline code overhauled
323
324Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
325These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
326of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
327call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
328signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
329
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330Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
331features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
332include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 333
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334* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
335
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336* New native configurations
337
97dc871c 338GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 339OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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340OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
341OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 342OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 343NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 344OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 345
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346* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
347
348GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
349The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
350including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
351migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
352compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
353work, was also included.
354
355GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
356module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
357
358h8300-*-*
359mcore-*-*
360mn10300-*-*
361ns32k-*-*
362sh64-*-*
363v850-*-*
364xstormy16-*-*
365
366Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
367made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
368
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369* REMOVED configurations and files
370
371Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
372Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
373Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
374Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
375Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
376AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
377Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
378decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
379riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
380sonymips mips-sony-*
381sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
382
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383*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
384
385* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
386
387The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
388GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
389command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
390program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
391with GDB".
392
393* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
394
395Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
396libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
397cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
398GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
399shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
400the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
401are created.
402
403Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
404
405* Fixed ISO-C build problems
406
407The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
408non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
409compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
410
411* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
412
413Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
414wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
415
416* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
417
418The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
419permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
420systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
421
422* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
423
424Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
425has been updated to use constant array sizes.
426
427* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
428
429GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
430its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
431panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
432
433* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
434
435When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
436by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
437not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
438
faae5abe 439*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 440
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441* Removed --with-mmalloc
442
443Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
444conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
445
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446* Changes in AMD64 configurations
447
448The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
449the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
450and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
451you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
452
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453* Revised SPARC target
454
455The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
456FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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457support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
458from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
459(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 460
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461* New C++ demangler
462
463GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
464names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
465with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
466programs.
467
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468* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
469
470GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
471arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
472encountered these.
473
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474* C++ nested types and namespaces
475
476GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
477improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
478is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
479Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
480namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
481"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
482frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
483if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
484GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
485
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486* New native configurations
487
488NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 489OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 490OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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491OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
492OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 493
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494* New debugging protocols
495
496M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
497
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498* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
499
500The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
501and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
502tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
503
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504* OBSOLETE configurations and files
505
506Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
507been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
508configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
509permanently REMOVED.
510
511Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
512Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
513Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
514Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
515Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
516AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
517Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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518decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
519riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
520sonymips mips-sony-*
521sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 522
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523* REMOVED configurations and files
524
525SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
526SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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527Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
528Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
529H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
530HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
531HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
532HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
533PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 534386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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535Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
536 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
537 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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538SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
539SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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540Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
541Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 542
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543*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
544
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545* Objective-C
546
547Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
548integrated into GDB.
549
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550* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
551
552DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
553information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
554By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
555backtraces.
556
557The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
558have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
559DWARF 2 CFI support.
560
561* Hosted file I/O.
562
563GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
564file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
565remote protocol documentation for details.
566
567* All targets using the new architecture framework.
568
569All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
570architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
571to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
572ppc32 on ppc64).
573
574* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
575
576GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
577per-thread variables.
578
579* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
580
581GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
582GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
583
584* Separate debug info.
585
586GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
587automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
588of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
589system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
590and optional debug files.
591
592* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
593
594DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
595describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
596debugger.
597
598GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
599for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
600
601* Java
602
603A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
604Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
605considered "useable".
606
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607* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
608
609The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
610commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
611kernel.
612
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613* GDB supports logging output to a file
614
615There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
616used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 617
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618* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
619
620The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
621disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
622command.
623
e286caf2 624* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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625
626The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
627registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
628
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629* Profiling support
630
631A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
632be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
633session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
634"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
635data, for more informative profiling results.
636
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637* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
638
639The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
640option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 641"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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AC
642
643Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
644removed.
645
fb9b6b35
JJ
646Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
647Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
648Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
649 in a subsequent -var-update.
650
954a4db8
MK
651* New native configurations.
652
653FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
654
6760f9e6
JB
655* Multi-arched targets.
656
b4263afa 657HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 658Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 659
1b831c93
AC
660* OBSOLETE configurations and files
661
662Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
663been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
664configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
665permanently REMOVED.
666
8b0e5691 667Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 668Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 669H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
670HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
671HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
672HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 673PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
674Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
675 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
676 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
677Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
678Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 679
5835abe7
NC
680* REMOVED configurations and files
681
682V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
683Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
684IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
685i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
686i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
687i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
688HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
689 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
690 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
691Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
692Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
693Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
694OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
695I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 696
a094c6fb
AC
697* MIPS $fp behavior changed
698
699The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
700the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
701context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
702address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
703The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
704
299ffc64 705*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 706
46248966
AC
707* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
708
709When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
710`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
711in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
712library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
713shared libs like mad''.
714
b9d14705 715* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 716
b9d14705
DJ
717Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
718the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
719arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
720powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 721
e0e9281e
JB
722* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
723
724GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
725and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
726they expand.
727
dd73b9bb
AC
728The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
729invocations in expression, and shows the result.
730
731The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
732macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
733
e0e9281e
JB
734Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
735information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
736your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
737information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
738
2250ee0c
CV
739* Multi-arched targets.
740
6e3ba3b8
JT
741DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
742DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 743NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 744National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
745Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
746Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 747
cd9bfe15 748* New targets.
e33ce519 749
456f8b9d
DB
750Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
751
e33ce519 752
da8ca43d
JT
753* New native configurations
754
755Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 756SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 757MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 758UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 759
cd9bfe15
AC
760* OBSOLETE configurations and files
761
762Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
763been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
764configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
765permanently REMOVED.
766
92eb23c5 767Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 768OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 769IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 770Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 771Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 772Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
773i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
774i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
775i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
776HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
777 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
778 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 779I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 780
db034ac5
AC
781* OBSOLETE languages
782
783CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
784
cd9bfe15
AC
785* REMOVED configurations and files
786
787AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
788A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
789AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
790AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
791AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
792
793testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
794
20f01a46
DH
795* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
796
797This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
798commands. The default is 1024.
799
a5941fbf
MK
800* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
801
802Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
803
89743e04
MS
804* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
805
806These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
807to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
808from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 809
9fb14e79
JB
810* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
811
812The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
813including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
814of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
815
2037aebb
AC
816*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
817
818* New targets.
819
820Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
821
822* Bug fixes
823
824gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
825mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
826Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
827
828gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
829dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
830Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
831
832Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
833Surprisingly enough, it works now.
834By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
835
836i386 hardware watchpoint support:
837avoid misses on second run for some targets.
838By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
839
37057839 840*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 841
1a703748
MS
842* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
843
844This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
845really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
846In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
847target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
848This can be a significant performance improvement on some
849(notably embedded) targets.
850
cefd4ef5
MS
851* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
852
55241689
AC
853This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
854process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
855GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
856hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 857
352ed7b4
MS
858* New command line option
859
860GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
861
862* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
863
864There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
865command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
866a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
867be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
868open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
869issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
870a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
871it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
872GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
873is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
874
fe419ffc
RE
875* Changes in ARM configurations.
876
877Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
878configuration is fully multi-arch.
879
eb7cedd9
MK
880* New native configurations
881
fe419ffc 882ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 883x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 884AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 885Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 886
c9f63e6b
CV
887* New targets
888
889Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
890
9b4ff276
AC
891* OBSOLETE configurations and files
892
893Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
894been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
895configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
896permanently REMOVED.
897
898AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
899A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
900AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
901AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
902AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
903
b4ceaee6 904testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 905
e2caac18
AC
906* REMOVED configurations and files
907
908TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 909WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
910PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
911PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
912PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 913Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
914Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
915 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 916SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 917Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
918Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
919ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 920Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 921
c2a727fa
TT
922* Changes to command line processing
923
924The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
925for the inferior from gdb's command line.
926
467d8519
TT
927* Changes to key bindings
928
929There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
930
7072a954
AC
931*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
932
933Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
934
935Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
936corrupted.
937
938Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
939
940Numerous documentation fixes.
941
942Numerous testsuite fixes.
943
34f47bc4 944*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
945
946* New native configurations
947
948Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
949x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 950MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
951MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
952ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 953s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 954
bf64bfd6
AC
955* New targets
956
def90278 957Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 958CRIS cris-axis
55241689 959UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 960
17e78a56 961* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
962
963x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 964Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
965Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
966 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
967TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
968WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 969Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
970PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
971PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
972PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 973SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
974Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
975ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 976Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 977
17e78a56
AC
978stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
979kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
980
7fcca85b
AC
981Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
982been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
983configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
984permanently REMOVED.
985
a196c81c 986* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
987
988Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
989Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
990Pyramid pyramid-*-*
991ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
992Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 993ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 994
6d6b80e5 995* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 996
6d6b80e5 997GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
998sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
999present.
1000
bf64bfd6
AC
1001* Other news:
1002
e23194cb
EZ
1003* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1004
1005* The MI enabled by default.
1006
1007The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1008revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1009engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1010using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1011which is now deprecated.
1012
1013* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1014
1015GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1016main features are supported:
1017
1018 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1019
1020 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1021 extension;
1022
1023 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1024
1025 - a Pascal expression parser.
1026
1027However, some important features are not yet supported.
1028
1029 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1030
1031 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1032
1033 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1034 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1035
1036 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1037
1038 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1039
1040* Changes in completion.
1041
1042Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1043to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1044users expect at the shell prompt.
1045
1046Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1047`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1048program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1049files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1050be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1051considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1052name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1053
1054`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1055
1056* New platform-independent commands:
1057
1058It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1059hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1060documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1061
1062* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1063
d7275149
MK
1064Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1065revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1066many threads as your system allows you to have.
1067
e23194cb
EZ
1068Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1069
d7275149
MK
1070Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1071multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1072
1073* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1074
1075Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1076
e23194cb
EZ
1077GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1078debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1079supported.)
1080
1081* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1082
1083Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1084breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1085implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1086put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1087and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1088registers.
1089
1090The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1091debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1092watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1093
1094* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1095
1096New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1097the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1098
1099New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1100display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1101IDT.
1102
1103New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1104from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1105New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1106a given linear address.
1107
1108GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1109program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1110which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1111
1112DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1113
6c56c069
EZ
1114It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1115
e23194cb
EZ
1116* Changes in documentation.
1117
1118All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1119Documentation License.
1120
1121Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1122manual.
1123
1124TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1125
1126Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1127manual.
1128
1129The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1130documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1131hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1132
5d6640b1
AC
1133* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1134
1135The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1136``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1137contents of this file.
1138
1a1d8446
AC
1139* gdba.el deleted
1140
1141GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1142
9debab2f 1143*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1144
c63ce875
EZ
1145* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1146
1147Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1148programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1149displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1150greater level of detail.
1151
1152* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1153
1154It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1155bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1156on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1157written.
1158
1159* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1160
1161The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1162necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1163machines ``out of the box''.
1164
1165The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1166possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1167signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1168would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1169interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1170
1171It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1172standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1173even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1174and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1175terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1176
1177The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1178enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1179also works.
1180
1181DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1182GDB.
1183
1184It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1185directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1186times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1187breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1188
ed9a39eb
JM
1189* New native configurations
1190
1191ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1192PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1193
7a292a7a
SS
1194* New targets
1195
96baa820 1196Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1197x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1198PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1199TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1200
085dd6e6
JM
1201* OBSOLETE configurations
1202
1203Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1204Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1205Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1206ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1207Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1208
9debab2f
AC
1209Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1210but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1211these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1212be permanently REMOVED.
1213
5330533d
SS
1214* Gould support removed
1215
1216Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1217
bc9e5bbf
AC
1218* New features for SVR4
1219
1220On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1221without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1222load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1223
1224* Many C++ enhancements
1225
1226C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1227in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1228
adf40b2e
JM
1229* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1230
1231A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1232sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1233with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1234``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1235
1236 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1237 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1238
43e526b9
JM
1239* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1240
1241A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1242expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1243instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1244
1245The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1246added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1247
96baa820
JM
1248* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1249
1250The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1251``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1252include ``set remote P-packet''.
1253
11cf8741
JM
1254* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1255
1256The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1257accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1258``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1259
7876dd43
DB
1260* ``apropos'' command added.
1261
1262The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1263documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1264try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1265
bc9e5bbf
AC
1266* New MI interface
1267
1268A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1269interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1270process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1271"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1272enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1273
1274 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1275
c906108c
SS
1276*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1277
1278* New native configurations
1279
1280HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1281HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1282M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1283
1284* New targets
1285
1286Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1287Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1288Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1289
1290* OBSOLETE configurations
1291
1292Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1293
1294Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1295but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1296these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1297be permanently REMOVED.
1298
1299* ANSI/ISO C
1300
1301As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1302buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1303containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1304use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1305available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1306configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1307information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1308already.
1309
1310* Readline 2.2
1311
1312GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1313
1314* set extension-language
1315
1316You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1317languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1318you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1319 set extension-language .c c++
1320The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1321and their associated languages.
1322
1323* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1324
1325When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1326you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1327PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1328
1329 set processor NAME
1330
1331sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1332following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1333
1334 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1335 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1336 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1337 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1338 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1339 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1340 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1341 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1342 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1343 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1344 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1345
1346At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1347special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1348registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1349only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1350
1351* HP-UX support
1352
1353Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1354more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1355library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1356support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1357for xdb and dbx commands.
1358
1359* Catchpoints
1360
1361HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1362generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1363to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1364
1365This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1366argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1367output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1368
1369* Debugging across forks
1370
1371On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1372in the inferior.
1373
1374* TUI
1375
1376HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1377it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1378configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1379
1380* GDB remote protocol additions
1381
1382A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1383Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1384fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1385allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1386
1387For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1388full 64-bit address. The command
1389
1390 set remoteaddresssize 32
1391
1392can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1393the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1394will be discarded.
1395
1396In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1397command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1398
1399 maint packet heythere
1400
1401sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1402disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1403time.
1404
1405The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1406target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1407downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1408
1409* Tracing can collect general expressions
1410
1411You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1412further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1413doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1414
1415* mask-address variable for Mips
1416
1417For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1418a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1419of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1420
1421* Higher serial baud rates
1422
1423GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1424230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1425to achieve all of these rates.)
1426
1427* i960 simulator
1428
1429The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1430builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1431
1432
1433*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1434
1435* New native configurations
1436
1437Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1438Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1439Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1440PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1441PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1442Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1443Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1444
1445* New targets
1446
1447Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1448Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1449Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1450Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1451MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1452MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1453MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1454Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1455Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1456Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1457NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1458
1459* New debugging protocols
1460
1461ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1462M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1463DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1464PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1465PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1466Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1467
1468* DWARF 2
1469
1470All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1471format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1472information.
1473
1474* Java frontend
1475
1476GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1477only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1478
1479* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1480
1481For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1482loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1483locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1484
1485* Live range splitting
1486
1487GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1488range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1489more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1490
1491* Hurd support
1492
1493GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1494updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1495
1496* ARM Thumb support
1497
1498GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1499instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1500instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1501accordingly.
1502
1503* MIPS16 support
1504
1505GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1506instruction set.
1507
1508* Overlay support
1509
1510GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1511linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1512will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1513control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1514additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1515in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1516
1517* info symbol
1518
1519The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1520the symbol at the specified address.
1521
1522* Trace support
1523
1524The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1525asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1526extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1527includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1528file tracepoint.c for more details.
1529
1530* MIPS simulator
1531
1532Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1533by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1534of most MIPS variants.
1535
1536* Sparc simulator
1537
1538Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1539by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1540Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1541
1542* set architecture
1543
1544For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1545basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1546architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1547the possible architectures.
1548
1549*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1550
1551* New native configurations
1552
1553Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1554M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1555PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1556PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1557PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1558RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1559
1560* New targets
1561
1562ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1563I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1564MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1565MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1566PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1567Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1568Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1569
1570* PowerPC simulator
1571
1572The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1573contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1574PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1575basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1576performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1577
1578* Solaris 2.5
1579
1580GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1581
1582* Windows 95/NT native
1583
1584GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1585To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1586which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1587Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1588ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1589
1590* dont-repeat command
1591
1592If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1593command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1594useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1595extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1596
1597* Send break instead of ^C
1598
1599The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1600rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1601GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1602
1603* Remote protocol timeout
1604
1605The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1606that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1607to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1608
1609* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1610
1611By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1612loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1613stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1614when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1615in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1616
1617Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1618/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1619automatically on hpux10.
1620
1621* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1622
1623Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1624
1625* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1626
1627When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1628may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1629the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1630every character. The default value is 1050.
1631
1632* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1633
1634If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1635a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1636replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1637details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1638remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1639to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1640
1641* Speedups for remote debugging
1642
1643GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1644the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1645and more efficient S-record downloading.
1646
1647* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1648
1649GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1650Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1651
1652*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1653
1654* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1655
1656The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1657can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1658
1659* Remote targets use caching
1660
1661Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1662remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1663it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1664debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1665off' turns the the data cache off.
1666
1667* Remote targets may have threads
1668
1669The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1670in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1671gdb/remote.c for details.
1672
1673* NetROM support
1674
1675If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1676support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1677acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1678write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1679support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1680another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1681sequence is something like
1682
1683 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1684 load <prog>
1685 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1686
1687* Macintosh host
1688
1689GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1690may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1691it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1692available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1693device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1694directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1695scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1696mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1697
1698* Autoconf
1699
1700GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1701but does simplify configuration and building.
1702
1703* hpux10
1704
1705GDB now supports hpux10.
1706
1707*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1708
1709* New native configurations
1710
1711x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1712x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1713NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1714Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1715
1716* New targets
1717
1718A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1719HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1720CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1721PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1722WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1723
1724* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1725
1726GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1727possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1728filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1729the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1730if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1731
1732* Arguments to user-defined commands
1733
1734User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1735Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1736trivial example:
1737define adder
1738 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1739
1740To execute the command use:
1741adder 1 2 3
1742
1743Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1744Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1745use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1746
1747* New `if' and `while' commands
1748
1749This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1750commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1751expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1752execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1753terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1754`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1755if the expression is zero.
1756
1757* Fortran source language mode
1758
1759GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1760Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1761variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1762with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1763Fortran compilers.
1764
1765* Better HPUX support
1766
1767Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1768running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1769processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1770for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1771that behavior do the following before running the program:
1772
1773 adb -w a.out
1774 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1775 control-d
1776
1777This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1778To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1779
1780 adb -w a.out
1781 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1782 control-d
1783
1784You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1785the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1786external linkage.
1787
1788GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1789HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1790
1791* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1792
1793You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1794commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1795current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1796"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1797associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1798configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1799
1800* New DOS host serial code
1801
1802This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1803no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1804a PC's serial port.
1805
1806*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1807
1808* New "complete" command
1809
1810This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1811were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1812
1813* Trailing space optional in prompt
1814
1815"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1816allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1817
1818* Breakpoint hit counts
1819
1820"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1821has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1822can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1823to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1824less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1825that breakpoint.
1826
1827* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1828
1829"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1830an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1831arrays actually contain only short strings.
1832
1833* Shared library breakpoints
1834
1835In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1836breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1837
1838* Hardware watchpoints
1839
1840There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1841targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1842
55241689 1843Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1844
1845* Annotations
1846
1847Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1848and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1849
1850* Improved Irix 5 support
1851
1852GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1853
1854* Improved HPPA support
1855
1856GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1857
1858* New native configurations
1859
1860Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1861HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1862Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1863RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1864
1865* New targets
1866
1867OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1868MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1869Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1870
1871* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1872
1873There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1874This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1875
1876* Fixes
1877
1878As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1879and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1880
1881*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1882
1883* Irix 5 is now supported
1884
1885* HPPA support
1886
1887GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1888to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1889GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1890of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1891can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1892
1893
1894*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1895
1896* User visible changes:
1897
1898* Remote Debugging
1899
1900The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1901target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1902debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1903integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1904debugging info for the mips target).
1905
1906* DEC Alpha native support
1907
1908GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1909debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1910work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1911Alpha-specific notes.
1912
1913* Preliminary thread implementation
1914
1915GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1916
1917* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1918
1919This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1920to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1921for details).
1922
1923* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1924
1925This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1926mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1927call methods, ...etc.
1928
1929*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1930
1931 * User visible changes:
1932
1933Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1934supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1935other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1936somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1937
1938Filename completion now works.
1939
1940When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1941arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1942addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1943
1944All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1945vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1946should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1947your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1948to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1949
1950 * DEC alpha support
1951
1952This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1953cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1954
1955
1956*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1957
1958 * Testsuite
1959
1960This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1961The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1962via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1963
1964 * C++ demangling
1965
1966'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1967emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1968Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1969disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1970use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1971
1972 * Simulators
1973
1974GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1975So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1976Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1977
1978 * New targets supported
1979
1980H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1981H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1982SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1983Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1984IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1985
1986Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1987version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1988GO32 memory extender.
1989
1990 * New remote protocols
1991
1992MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1993
1994 * New source languages supported
1995
1996This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1997used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1998into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1999
2000
2001*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2002
2003 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2004
2005GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2006version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2007University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2008compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2009format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2010(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2011
2012Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2013
2014 * Faster and better demangling
2015
2016We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2017demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2018character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2019only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2020This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2021increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2022symbol lookups.
2023
2024`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2025from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2026compiler does not actually implement.
2027
2028 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2029
2030In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2031inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2032recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2033very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2034The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2035circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2036fix.
2037
2038The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2039release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2040
2041 * Improved configure script
2042
2043The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2044you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2045host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2046done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2047
2048We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2049version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2050`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2051The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2052only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2053We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2054
2055 * Documentation improvements
2056
2057There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2058produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2059before submitting changes.
2060
2061The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2062M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2063`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2064you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2065a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2066
2067*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2068We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2069been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2070or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2071`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2072around this problem.
2073
2074 * New features
2075
2076GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2077the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2078`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2079the target program.
2080
2081The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2082how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2083
2084 * New native hosts supported
2085
2086HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2087386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2088
2089 * New targets supported
2090
2091AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2092
2093 * New file formats supported
2094
2095BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2096HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2097
2098 * Major bug fixes
2099
2100Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2101
2102We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2103printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2104
2105We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2106for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2107release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2108
2109You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2110will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2111
2112We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2113for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2114especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2115libraries.
2116
2117The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2118information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2119command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2120any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2121when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2122
2123 * Internal improvements
2124
2125GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2126debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2127
2128GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2129Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2130symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2131contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2132shared code that handles any of them.
2133
2134 * New command line options
2135
2136We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2137
2138 * Mmalloc licensing
2139
2140The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2141General Public License.
2142
2143*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2144
2145 * Host/native/target split
2146
2147GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2148hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2149target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2150local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2151ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2152
2153The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2154GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2155is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2156code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2157any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2158built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2159handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2160
2161GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2162It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2163plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2164
2165 * New hosts supported
2166
2167HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2168386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2169386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2170
2171 * New targets supported
2172
2173Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
217468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2175
2176 * New native hosts supported
2177
2178386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2179 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2180386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2181
2182 * New file formats supported
2183
2184BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2185supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2186format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2187
2188 * New commands
2189
2190`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2191`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2192These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2193
2194`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2195
2196You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2197scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2198prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2199executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2200
2201 * C++ improvements
2202
2203We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2204info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2205symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2206
2207Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2208
2209 * Major bug fixes
2210
2211The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2212fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2213by the compiler.
2214
2215We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2216support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2217
2218John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2219slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2220that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2221purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2222the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2223mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2224
2225Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2226about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2227completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2228we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2229
2230 * AMD 29k support
2231
2232A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2233specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2234calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2235usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2236in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2237
2238We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2239Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2240of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2241resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2242
2243 * Remote interfaces
2244
2245We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2246with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2247message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2248This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2249needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2250breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2251each instruction being stepped through.
2252
2253The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2254registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2255
2256There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2257find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2258Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2259processor with a serial port.
2260
2261 * Configuration
2262
2263Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2264`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2265supported, and what files each one uses.
2266
2267 * Library changes
2268
2269There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2270disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2271Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2272disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2273
2274The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2275Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2276can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2277grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2278
2279 * Documentation
2280
2281The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2282reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2283as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2284encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2285system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2286bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2287
2288And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2289
2290
2291*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2292
2293 * Better support for C++ function names
2294
2295GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2296names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2297(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2298single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2299Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2300
2301GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2302the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2303You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2304lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2305for the list of formats.
2306
2307 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2308
2309Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2310C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2311directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2312can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2313usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2314about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2315this problem.)
2316
2317 * New 'maintenance' command
2318
2319All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2320the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2321can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2322
2323 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2324 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2325 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2326 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2327 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2328 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2329
2330The following commands are new:
2331
2332 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2333 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2334 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2335
2336 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2337
2338We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2339(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2340be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2341read after argv processing.
2342
2343 * New hosts supported
2344
2345Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2346
55241689 2347GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2348
2349We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2350is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2351for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2352masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2353fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2354It costs extra.
2355
2356 * New targets supported
2357
2358Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2359
2360 * More smarts about finding #include files
2361
2362GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2363all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2364greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2365especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2366the one that contains your sources.
2367
2368We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2369breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2370try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2371
2372 * Interesting infernals change
2373
2374GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2375section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2376target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2377stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2378
2379 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2380
2381There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2382 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2383 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2384
2385See the ChangeLog for details.
2386
2387*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2388
2389 * New machines supported (host and target)
2390
2391IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2392
2393SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2394
2395 * New malloc package
2396
2397GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2398Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2399capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2400This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2401pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2402more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2403
2404 * info proc
2405
2406The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2407'help info proc' for details.
2408
2409 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2410
2411The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2412Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2413possible.
2414
2415 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2416
2417Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2418support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2419conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2420environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2421that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2422in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2423
2424 * Cross byte order fixes
2425
2426Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2427targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2428
2429 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2430
2431If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2432system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2433`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2434program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2435called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2436Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2437and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2438the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2439option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2440starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2441
2442You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2443the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2444information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2445slower, but makes future operations faster.
2446
2447The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2448build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2449A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2450use is:
2451
2452 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2453
2454The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2455It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2456shared across multiple host platforms.
2457
2458 * longjmp() handling
2459
2460GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2461siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2462all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2463platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2464
2465 * Solaris 2.0
2466
2467Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2468this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2469reading symbols.
2470
2471 * Bug fixes
2472
2473As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2474People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2475crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2476
2477*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2478
2479 * New machines supported (host and target)
2480
2481SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2482 (except core files)
2483BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2484Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2485
2486 * New machines supported (target)
2487
2488AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2489
2490 * C++ support
2491
2492GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2493The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2494per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2495
2496GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2497`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2498extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2499good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2500will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2501released.
2502
2503 * New features for SVR4
2504
2505GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2506shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2507only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2508
2509The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2510on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2511it prints the address mappings of the process.
2512
2513If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2514bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2515
2516 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2517
2518Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2519now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2520skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2521make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2522same code linked statically.
2523
2524 * New Getopt
2525
2526GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2527version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2528continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2529Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2530added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2531future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2532
2533 * Bugs fixed
2534
2535The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2536Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2537See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2538
2539
2540*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2541
2542 * New machines supported (host and target)
2543
2544Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2545NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2546Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2547
2548 * Almost SCO Unix support
2549
2550We had hoped to support:
2551SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2552(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2553that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2554about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2555
2556 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2557
2558GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2559debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2560is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2561send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2562reqired (if any).
2563
2564 * New Readline
2565
2566GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2567is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2568required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2569
2570 * Bugs fixed
2571
2572The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2573Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2574See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2575
2576 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2577
2578GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2579supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2580symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2581
2582Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2583mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2584debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2585mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2586version 2.
2587
2588Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2589really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2590line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2591variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2592situation somewhat.
2593
2594When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2595However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2596methods.
2597
2598We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2599DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2600encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2601
2602
2603*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2604
2605 * Improved configuration
2606
2607Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2608Porting BFD is simpler.
2609
2610 * Stepping improved
2611
2612The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2613of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2614in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2615function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2616
2617 * Bug fixing
2618
2619Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2620
2621 * New host supported (not target)
2622
2623Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2624
2625
2626*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2627
2628 * Multiple source language support
2629
2630GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2631It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2632and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2633language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2634You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2635`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2636
2637 * GDB and Modula-2
2638
2639GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2640currently under development at the State University of New York at
2641Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2642continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2643
2644Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2645debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2646symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2647
2648There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2649in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2650
2651 * set write on/off
2652
2653GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2654a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2655the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2656by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2657effect immediately.
2658
2659 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2660
2661When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2662shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2663The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2664examining core files.
2665
2666 * set listsize
2667
2668You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2669The default is 10.
2670
2671 * New machines supported (host and target)
2672
2673SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2674Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2675Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2676
2677 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2678
2679IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2680
2681 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2682
2683AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2684AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2685Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2686
2687 * New remote interfaces
2688
2689AMD 29000 Adapt
2690AMD 29000 Minimon
2691
2692
2693*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2694
2695 * New Facilities
2696
2697Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2698
2699Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2700target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2701is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2702remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2703remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2704also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2705using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2706stub on the target system.
2707
2708New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2709
2710GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2711library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2712object file types such as a.out and coff.
2713
2714There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2715refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2716
2717
2718 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2719
2720All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2721by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2722
2723For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2724``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2725Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2726
2727What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2728print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2729will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2730all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2731
2732confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2733 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2734 it is already running. Default is ON.
2735
2736editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2737 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2738 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2739 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2740 Default is ON.
2741
2742history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2743 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2744 or the value of the environment variable
2745 GDBHISTFILE.
2746
2747history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2748 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2749 HISTSIZE.
2750
2751history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2752 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2753 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2754
2755history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2756 history expansion will be performed on
2757 command line input. The default is OFF.
2758
2759radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2760 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2761 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2762
2763height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2764 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2765 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2766 variable TERM.
2767
2768width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2769 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2770 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2771 variable TERM.
2772
2773Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2774``set width'' instead.
2775
2776print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2777 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2778 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2779 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2780
2781print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2782 is OFF.
2783
2784print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2785 "raw" form if off.
2786
2787print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2788 like instructions.
2789
2790print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2791
2792
2793 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2794
2795The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2796new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2797are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2798window.
2799
2800
2801 * Support for Shared Libraries
2802
2803GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2804Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2805before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2806happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2807At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2808from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2809shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2810It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2811
2812sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2813 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2814 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2815
2816info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2817
2818
2819 * Watchpoints
2820
2821A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2822expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2823tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2824quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2825problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2826more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2827
2828watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2829
2830info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2831
2832delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2833disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2834enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2835
2836
2837 * C++ multiple inheritance
2838
2839When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2840for C++ programs.
2841
2842 * C++ exception handling
2843
2844Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2845ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2846the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2847handler's context).
2848
2849catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2850 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2851 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2852
2853info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2854 current stack frame.
2855
2856
2857 * Minor command changes
2858
2859The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2860command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2861is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2862
2863The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2864at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2865frames without printing.
2866
2867 * New directory command
2868
2869'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2870The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2871about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2872with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2873find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2874
2875 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2876
2877For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2878for more details.
2879
2880GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2881two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2882Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2883where the program that you are debugging will run.
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