* stack.c (print_frame_info): Restore call to annotate_frame_begin
[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 5.3:
5
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6* Profiling support
7
8A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
9be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
10session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
11"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
12data, for more informative profiling results.
13
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14* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
15
16The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
17option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
18"mi1", can be enabled by sepcifying the option "-i=mi1".
19
20Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
21removed.
22
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23Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
24Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
25Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
26 in a subsequent -var-update.
27
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28* OBSOLETE configurations and files
29
30Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
31been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
32configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
33permanently REMOVED.
34
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35* REMOVED configurations and files
36
37V850EA ISA
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38Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
39IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
40i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
41i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
42i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
43HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
44 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
45 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
46Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
47Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
48Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
49OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
50I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 51
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52* MIPS $fp behavior changed
53
54The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
55the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
56context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
57address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
58The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
59
299ffc64 60*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 61
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62* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
63
64When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
65`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
66in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
67library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
68shared libs like mad''.
69
b9d14705 70* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 71
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72Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
73the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
74arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
75powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 76
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77* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
78
79GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
80and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
81they expand.
82
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83The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
84invocations in expression, and shows the result.
85
86The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
87macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
88
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89Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
90information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
91your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
92information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
93
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94* Multi-arched targets.
95
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96DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
97DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 98NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 99National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
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100Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
101Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 102
cd9bfe15 103* New targets.
e33ce519 104
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105Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
106
e33ce519 107
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108* New native configurations
109
110Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 111SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 112MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 113UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 114
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115* OBSOLETE configurations and files
116
117Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
118been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
119configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
120permanently REMOVED.
121
92eb23c5 122Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 123OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 124IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 125Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 126Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 127Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
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128i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
129i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
130i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
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131HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
132 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
133 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 134I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 135
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136* OBSOLETE languages
137
138CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
139
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140* REMOVED configurations and files
141
142AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
143A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
144AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
145AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
146AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
147
148testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
149
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150* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
151
152This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
153commands. The default is 1024.
154
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155* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
156
157Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
158
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159* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
160
161These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
162to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
163from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 164
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165* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
166
167The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
168including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
169of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
170
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171*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
172
173* New targets.
174
175Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
176
177* Bug fixes
178
179gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
180mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
181Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
182
183gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
184dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
185Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
186
187Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
188Surprisingly enough, it works now.
189By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
190
191i386 hardware watchpoint support:
192avoid misses on second run for some targets.
193By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
194
37057839 195*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 196
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197* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
198
199This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
200really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
201In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
202target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
203This can be a significant performance improvement on some
204(notably embedded) targets.
205
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206* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
207
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208This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
209process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
210GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
211hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 212
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213* New command line option
214
215GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
216
217* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
218
219There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
220command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
221a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
222be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
223open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
224issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
225a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
226it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
227GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
228is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
229
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230* Changes in ARM configurations.
231
232Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
233configuration is fully multi-arch.
234
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235* New native configurations
236
fe419ffc 237ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 238x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 239AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 240Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 241
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242* New targets
243
244Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
245
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246* OBSOLETE configurations and files
247
248Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
249been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
250configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
251permanently REMOVED.
252
253AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
254A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
255AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
256AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
257AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
258
b4ceaee6 259testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 260
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261* REMOVED configurations and files
262
263TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 264WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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265PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
266PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
267PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 268Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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269Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
270 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 271SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 272Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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273Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
274ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 275Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 276
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277* Changes to command line processing
278
279The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
280for the inferior from gdb's command line.
281
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282* Changes to key bindings
283
284There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
285
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286*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
287
288Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
289
290Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
291corrupted.
292
293Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
294
295Numerous documentation fixes.
296
297Numerous testsuite fixes.
298
34f47bc4 299*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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300
301* New native configurations
302
303Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
304x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 305MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
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306MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
307ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 308s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 309
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310* New targets
311
def90278 312Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 313CRIS cris-axis
55241689 314UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 315
17e78a56 316* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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317
318x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 319Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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320Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
321 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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322TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
323WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 324Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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325PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
326PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
327PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 328SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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329Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
330ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 331Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 332
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333stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
334kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
335
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336Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
337been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
338configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
339permanently REMOVED.
340
a196c81c 341* REMOVED configurations and files
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342
343Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
344Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
345Pyramid pyramid-*-*
346ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
347Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 348ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 349
6d6b80e5 350* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 351
6d6b80e5 352GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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353sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
354present.
355
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356* Other news:
357
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358* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
359
360* The MI enabled by default.
361
362The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
363revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
364engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
365using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
366which is now deprecated.
367
368* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
369
370GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
371main features are supported:
372
373 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
374
375 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
376 extension;
377
378 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
379
380 - a Pascal expression parser.
381
382However, some important features are not yet supported.
383
384 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
385
386 - there are some problems with boolean types;
387
388 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
389 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
390
391 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
392
393 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
394
395* Changes in completion.
396
397Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
398to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
399users expect at the shell prompt.
400
401Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
402`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
403program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
404files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
405be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
406considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
407name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
408
409`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
410
411* New platform-independent commands:
412
413It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
414hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
415documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
416
417* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
418
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419Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
420revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
421many threads as your system allows you to have.
422
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423Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
424
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425Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
426multi-threaded programs though.
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427
428* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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429
430Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
431
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432GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
433debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
434supported.)
435
436* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
437
438Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
439breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
440implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
441put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
442and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
443registers.
444
445The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
446debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
447watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
448
449* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
450
451New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
452the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
453
454New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
455display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
456IDT.
457
458New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
459from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
460New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
461a given linear address.
462
463GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
464program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
465which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
466
467DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
468
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469It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
470
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471* Changes in documentation.
472
473All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
474Documentation License.
475
476Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
477manual.
478
479TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
480
481Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
482manual.
483
484The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
485documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
486hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
487
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488* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
489
490The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
491``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
492contents of this file.
493
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494* gdba.el deleted
495
496GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 497
9debab2f 498*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 499
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500* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
501
502Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
503programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
504displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
505greater level of detail.
506
507* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
508
509It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
510bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
511on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
512written.
513
514* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
515
516The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
517necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
518machines ``out of the box''.
519
520The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
521possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
522signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
523would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
524interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
525
526It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
527standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
528even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
529and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
530terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
531
532The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
533enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
534also works.
535
536DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
537GDB.
538
539It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
540directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
541times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
542breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
543
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544* New native configurations
545
546ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 547PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 548
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549* New targets
550
96baa820 551Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
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552x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
553PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
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554TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
555
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556* OBSOLETE configurations
557
558Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
559Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 560Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 561ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 562Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 563
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564Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
565but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
566these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
567be permanently REMOVED.
568
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569* Gould support removed
570
571Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
572
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573* New features for SVR4
574
575On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
576without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
577load symbols from the running process's executable file.
578
579* Many C++ enhancements
580
581C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
582in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
583
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584* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
585
586A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
587sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
588with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
589``|<program> <args>'' vis:
590
591 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
592 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
593
43e526b9
JM
594* MIPS 64 remote protocol
595
596A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
597expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
598instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
599
600The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
601added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
602
96baa820
JM
603* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
604
605The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
606``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
607include ``set remote P-packet''.
608
11cf8741
JM
609* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
610
611The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
612accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
613``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
614
7876dd43
DB
615* ``apropos'' command added.
616
617The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
618documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
619try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
620
bc9e5bbf
AC
621* New MI interface
622
623A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
624interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
625process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
626"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
627enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
628
629 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
630
c906108c
SS
631*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
632
633* New native configurations
634
635HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
636HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 637M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
638
639* New targets
640
641Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
642Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
643Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
644
645* OBSOLETE configurations
646
647Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
648
649Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
650but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
651these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
652be permanently REMOVED.
653
654* ANSI/ISO C
655
656As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
657buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
658containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
659use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
660available. If this is not true, please report the affected
661configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
662information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
663already.
664
665* Readline 2.2
666
667GDB now uses readline 2.2.
668
669* set extension-language
670
671You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
672languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
673you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
674 set extension-language .c c++
675The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
676and their associated languages.
677
678* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
679
680When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
681you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
682PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
683
684 set processor NAME
685
686sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
687following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
688
689 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
690 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
691 403 IBM PowerPC 403
692 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
693 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
694 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
695 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
696 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
697 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
698 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
699 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
700
701At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
702special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
703registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
704only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
705
706* HP-UX support
707
708Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
709more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
710library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
711support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
712for xdb and dbx commands.
713
714* Catchpoints
715
716HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
717generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
718to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
719
720This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
721argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
722output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
723
724* Debugging across forks
725
726On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
727in the inferior.
728
729* TUI
730
731HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
732it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
733configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
734
735* GDB remote protocol additions
736
737A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
738Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
739fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
740allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
741
742For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
743full 64-bit address. The command
744
745 set remoteaddresssize 32
746
747can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
748the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
749will be discarded.
750
751In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
752command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
753
754 maint packet heythere
755
756sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
757disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
758time.
759
760The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
761target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
762downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
763
764* Tracing can collect general expressions
765
766You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
767further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
768doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
769
770* mask-address variable for Mips
771
772For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
773a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
774of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
775
776* Higher serial baud rates
777
778GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
779230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
780to achieve all of these rates.)
781
782* i960 simulator
783
784The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
785builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
786
787
788*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
789
790* New native configurations
791
792Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
793Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
794Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
795PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
796PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
797Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
798Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
799
800* New targets
801
802Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
803Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
804Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
805Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
806MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
807MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
808MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
809Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
810Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
811Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
812NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
813
814* New debugging protocols
815
816ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
817M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
818DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
819PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
820PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
821Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
822
823* DWARF 2
824
825All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
826format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
827information.
828
829* Java frontend
830
831GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
832only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
833
834* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
835
836For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
837loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
838locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
839
840* Live range splitting
841
842GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
843range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
844more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
845
846* Hurd support
847
848GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
849updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
850
851* ARM Thumb support
852
853GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
854instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
855instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
856accordingly.
857
858* MIPS16 support
859
860GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
861instruction set.
862
863* Overlay support
864
865GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
866linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
867will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
868control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
869additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
870in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
871
872* info symbol
873
874The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
875the symbol at the specified address.
876
877* Trace support
878
879The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
880asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
881extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
882includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
883file tracepoint.c for more details.
884
885* MIPS simulator
886
887Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
888by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
889of most MIPS variants.
890
891* Sparc simulator
892
893Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
894by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
895Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
896
897* set architecture
898
899For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
900basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
901architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
902the possible architectures.
903
904*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
905
906* New native configurations
907
908Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
909M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
910PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
911PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
912PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
913RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
914
915* New targets
916
917ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
918I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
919MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
920MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
921PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
922Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
923Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
924
925* PowerPC simulator
926
927The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
928contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
929PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
930basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
931performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
932
933* Solaris 2.5
934
935GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
936
937* Windows 95/NT native
938
939GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
940To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
941which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
942Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
943ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
944
945* dont-repeat command
946
947If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
948command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
949useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
950extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
951
952* Send break instead of ^C
953
954The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
955rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
956GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
957
958* Remote protocol timeout
959
960The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
961that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
962to read from the target. The default value is 2.
963
964* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
965
966By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
967loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
968stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
969when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
970in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
971
972Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
973/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
974automatically on hpux10.
975
976* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
977
978Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
979
980* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
981
982When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
983may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
984the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
985every character. The default value is 1050.
986
987* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
988
989If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
990a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
991replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
992details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
993remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
994to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
995
996* Speedups for remote debugging
997
998GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
999the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1000and more efficient S-record downloading.
1001
1002* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1003
1004GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1005Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1006
1007*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1008
1009* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1010
1011The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1012can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1013
1014* Remote targets use caching
1015
1016Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1017remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1018it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1019debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1020off' turns the the data cache off.
1021
1022* Remote targets may have threads
1023
1024The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1025in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1026gdb/remote.c for details.
1027
1028* NetROM support
1029
1030If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1031support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1032acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1033write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1034support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1035another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1036sequence is something like
1037
1038 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1039 load <prog>
1040 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1041
1042* Macintosh host
1043
1044GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1045may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1046it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1047available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1048device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1049directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1050scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1051mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1052
1053* Autoconf
1054
1055GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1056but does simplify configuration and building.
1057
1058* hpux10
1059
1060GDB now supports hpux10.
1061
1062*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1063
1064* New native configurations
1065
1066x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1067x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1068NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1069Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1070
1071* New targets
1072
1073A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1074HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1075CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1076PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1077WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1078
1079* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1080
1081GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1082possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1083filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1084the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1085if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1086
1087* Arguments to user-defined commands
1088
1089User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1090Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1091trivial example:
1092define adder
1093 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1094
1095To execute the command use:
1096adder 1 2 3
1097
1098Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1099Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1100use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1101
1102* New `if' and `while' commands
1103
1104This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1105commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1106expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1107execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1108terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1109`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1110if the expression is zero.
1111
1112* Fortran source language mode
1113
1114GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1115Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1116variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1117with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1118Fortran compilers.
1119
1120* Better HPUX support
1121
1122Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1123running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1124processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1125for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1126that behavior do the following before running the program:
1127
1128 adb -w a.out
1129 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1130 control-d
1131
1132This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1133To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1134
1135 adb -w a.out
1136 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1137 control-d
1138
1139You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1140the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1141external linkage.
1142
1143GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1144HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1145
1146* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1147
1148You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1149commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1150current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1151"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1152associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1153configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1154
1155* New DOS host serial code
1156
1157This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1158no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1159a PC's serial port.
1160
1161*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1162
1163* New "complete" command
1164
1165This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1166were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1167
1168* Trailing space optional in prompt
1169
1170"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1171allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1172
1173* Breakpoint hit counts
1174
1175"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1176has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1177can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1178to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1179less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1180that breakpoint.
1181
1182* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1183
1184"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1185an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1186arrays actually contain only short strings.
1187
1188* Shared library breakpoints
1189
1190In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1191breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1192
1193* Hardware watchpoints
1194
1195There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1196targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1197
55241689 1198Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1199
1200* Annotations
1201
1202Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1203and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1204
1205* Improved Irix 5 support
1206
1207GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1208
1209* Improved HPPA support
1210
1211GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1212
1213* New native configurations
1214
1215Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1216HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1217Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1218RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1219
1220* New targets
1221
1222OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1223MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1224Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1225
1226* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1227
1228There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1229This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1230
1231* Fixes
1232
1233As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1234and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1235
1236*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1237
1238* Irix 5 is now supported
1239
1240* HPPA support
1241
1242GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1243to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1244GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1245of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1246can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1247
1248
1249*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1250
1251* User visible changes:
1252
1253* Remote Debugging
1254
1255The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1256target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1257debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1258integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1259debugging info for the mips target).
1260
1261* DEC Alpha native support
1262
1263GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1264debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1265work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1266Alpha-specific notes.
1267
1268* Preliminary thread implementation
1269
1270GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1271
1272* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1273
1274This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1275to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1276for details).
1277
1278* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1279
1280This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1281mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1282call methods, ...etc.
1283
1284*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1285
1286 * User visible changes:
1287
1288Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1289supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1290other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1291somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1292
1293Filename completion now works.
1294
1295When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1296arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1297addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1298
1299All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1300vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1301should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1302your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1303to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1304
1305 * DEC alpha support
1306
1307This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1308cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1309
1310
1311*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1312
1313 * Testsuite
1314
1315This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1316The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1317via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1318
1319 * C++ demangling
1320
1321'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1322emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1323Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1324disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1325use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1326
1327 * Simulators
1328
1329GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1330So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1331Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1332
1333 * New targets supported
1334
1335H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1336H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1337SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1338Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1339IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1340
1341Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1342version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1343GO32 memory extender.
1344
1345 * New remote protocols
1346
1347MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1348
1349 * New source languages supported
1350
1351This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1352used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1353into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1354
1355
1356*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1357
1358 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1359
1360GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1361version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1362University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1363compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1364format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1365(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1366
1367Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1368
1369 * Faster and better demangling
1370
1371We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1372demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1373character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1374only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1375This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1376increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1377symbol lookups.
1378
1379`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1380from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1381compiler does not actually implement.
1382
1383 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1384
1385In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1386inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1387recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1388very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1389The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1390circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1391fix.
1392
1393The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1394release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1395
1396 * Improved configure script
1397
1398The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1399you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1400host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1401done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1402
1403We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1404version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1405`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1406The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1407only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1408We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1409
1410 * Documentation improvements
1411
1412There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1413produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1414before submitting changes.
1415
1416The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1417M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1418`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1419you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1420a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1421
1422*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1423We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1424been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1425or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1426`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1427around this problem.
1428
1429 * New features
1430
1431GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1432the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1433`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1434the target program.
1435
1436The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1437how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1438
1439 * New native hosts supported
1440
1441HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1442386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1443
1444 * New targets supported
1445
1446AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1447
1448 * New file formats supported
1449
1450BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1451HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1452
1453 * Major bug fixes
1454
1455Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1456
1457We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1458printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1459
1460We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1461for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1462release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1463
1464You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1465will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1466
1467We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1468for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1469especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1470libraries.
1471
1472The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1473information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1474command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1475any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1476when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1477
1478 * Internal improvements
1479
1480GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1481debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1482
1483GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1484Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1485symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1486contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1487shared code that handles any of them.
1488
1489 * New command line options
1490
1491We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1492
1493 * Mmalloc licensing
1494
1495The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1496General Public License.
1497
1498*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1499
1500 * Host/native/target split
1501
1502GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1503hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1504target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1505local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1506ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1507
1508The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1509GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1510is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1511code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1512any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1513built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1514handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1515
1516GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1517It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1518plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1519
1520 * New hosts supported
1521
1522HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1523386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1524386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1525
1526 * New targets supported
1527
1528Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
152968030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1530
1531 * New native hosts supported
1532
1533386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1534 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1535386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1536
1537 * New file formats supported
1538
1539BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1540supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1541format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1542
1543 * New commands
1544
1545`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1546`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1547These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1548
1549`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1550
1551You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1552scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1553prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1554executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1555
1556 * C++ improvements
1557
1558We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1559info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1560symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1561
1562Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1563
1564 * Major bug fixes
1565
1566The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1567fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1568by the compiler.
1569
1570We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1571support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1572
1573John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1574slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1575that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1576purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1577the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1578mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1579
1580Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1581about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1582completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1583we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1584
1585 * AMD 29k support
1586
1587A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1588specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1589calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1590usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1591in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1592
1593We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1594Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1595of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1596resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1597
1598 * Remote interfaces
1599
1600We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1601with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1602message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1603This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1604needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1605breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1606each instruction being stepped through.
1607
1608The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1609registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1610
1611There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1612find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1613Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1614processor with a serial port.
1615
1616 * Configuration
1617
1618Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1619`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1620supported, and what files each one uses.
1621
1622 * Library changes
1623
1624There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1625disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1626Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1627disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1628
1629The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1630Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1631can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1632grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1633
1634 * Documentation
1635
1636The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1637reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1638as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1639encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1640system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1641bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1642
1643And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1644
1645
1646*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1647
1648 * Better support for C++ function names
1649
1650GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1651names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1652(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1653single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1654Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1655
1656GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1657the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1658You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1659lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1660for the list of formats.
1661
1662 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1663
1664Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1665C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1666directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1667can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1668usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1669about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1670this problem.)
1671
1672 * New 'maintenance' command
1673
1674All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1675the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1676can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1677
1678 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1679 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1680 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1681 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1682 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1683 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1684
1685The following commands are new:
1686
1687 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1688 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1689 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1690
1691 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1692
1693We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1694(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1695be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1696read after argv processing.
1697
1698 * New hosts supported
1699
1700Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1701
55241689 1702GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
1703
1704We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1705is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1706for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1707masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1708fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1709It costs extra.
1710
1711 * New targets supported
1712
1713Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1714
1715 * More smarts about finding #include files
1716
1717GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1718all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1719greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1720especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1721the one that contains your sources.
1722
1723We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1724breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1725try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1726
1727 * Interesting infernals change
1728
1729GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1730section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1731target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1732stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1733
1734 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1735
1736There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1737 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1738 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1739
1740See the ChangeLog for details.
1741
1742*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1743
1744 * New machines supported (host and target)
1745
1746IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1747
1748SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1749
1750 * New malloc package
1751
1752GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1753Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1754capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1755This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1756pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1757more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1758
1759 * info proc
1760
1761The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1762'help info proc' for details.
1763
1764 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1765
1766The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1767Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1768possible.
1769
1770 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1771
1772Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1773support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1774conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1775environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1776that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1777in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1778
1779 * Cross byte order fixes
1780
1781Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1782targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1783
1784 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1785
1786If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1787system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1788`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1789program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1790called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1791Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1792and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1793the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1794option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1795starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1796
1797You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1798the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1799information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1800slower, but makes future operations faster.
1801
1802The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1803build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1804A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1805use is:
1806
1807 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1808
1809The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1810It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1811shared across multiple host platforms.
1812
1813 * longjmp() handling
1814
1815GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1816siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1817all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1818platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1819
1820 * Solaris 2.0
1821
1822Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1823this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1824reading symbols.
1825
1826 * Bug fixes
1827
1828As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1829People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1830crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1831
1832*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1833
1834 * New machines supported (host and target)
1835
1836SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1837 (except core files)
1838BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1839Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1840
1841 * New machines supported (target)
1842
1843AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1844
1845 * C++ support
1846
1847GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1848The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1849per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1850
1851GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1852`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1853extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1854good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1855will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1856released.
1857
1858 * New features for SVR4
1859
1860GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1861shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1862only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1863
1864The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1865on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1866it prints the address mappings of the process.
1867
1868If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1869bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1870
1871 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1872
1873Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1874now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1875skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1876make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1877same code linked statically.
1878
1879 * New Getopt
1880
1881GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1882version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1883continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1884Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1885added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1886future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1887
1888 * Bugs fixed
1889
1890The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1891Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1892See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1893
1894
1895*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1896
1897 * New machines supported (host and target)
1898
1899Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1900NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1901Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1902
1903 * Almost SCO Unix support
1904
1905We had hoped to support:
1906SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1907(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1908that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1909about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1910
1911 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1912
1913GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1914debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1915is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1916send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1917reqired (if any).
1918
1919 * New Readline
1920
1921GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1922is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1923required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1924
1925 * Bugs fixed
1926
1927The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1928Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1929See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1930
1931 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1932
1933GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1934supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1935symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1936
1937Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1938mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1939debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1940mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1941version 2.
1942
1943Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1944really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1945line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1946variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1947situation somewhat.
1948
1949When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1950However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1951methods.
1952
1953We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1954DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1955encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1956
1957
1958*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1959
1960 * Improved configuration
1961
1962Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1963Porting BFD is simpler.
1964
1965 * Stepping improved
1966
1967The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1968of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1969in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1970function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1971
1972 * Bug fixing
1973
1974Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1975
1976 * New host supported (not target)
1977
1978Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1979
1980
1981*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1982
1983 * Multiple source language support
1984
1985GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1986It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1987and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1988language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1989You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1990`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1991
1992 * GDB and Modula-2
1993
1994GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1995currently under development at the State University of New York at
1996Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1997continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1998
1999Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2000debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2001symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2002
2003There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2004in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2005
2006 * set write on/off
2007
2008GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2009a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2010the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2011by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2012effect immediately.
2013
2014 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2015
2016When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2017shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2018The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2019examining core files.
2020
2021 * set listsize
2022
2023You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2024The default is 10.
2025
2026 * New machines supported (host and target)
2027
2028SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2029Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2030Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2031
2032 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2033
2034IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2035
2036 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2037
2038AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2039AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2040Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2041
2042 * New remote interfaces
2043
2044AMD 29000 Adapt
2045AMD 29000 Minimon
2046
2047
2048*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2049
2050 * New Facilities
2051
2052Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2053
2054Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2055target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2056is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2057remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2058remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2059also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2060using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2061stub on the target system.
2062
2063New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2064
2065GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2066library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2067object file types such as a.out and coff.
2068
2069There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2070refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2071
2072
2073 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2074
2075All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2076by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2077
2078For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2079``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2080Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2081
2082What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2083print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2084will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2085all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2086
2087confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2088 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2089 it is already running. Default is ON.
2090
2091editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2092 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2093 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2094 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2095 Default is ON.
2096
2097history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2098 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2099 or the value of the environment variable
2100 GDBHISTFILE.
2101
2102history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2103 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2104 HISTSIZE.
2105
2106history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2107 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2108 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2109
2110history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2111 history expansion will be performed on
2112 command line input. The default is OFF.
2113
2114radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2115 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2116 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2117
2118height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2119 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2120 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2121 variable TERM.
2122
2123width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2124 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2125 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2126 variable TERM.
2127
2128Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2129``set width'' instead.
2130
2131print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2132 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2133 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2134 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2135
2136print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2137 is OFF.
2138
2139print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2140 "raw" form if off.
2141
2142print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2143 like instructions.
2144
2145print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2146
2147
2148 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2149
2150The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2151new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2152are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2153window.
2154
2155
2156 * Support for Shared Libraries
2157
2158GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2159Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2160before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2161happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2162At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2163from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2164shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2165It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2166
2167sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2168 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2169 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2170
2171info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2172
2173
2174 * Watchpoints
2175
2176A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2177expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2178tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2179quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2180problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2181more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2182
2183watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2184
2185info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2186
2187delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2188disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2189enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2190
2191
2192 * C++ multiple inheritance
2193
2194When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2195for C++ programs.
2196
2197 * C++ exception handling
2198
2199Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2200ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2201the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2202handler's context).
2203
2204catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2205 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2206 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2207
2208info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2209 current stack frame.
2210
2211
2212 * Minor command changes
2213
2214The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2215command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2216is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2217
2218The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2219at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2220frames without printing.
2221
2222 * New directory command
2223
2224'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2225The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2226about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2227with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2228find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2229
2230 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2231
2232For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2233for more details.
2234
2235GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2236two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2237Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2238where the program that you are debugging will run.
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