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[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 5.1:
5
6* New native configurations
7
8x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
9
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10* REMOVED configurations and files
11
12TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 13WDC 65816 w65-*-*
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14PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
15PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
16PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 17Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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18Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
19 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 20SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
e2caac18 21
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22* Changes to command line processing
23
24The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
25for the inferior from gdb's command line.
26
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27* Changes to key bindings
28
29There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
30
34f47bc4 31*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
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32
33* New native configurations
34
35Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
36x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2aa830e4 37MIPS Linux mips*-*-linux*
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38MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
39ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5769d3cd 40s390 and s390x Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 41
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42* New targets
43
def90278 44Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 45CRIS cris-axis
e23194cb 46UltraSparc running Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 47
17e78a56 48* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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49
50x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 51Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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52Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
53 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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54TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
55WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 56Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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57PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
58PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
59PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 60SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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61Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
62ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 63Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 64
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65stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
66kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
67
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68Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
69been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
70configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
71permanently REMOVED.
72
a196c81c 73* REMOVED configurations and files
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74
75Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
76Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
77Pyramid pyramid-*-*
78ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
79Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 80ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 81
6d6b80e5 82* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 83
6d6b80e5 84GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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85sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
86present.
87
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88* Other news:
89
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90* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
91
92* The MI enabled by default.
93
94The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
95revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
96engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
97using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
98which is now deprecated.
99
100* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
101
102GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
103main features are supported:
104
105 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
106
107 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
108 extension;
109
110 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
111
112 - a Pascal expression parser.
113
114However, some important features are not yet supported.
115
116 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
117
118 - there are some problems with boolean types;
119
120 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
121 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
122
123 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
124
125 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
126
127* Changes in completion.
128
129Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
130to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
131users expect at the shell prompt.
132
133Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
134`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
135program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
136files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
137be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
138considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
139name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
140
141`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
142
143* New platform-independent commands:
144
145It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
146hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
147documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
148
149* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
150
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151Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
152revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
153many threads as your system allows you to have.
154
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155Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
156
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157Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
158multi-threaded programs though.
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159
160* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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161
162Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
163
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164GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
165debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
166supported.)
167
168* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
169
170Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
171breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
172implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
173put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
174and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
175registers.
176
177The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
178debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
179watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
180
181* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
182
183New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
184the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
185
186New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
187display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
188IDT.
189
190New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
191from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
192New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
193a given linear address.
194
195GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
196program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
197which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
198
199DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
200
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201It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
202
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203* Changes in documentation.
204
205All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
206Documentation License.
207
208Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
209manual.
210
211TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
212
213Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
214manual.
215
216The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
217documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
218hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
219
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220* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
221
222The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
223``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
224contents of this file.
225
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226* gdba.el deleted
227
228GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 229
9debab2f 230*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 231
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232* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
233
234Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
235programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
236displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
237greater level of detail.
238
239* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
240
241It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
242bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
243on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
244written.
245
246* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
247
248The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
249necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
250machines ``out of the box''.
251
252The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
253possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
254signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
255would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
256interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
257
258It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
259standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
260even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
261and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
262terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
263
264The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
265enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
266also works.
267
268DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
269GDB.
270
271It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
272directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
273times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
274breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
275
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276* New native configurations
277
278ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 279PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 280
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281* New targets
282
96baa820 283Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
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284x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
285PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
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286TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
287
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288* OBSOLETE configurations
289
290Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
291Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 292Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 293ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 294Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 295
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296Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
297but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
298these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
299be permanently REMOVED.
300
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301* Gould support removed
302
303Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
304
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305* New features for SVR4
306
307On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
308without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
309load symbols from the running process's executable file.
310
311* Many C++ enhancements
312
313C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
314in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
315
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316* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
317
318A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
319sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
320with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
321``|<program> <args>'' vis:
322
323 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
324 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
325
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326* MIPS 64 remote protocol
327
328A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
329expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
330instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
331
332The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
333added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
334
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335* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
336
337The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
338``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
339include ``set remote P-packet''.
340
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341* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
342
343The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
344accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
345``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
346
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347* ``apropos'' command added.
348
349The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
350documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
351try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
352
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353* New MI interface
354
355A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
356interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
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357process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
358"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
359enabled by configuring with:
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360
361 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
362
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363*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
364
365* New native configurations
366
367HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
368HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
369M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
370
371* New targets
372
373Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
374Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
375Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
376
377* OBSOLETE configurations
378
379Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
380
381Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
382but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
383these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
384be permanently REMOVED.
385
386* ANSI/ISO C
387
388As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
389buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
390containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
391use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
392available. If this is not true, please report the affected
393configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
394information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
395already.
396
397* Readline 2.2
398
399GDB now uses readline 2.2.
400
401* set extension-language
402
403You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
404languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
405you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
406 set extension-language .c c++
407The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
408and their associated languages.
409
410* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
411
412When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
413you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
414PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
415
416 set processor NAME
417
418sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
419following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
420
421 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
422 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
423 403 IBM PowerPC 403
424 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
425 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
426 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
427 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
428 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
429 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
430 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
431 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
432
433At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
434special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
435registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
436only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
437
438* HP-UX support
439
440Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
441more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
442library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
443support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
444for xdb and dbx commands.
445
446* Catchpoints
447
448HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
449generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
450to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
451
452This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
453argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
454output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
455
456* Debugging across forks
457
458On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
459in the inferior.
460
461* TUI
462
463HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
464it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
465configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
466
467* GDB remote protocol additions
468
469A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
470Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
471fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
472allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
473
474For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
475full 64-bit address. The command
476
477 set remoteaddresssize 32
478
479can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
480the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
481will be discarded.
482
483In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
484command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
485
486 maint packet heythere
487
488sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
489disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
490time.
491
492The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
493target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
494downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
495
496* Tracing can collect general expressions
497
498You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
499further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
500doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
501
502* mask-address variable for Mips
503
504For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
505a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
506of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
507
508* Higher serial baud rates
509
510GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
511230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
512to achieve all of these rates.)
513
514* i960 simulator
515
516The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
517builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
518
519
520*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
521
522* New native configurations
523
524Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
525Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
526Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
527PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
528PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
529Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
530Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
531
532* New targets
533
534Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
535Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
536Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
537Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
538MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
539MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
540MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
541Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
542Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
543Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
544NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
545
546* New debugging protocols
547
548ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
549M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
550DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
551PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
552PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
553Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
554
555* DWARF 2
556
557All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
558format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
559information.
560
561* Java frontend
562
563GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
564only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
565
566* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
567
568For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
569loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
570locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
571
572* Live range splitting
573
574GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
575range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
576more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
577
578* Hurd support
579
580GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
581updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
582
583* ARM Thumb support
584
585GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
586instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
587instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
588accordingly.
589
590* MIPS16 support
591
592GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
593instruction set.
594
595* Overlay support
596
597GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
598linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
599will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
600control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
601additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
602in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
603
604* info symbol
605
606The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
607the symbol at the specified address.
608
609* Trace support
610
611The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
612asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
613extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
614includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
615file tracepoint.c for more details.
616
617* MIPS simulator
618
619Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
620by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
621of most MIPS variants.
622
623* Sparc simulator
624
625Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
626by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
627Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
628
629* set architecture
630
631For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
632basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
633architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
634the possible architectures.
635
636*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
637
638* New native configurations
639
640Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
641M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
642PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
643PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
644PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
645RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
646
647* New targets
648
649ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
650I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
651MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
652MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
653PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
654Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
655Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
656
657* PowerPC simulator
658
659The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
660contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
661PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
662basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
663performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
664
665* Solaris 2.5
666
667GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
668
669* Windows 95/NT native
670
671GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
672To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
673which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
674Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
675ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
676
677* dont-repeat command
678
679If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
680command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
681useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
682extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
683
684* Send break instead of ^C
685
686The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
687rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
688GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
689
690* Remote protocol timeout
691
692The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
693that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
694to read from the target. The default value is 2.
695
696* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
697
698By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
699loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
700stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
701when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
702in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
703
704Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
705/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
706automatically on hpux10.
707
708* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
709
710Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
711
712* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
713
714When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
715may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
716the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
717every character. The default value is 1050.
718
719* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
720
721If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
722a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
723replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
724details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
725remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
726to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
727
728* Speedups for remote debugging
729
730GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
731the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
732and more efficient S-record downloading.
733
734* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
735
736GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
737Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
738
739*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
740
741* Psymtabs for XCOFF
742
743The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
744can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
745
746* Remote targets use caching
747
748Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
749remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
750it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
751debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
752off' turns the the data cache off.
753
754* Remote targets may have threads
755
756The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
757in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
758gdb/remote.c for details.
759
760* NetROM support
761
762If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
763support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
764acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
765write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
766support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
767another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
768sequence is something like
769
770 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
771 load <prog>
772 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
773
774* Macintosh host
775
776GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
777may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
778it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
779available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
780device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
781directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
782scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
783mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
784
785* Autoconf
786
787GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
788but does simplify configuration and building.
789
790* hpux10
791
792GDB now supports hpux10.
793
794*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
795
796* New native configurations
797
798x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
799x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
800NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
801Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
802
803* New targets
804
805A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
806HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
807CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
808PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
809WDC 65816 w65-*-*
810
811* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
812
813GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
814possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
815filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
816the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
817if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
818
819* Arguments to user-defined commands
820
821User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
822Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
823trivial example:
824define adder
825 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
826
827To execute the command use:
828adder 1 2 3
829
830Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
831Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
832use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
833
834* New `if' and `while' commands
835
836This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
837commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
838expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
839execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
840terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
841`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
842if the expression is zero.
843
844* Fortran source language mode
845
846GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
847Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
848variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
849with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
850Fortran compilers.
851
852* Better HPUX support
853
854Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
855running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
856processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
857for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
858that behavior do the following before running the program:
859
860 adb -w a.out
861 __dld_flags?W 0x5
862 control-d
863
864This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
865To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
866
867 adb -w a.out
868 __dld_flags?W 0x4
869 control-d
870
871You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
872the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
873external linkage.
874
875GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
876HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
877
878* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
879
880You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
881commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
882current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
883"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
884associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
885configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
886
887* New DOS host serial code
888
889This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
890no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
891a PC's serial port.
892
893*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
894
895* New "complete" command
896
897This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
898were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
899
900* Trailing space optional in prompt
901
902"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
903allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
904
905* Breakpoint hit counts
906
907"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
908has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
909can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
910to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
911less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
912that breakpoint.
913
914* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
915
916"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
917an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
918arrays actually contain only short strings.
919
920* Shared library breakpoints
921
922In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
923breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
924
925* Hardware watchpoints
926
927There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
928targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
929
930Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
931
932* Annotations
933
934Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
935and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
936
937* Improved Irix 5 support
938
939GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
940
941* Improved HPPA support
942
943GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
944
945* New native configurations
946
947Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
948HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
949Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
950RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
951
952* New targets
953
954OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
955MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
956Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
957
958* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
959
960There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
961This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
962
963* Fixes
964
965As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
966and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
967
968*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
969
970* Irix 5 is now supported
971
972* HPPA support
973
974GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
975to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
976GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
977of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
978can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
979
980
981*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
982
983* User visible changes:
984
985* Remote Debugging
986
987The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
988target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
989debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
990integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
991debugging info for the mips target).
992
993* DEC Alpha native support
994
995GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
996debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
997work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
998Alpha-specific notes.
999
1000* Preliminary thread implementation
1001
1002GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1003
1004* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1005
1006This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1007to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1008for details).
1009
1010* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1011
1012This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1013mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1014call methods, ...etc.
1015
1016*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1017
1018 * User visible changes:
1019
1020Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1021supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1022other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1023somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1024
1025Filename completion now works.
1026
1027When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1028arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1029addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1030
1031All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1032vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1033should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1034your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1035to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1036
1037 * DEC alpha support
1038
1039This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1040cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1041
1042
1043*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1044
1045 * Testsuite
1046
1047This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1048The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1049via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1050
1051 * C++ demangling
1052
1053'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1054emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1055Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1056disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1057use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1058
1059 * Simulators
1060
1061GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1062So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1063Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1064
1065 * New targets supported
1066
1067H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1068H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1069SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1070Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1071IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1072
1073Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1074version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1075GO32 memory extender.
1076
1077 * New remote protocols
1078
1079MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1080
1081 * New source languages supported
1082
1083This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1084used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1085into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1086
1087
1088*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1089
1090 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1091
1092GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1093version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1094University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1095compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1096format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1097(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1098
1099Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1100
1101 * Faster and better demangling
1102
1103We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1104demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1105character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1106only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1107This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1108increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1109symbol lookups.
1110
1111`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1112from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1113compiler does not actually implement.
1114
1115 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1116
1117In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1118inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1119recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1120very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1121The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1122circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1123fix.
1124
1125The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1126release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1127
1128 * Improved configure script
1129
1130The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1131you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1132host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1133done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1134
1135We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1136version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1137`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1138The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1139only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1140We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1141
1142 * Documentation improvements
1143
1144There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1145produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1146before submitting changes.
1147
1148The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1149M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1150`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1151you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1152a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1153
1154*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1155We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1156been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1157or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1158`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1159around this problem.
1160
1161 * New features
1162
1163GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1164the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1165`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1166the target program.
1167
1168The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1169how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1170
1171 * New native hosts supported
1172
1173HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1174386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1175
1176 * New targets supported
1177
1178AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1179
1180 * New file formats supported
1181
1182BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1183HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1184
1185 * Major bug fixes
1186
1187Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1188
1189We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1190printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1191
1192We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1193for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1194release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1195
1196You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1197will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1198
1199We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1200for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1201especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1202libraries.
1203
1204The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1205information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1206command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1207any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1208when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1209
1210 * Internal improvements
1211
1212GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1213debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1214
1215GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1216Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1217symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1218contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1219shared code that handles any of them.
1220
1221 * New command line options
1222
1223We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1224
1225 * Mmalloc licensing
1226
1227The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1228General Public License.
1229
1230*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1231
1232 * Host/native/target split
1233
1234GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1235hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1236target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1237local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1238ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1239
1240The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1241GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1242is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1243code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1244any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1245built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1246handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1247
1248GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1249It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1250plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1251
1252 * New hosts supported
1253
1254HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1255386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1256386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1257
1258 * New targets supported
1259
1260Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
126168030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1262
1263 * New native hosts supported
1264
1265386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1266 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1267386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1268
1269 * New file formats supported
1270
1271BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1272supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1273format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1274
1275 * New commands
1276
1277`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1278`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1279These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1280
1281`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1282
1283You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1284scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1285prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1286executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1287
1288 * C++ improvements
1289
1290We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1291info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1292symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1293
1294Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1295
1296 * Major bug fixes
1297
1298The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1299fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1300by the compiler.
1301
1302We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1303support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1304
1305John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1306slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1307that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1308purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1309the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1310mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1311
1312Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1313about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1314completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1315we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1316
1317 * AMD 29k support
1318
1319A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1320specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1321calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1322usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1323in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1324
1325We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1326Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1327of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1328resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1329
1330 * Remote interfaces
1331
1332We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1333with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1334message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1335This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1336needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1337breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1338each instruction being stepped through.
1339
1340The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1341registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1342
1343There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1344find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1345Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1346processor with a serial port.
1347
1348 * Configuration
1349
1350Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1351`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1352supported, and what files each one uses.
1353
1354 * Library changes
1355
1356There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1357disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1358Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1359disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1360
1361The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1362Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1363can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1364grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1365
1366 * Documentation
1367
1368The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1369reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1370as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1371encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1372system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1373bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1374
1375And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1376
1377
1378*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1379
1380 * Better support for C++ function names
1381
1382GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1383names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1384(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1385single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1386Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1387
1388GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1389the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1390You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1391lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1392for the list of formats.
1393
1394 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1395
1396Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1397C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1398directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1399can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1400usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1401about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1402this problem.)
1403
1404 * New 'maintenance' command
1405
1406All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1407the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1408can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1409
1410 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1411 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1412 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1413 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1414 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1415 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1416
1417The following commands are new:
1418
1419 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1420 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1421 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1422
1423 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1424
1425We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1426(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1427be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1428read after argv processing.
1429
1430 * New hosts supported
1431
1432Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1433
1434Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1435
1436We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1437is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1438for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1439masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1440fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1441It costs extra.
1442
1443 * New targets supported
1444
1445Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1446
1447 * More smarts about finding #include files
1448
1449GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1450all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1451greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1452especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1453the one that contains your sources.
1454
1455We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1456breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1457try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1458
1459 * Interesting infernals change
1460
1461GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1462section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1463target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1464stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1465
1466 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1467
1468There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1469 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1470 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1471
1472See the ChangeLog for details.
1473
1474*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1475
1476 * New machines supported (host and target)
1477
1478IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1479
1480SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1481
1482 * New malloc package
1483
1484GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1485Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1486capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1487This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1488pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1489more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1490
1491 * info proc
1492
1493The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1494'help info proc' for details.
1495
1496 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1497
1498The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1499Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1500possible.
1501
1502 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1503
1504Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1505support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1506conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1507environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1508that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1509in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1510
1511 * Cross byte order fixes
1512
1513Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1514targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1515
1516 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1517
1518If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1519system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1520`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1521program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1522called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1523Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1524and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1525the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1526option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1527starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1528
1529You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1530the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1531information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1532slower, but makes future operations faster.
1533
1534The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1535build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1536A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1537use is:
1538
1539 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1540
1541The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1542It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1543shared across multiple host platforms.
1544
1545 * longjmp() handling
1546
1547GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1548siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1549all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1550platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1551
1552 * Solaris 2.0
1553
1554Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1555this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1556reading symbols.
1557
1558 * Bug fixes
1559
1560As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1561People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1562crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1563
1564*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1565
1566 * New machines supported (host and target)
1567
1568SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1569 (except core files)
1570BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1571Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1572
1573 * New machines supported (target)
1574
1575AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1576
1577 * C++ support
1578
1579GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1580The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1581per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1582
1583GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1584`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1585extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1586good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1587will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1588released.
1589
1590 * New features for SVR4
1591
1592GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1593shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1594only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1595
1596The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1597on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1598it prints the address mappings of the process.
1599
1600If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1601bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1602
1603 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1604
1605Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1606now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1607skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1608make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1609same code linked statically.
1610
1611 * New Getopt
1612
1613GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1614version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1615continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1616Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1617added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1618future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1619
1620 * Bugs fixed
1621
1622The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1623Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1624See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1625
1626
1627*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1628
1629 * New machines supported (host and target)
1630
1631Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1632NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1633Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1634
1635 * Almost SCO Unix support
1636
1637We had hoped to support:
1638SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1639(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1640that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1641about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1642
1643 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1644
1645GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1646debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1647is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1648send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1649reqired (if any).
1650
1651 * New Readline
1652
1653GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1654is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1655required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1656
1657 * Bugs fixed
1658
1659The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1660Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1661See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1662
1663 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1664
1665GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1666supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1667symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1668
1669Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1670mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1671debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1672mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1673version 2.
1674
1675Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1676really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1677line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1678variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1679situation somewhat.
1680
1681When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1682However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1683methods.
1684
1685We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1686DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1687encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1688
1689
1690*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1691
1692 * Improved configuration
1693
1694Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1695Porting BFD is simpler.
1696
1697 * Stepping improved
1698
1699The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1700of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1701in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1702function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1703
1704 * Bug fixing
1705
1706Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1707
1708 * New host supported (not target)
1709
1710Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1711
1712
1713*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1714
1715 * Multiple source language support
1716
1717GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1718It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1719and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1720language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1721You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1722`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1723
1724 * GDB and Modula-2
1725
1726GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1727currently under development at the State University of New York at
1728Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1729continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1730
1731Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1732debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1733symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1734
1735There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1736in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1737
1738 * set write on/off
1739
1740GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1741a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1742the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1743by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1744effect immediately.
1745
1746 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1747
1748When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1749shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1750The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1751examining core files.
1752
1753 * set listsize
1754
1755You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1756The default is 10.
1757
1758 * New machines supported (host and target)
1759
1760SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1761Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1762Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1763
1764 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1765
1766IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1767
1768 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1769
1770AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1771AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1772Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1773
1774 * New remote interfaces
1775
1776AMD 29000 Adapt
1777AMD 29000 Minimon
1778
1779
1780*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1781
1782 * New Facilities
1783
1784Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1785
1786Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1787target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1788is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1789remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1790remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1791also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1792using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1793stub on the target system.
1794
1795New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1796
1797GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1798library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1799object file types such as a.out and coff.
1800
1801There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1802refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1803
1804
1805 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1806
1807All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1808by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1809
1810For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1811``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1812Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1813
1814What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1815print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1816will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1817all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1818
1819confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1820 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1821 it is already running. Default is ON.
1822
1823editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1824 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1825 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1826 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1827 Default is ON.
1828
1829history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1830 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1831 or the value of the environment variable
1832 GDBHISTFILE.
1833
1834history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1835 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1836 HISTSIZE.
1837
1838history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1839 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1840 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1841
1842history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1843 history expansion will be performed on
1844 command line input. The default is OFF.
1845
1846radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1847 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1848 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1849
1850height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1851 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1852 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1853 variable TERM.
1854
1855width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1856 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1857 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1858 variable TERM.
1859
1860Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1861``set width'' instead.
1862
1863print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1864 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1865 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1866 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1867
1868print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1869 is OFF.
1870
1871print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1872 "raw" form if off.
1873
1874print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1875 like instructions.
1876
1877print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1878
1879
1880 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1881
1882The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1883new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1884are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1885window.
1886
1887
1888 * Support for Shared Libraries
1889
1890GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1891Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1892before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1893happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1894At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1895from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1896shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1897It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1898
1899sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1900 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1901 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1902
1903info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1904
1905
1906 * Watchpoints
1907
1908A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1909expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1910tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1911quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1912problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1913more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1914
1915watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1916
1917info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1918
1919delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1920disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1921enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1922
1923
1924 * C++ multiple inheritance
1925
1926When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1927for C++ programs.
1928
1929 * C++ exception handling
1930
1931Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1932ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1933the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1934handler's context).
1935
1936catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1937 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1938 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1939
1940info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1941 current stack frame.
1942
1943
1944 * Minor command changes
1945
1946The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1947command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1948is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1949
1950The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1951at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1952frames without printing.
1953
1954 * New directory command
1955
1956'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1957The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1958about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1959with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1960find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1961
1962 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1963
1964For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1965for more details.
1966
1967GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1968two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1969Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1970where the program that you are debugging will run.
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