2001-10-30 Michael Snyder <msnyder@redhat.com>
[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 5.0:
5
6* New native configurations
7
8Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
9x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
2aa830e4 10MIPS Linux mips*-*-linux*
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11MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
12ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5769d3cd 13s390 and s390x Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 14
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15* New targets
16
def90278 17Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 18CRIS cris-axis
e23194cb 19UltraSparc running Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 20
17e78a56 21* OBSOLETE configurations and files
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22
23x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 24Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
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25Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
26 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
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27TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
28WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 29Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
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30PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
31PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
32PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 33SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
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34Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
35ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 36Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 37
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38stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
39kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
40
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41Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
42been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
43configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
44permanently REMOVED.
45
a196c81c 46* REMOVED configurations and files
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47
48Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
49Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
50Pyramid pyramid-*-*
51ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
52Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 53ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 54
6d6b80e5 55* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 56
6d6b80e5 57GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
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58sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
59present.
60
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61* Other news:
62
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63* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
64
65* The MI enabled by default.
66
67The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
68revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
69engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
70using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
71which is now deprecated.
72
73* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
74
75GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
76main features are supported:
77
78 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
79
80 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
81 extension;
82
83 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
84
85 - a Pascal expression parser.
86
87However, some important features are not yet supported.
88
89 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
90
91 - there are some problems with boolean types;
92
93 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
94 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
95
96 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
97
98 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
99
100* Changes in completion.
101
102Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
103to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
104users expect at the shell prompt.
105
106Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
107`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
108program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
109files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
110be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
111considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
112name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
113
114`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
115
116* New platform-independent commands:
117
118It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
119hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
120documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
121
122* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
123
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124Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
125revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
126many threads as your system allows you to have.
127
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128Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
129
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130Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
131multi-threaded programs though.
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132
133* Changes in MIPS configurations.
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134
135Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
136
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137GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
138debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
139supported.)
140
141* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
142
143Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
144breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
145implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
146put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
147and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
148registers.
149
150The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
151debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
152watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
153
154* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
155
156New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
157the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
158
159New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
160display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
161IDT.
162
163New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
164from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
165New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
166a given linear address.
167
168GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
169program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
170which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
171
172DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
173
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174It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
175
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176* Changes in documentation.
177
178All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
179Documentation License.
180
181Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
182manual.
183
184TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
185
186Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
187manual.
188
189The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
190documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
191hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
192
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193* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
194
195The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
196``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
197contents of this file.
198
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199* gdba.el deleted
200
201GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 202
9debab2f 203*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 204
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205* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
206
207Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
208programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
209displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
210greater level of detail.
211
212* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
213
214It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
215bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
216on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
217written.
218
219* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
220
221The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
222necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
223machines ``out of the box''.
224
225The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
226possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
227signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
228would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
229interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
230
231It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
232standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
233even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
234and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
235terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
236
237The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
238enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
239also works.
240
241DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
242GDB.
243
244It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
245directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
246times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
247breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
248
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249* New native configurations
250
251ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 252PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 253
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254* New targets
255
96baa820 256Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
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257x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
258PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
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259TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
260
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261* OBSOLETE configurations
262
263Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
264Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 265Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 266ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 267Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 268
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269Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
270but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
271these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
272be permanently REMOVED.
273
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274* Gould support removed
275
276Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
277
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278* New features for SVR4
279
280On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
281without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
282load symbols from the running process's executable file.
283
284* Many C++ enhancements
285
286C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
287in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
288
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289* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
290
291A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
292sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
293with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
294``|<program> <args>'' vis:
295
296 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
297 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
298
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299* MIPS 64 remote protocol
300
301A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
302expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
303instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
304
305The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
306added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
307
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308* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
309
310The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
311``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
312include ``set remote P-packet''.
313
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314* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
315
316The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
317accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
318``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
319
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320* ``apropos'' command added.
321
322The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
323documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
324try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
325
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326* New MI interface
327
328A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
329interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
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330process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
331"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
332enabled by configuring with:
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333
334 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
335
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336*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
337
338* New native configurations
339
340HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
341HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
342M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
343
344* New targets
345
346Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
347Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
348Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
349
350* OBSOLETE configurations
351
352Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
353
354Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
355but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
356these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
357be permanently REMOVED.
358
359* ANSI/ISO C
360
361As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
362buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
363containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
364use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
365available. If this is not true, please report the affected
366configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
367information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
368already.
369
370* Readline 2.2
371
372GDB now uses readline 2.2.
373
374* set extension-language
375
376You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
377languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
378you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
379 set extension-language .c c++
380The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
381and their associated languages.
382
383* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
384
385When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
386you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
387PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
388
389 set processor NAME
390
391sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
392following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
393
394 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
395 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
396 403 IBM PowerPC 403
397 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
398 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
399 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
400 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
401 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
402 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
403 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
404 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
405
406At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
407special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
408registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
409only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
410
411* HP-UX support
412
413Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
414more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
415library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
416support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
417for xdb and dbx commands.
418
419* Catchpoints
420
421HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
422generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
423to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
424
425This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
426argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
427output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
428
429* Debugging across forks
430
431On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
432in the inferior.
433
434* TUI
435
436HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
437it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
438configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
439
440* GDB remote protocol additions
441
442A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
443Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
444fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
445allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
446
447For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
448full 64-bit address. The command
449
450 set remoteaddresssize 32
451
452can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
453the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
454will be discarded.
455
456In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
457command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
458
459 maint packet heythere
460
461sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
462disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
463time.
464
465The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
466target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
467downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
468
469* Tracing can collect general expressions
470
471You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
472further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
473doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
474
475* mask-address variable for Mips
476
477For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
478a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
479of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
480
481* Higher serial baud rates
482
483GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
484230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
485to achieve all of these rates.)
486
487* i960 simulator
488
489The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
490builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
491
492
493*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
494
495* New native configurations
496
497Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
498Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
499Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
500PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
501PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
502Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
503Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
504
505* New targets
506
507Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
508Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
509Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
510Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
511MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
512MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
513MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
514Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
515Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
516Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
517NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
518
519* New debugging protocols
520
521ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
522M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
523DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
524PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
525PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
526Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
527
528* DWARF 2
529
530All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
531format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
532information.
533
534* Java frontend
535
536GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
537only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
538
539* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
540
541For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
542loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
543locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
544
545* Live range splitting
546
547GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
548range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
549more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
550
551* Hurd support
552
553GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
554updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
555
556* ARM Thumb support
557
558GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
559instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
560instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
561accordingly.
562
563* MIPS16 support
564
565GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
566instruction set.
567
568* Overlay support
569
570GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
571linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
572will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
573control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
574additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
575in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
576
577* info symbol
578
579The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
580the symbol at the specified address.
581
582* Trace support
583
584The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
585asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
586extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
587includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
588file tracepoint.c for more details.
589
590* MIPS simulator
591
592Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
593by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
594of most MIPS variants.
595
596* Sparc simulator
597
598Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
599by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
600Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
601
602* set architecture
603
604For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
605basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
606architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
607the possible architectures.
608
609*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
610
611* New native configurations
612
613Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
614M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
615PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
616PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
617PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
618RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
619
620* New targets
621
622ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
623I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
624MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
625MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
626PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
627Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
628Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
629
630* PowerPC simulator
631
632The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
633contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
634PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
635basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
636performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
637
638* Solaris 2.5
639
640GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
641
642* Windows 95/NT native
643
644GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
645To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
646which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
647Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
648ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
649
650* dont-repeat command
651
652If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
653command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
654useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
655extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
656
657* Send break instead of ^C
658
659The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
660rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
661GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
662
663* Remote protocol timeout
664
665The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
666that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
667to read from the target. The default value is 2.
668
669* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
670
671By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
672loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
673stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
674when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
675in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
676
677Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
678/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
679automatically on hpux10.
680
681* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
682
683Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
684
685* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
686
687When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
688may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
689the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
690every character. The default value is 1050.
691
692* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
693
694If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
695a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
696replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
697details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
698remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
699to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
700
701* Speedups for remote debugging
702
703GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
704the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
705and more efficient S-record downloading.
706
707* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
708
709GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
710Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
711
712*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
713
714* Psymtabs for XCOFF
715
716The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
717can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
718
719* Remote targets use caching
720
721Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
722remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
723it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
724debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
725off' turns the the data cache off.
726
727* Remote targets may have threads
728
729The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
730in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
731gdb/remote.c for details.
732
733* NetROM support
734
735If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
736support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
737acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
738write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
739support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
740another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
741sequence is something like
742
743 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
744 load <prog>
745 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
746
747* Macintosh host
748
749GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
750may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
751it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
752available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
753device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
754directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
755scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
756mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
757
758* Autoconf
759
760GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
761but does simplify configuration and building.
762
763* hpux10
764
765GDB now supports hpux10.
766
767*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
768
769* New native configurations
770
771x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
772x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
773NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
774Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
775
776* New targets
777
778A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
779HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
780CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
781PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
782WDC 65816 w65-*-*
783
784* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
785
786GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
787possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
788filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
789the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
790if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
791
792* Arguments to user-defined commands
793
794User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
795Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
796trivial example:
797define adder
798 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
799
800To execute the command use:
801adder 1 2 3
802
803Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
804Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
805use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
806
807* New `if' and `while' commands
808
809This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
810commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
811expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
812execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
813terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
814`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
815if the expression is zero.
816
817* Fortran source language mode
818
819GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
820Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
821variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
822with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
823Fortran compilers.
824
825* Better HPUX support
826
827Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
828running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
829processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
830for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
831that behavior do the following before running the program:
832
833 adb -w a.out
834 __dld_flags?W 0x5
835 control-d
836
837This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
838To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
839
840 adb -w a.out
841 __dld_flags?W 0x4
842 control-d
843
844You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
845the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
846external linkage.
847
848GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
849HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
850
851* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
852
853You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
854commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
855current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
856"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
857associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
858configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
859
860* New DOS host serial code
861
862This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
863no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
864a PC's serial port.
865
866*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
867
868* New "complete" command
869
870This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
871were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
872
873* Trailing space optional in prompt
874
875"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
876allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
877
878* Breakpoint hit counts
879
880"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
881has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
882can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
883to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
884less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
885that breakpoint.
886
887* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
888
889"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
890an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
891arrays actually contain only short strings.
892
893* Shared library breakpoints
894
895In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
896breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
897
898* Hardware watchpoints
899
900There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
901targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
902
903Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
904
905* Annotations
906
907Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
908and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
909
910* Improved Irix 5 support
911
912GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
913
914* Improved HPPA support
915
916GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
917
918* New native configurations
919
920Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
921HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
922Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
923RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
924
925* New targets
926
927OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
928MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
929Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
930
931* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
932
933There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
934This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
935
936* Fixes
937
938As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
939and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
940
941*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
942
943* Irix 5 is now supported
944
945* HPPA support
946
947GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
948to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
949GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
950of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
951can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
952
953
954*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
955
956* User visible changes:
957
958* Remote Debugging
959
960The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
961target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
962debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
963integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
964debugging info for the mips target).
965
966* DEC Alpha native support
967
968GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
969debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
970work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
971Alpha-specific notes.
972
973* Preliminary thread implementation
974
975GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
976
977* LynxOS native and target support for 386
978
979This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
980to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
981for details).
982
983* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
984
985This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
986mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
987call methods, ...etc.
988
989*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
990
991 * User visible changes:
992
993Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
994supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
995other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
996somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
997
998Filename completion now works.
999
1000When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1001arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1002addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1003
1004All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1005vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1006should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1007your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1008to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1009
1010 * DEC alpha support
1011
1012This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1013cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1014
1015
1016*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1017
1018 * Testsuite
1019
1020This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1021The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1022via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1023
1024 * C++ demangling
1025
1026'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1027emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1028Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1029disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1030use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1031
1032 * Simulators
1033
1034GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1035So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1036Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1037
1038 * New targets supported
1039
1040H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1041H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1042SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1043Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1044IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1045
1046Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1047version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1048GO32 memory extender.
1049
1050 * New remote protocols
1051
1052MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1053
1054 * New source languages supported
1055
1056This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1057used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1058into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1059
1060
1061*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1062
1063 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1064
1065GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1066version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1067University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1068compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1069format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1070(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1071
1072Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1073
1074 * Faster and better demangling
1075
1076We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1077demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1078character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1079only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1080This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1081increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1082symbol lookups.
1083
1084`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1085from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1086compiler does not actually implement.
1087
1088 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1089
1090In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1091inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1092recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1093very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1094The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1095circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1096fix.
1097
1098The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1099release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1100
1101 * Improved configure script
1102
1103The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1104you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1105host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1106done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1107
1108We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1109version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1110`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1111The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1112only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1113We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1114
1115 * Documentation improvements
1116
1117There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1118produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1119before submitting changes.
1120
1121The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1122M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1123`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1124you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1125a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1126
1127*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1128We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1129been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1130or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1131`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1132around this problem.
1133
1134 * New features
1135
1136GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1137the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1138`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1139the target program.
1140
1141The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1142how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1143
1144 * New native hosts supported
1145
1146HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1147386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1148
1149 * New targets supported
1150
1151AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1152
1153 * New file formats supported
1154
1155BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1156HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1157
1158 * Major bug fixes
1159
1160Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1161
1162We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1163printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1164
1165We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1166for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1167release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1168
1169You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1170will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1171
1172We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1173for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1174especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1175libraries.
1176
1177The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1178information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1179command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1180any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1181when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1182
1183 * Internal improvements
1184
1185GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1186debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1187
1188GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1189Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1190symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1191contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1192shared code that handles any of them.
1193
1194 * New command line options
1195
1196We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1197
1198 * Mmalloc licensing
1199
1200The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1201General Public License.
1202
1203*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1204
1205 * Host/native/target split
1206
1207GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1208hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1209target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1210local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1211ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1212
1213The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1214GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1215is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1216code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1217any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1218built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1219handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1220
1221GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1222It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1223plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1224
1225 * New hosts supported
1226
1227HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1228386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1229386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1230
1231 * New targets supported
1232
1233Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
123468030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1235
1236 * New native hosts supported
1237
1238386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1239 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1240386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1241
1242 * New file formats supported
1243
1244BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1245supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1246format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1247
1248 * New commands
1249
1250`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1251`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1252These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1253
1254`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1255
1256You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1257scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1258prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1259executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1260
1261 * C++ improvements
1262
1263We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1264info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1265symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1266
1267Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1268
1269 * Major bug fixes
1270
1271The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1272fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1273by the compiler.
1274
1275We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1276support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1277
1278John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1279slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1280that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1281purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1282the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1283mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1284
1285Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1286about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1287completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1288we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1289
1290 * AMD 29k support
1291
1292A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1293specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1294calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1295usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1296in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1297
1298We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1299Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1300of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1301resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1302
1303 * Remote interfaces
1304
1305We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1306with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1307message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1308This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1309needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1310breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1311each instruction being stepped through.
1312
1313The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1314registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1315
1316There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1317find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1318Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1319processor with a serial port.
1320
1321 * Configuration
1322
1323Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1324`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1325supported, and what files each one uses.
1326
1327 * Library changes
1328
1329There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1330disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1331Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1332disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1333
1334The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1335Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1336can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1337grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1338
1339 * Documentation
1340
1341The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1342reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1343as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1344encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1345system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1346bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1347
1348And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1349
1350
1351*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1352
1353 * Better support for C++ function names
1354
1355GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1356names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1357(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1358single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1359Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1360
1361GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1362the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1363You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1364lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1365for the list of formats.
1366
1367 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1368
1369Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1370C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1371directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1372can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1373usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1374about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1375this problem.)
1376
1377 * New 'maintenance' command
1378
1379All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1380the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1381can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1382
1383 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1384 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1385 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1386 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1387 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1388 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1389
1390The following commands are new:
1391
1392 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1393 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1394 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1395
1396 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1397
1398We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1399(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1400be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1401read after argv processing.
1402
1403 * New hosts supported
1404
1405Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1406
1407Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1408
1409We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1410is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1411for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1412masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1413fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1414It costs extra.
1415
1416 * New targets supported
1417
1418Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1419
1420 * More smarts about finding #include files
1421
1422GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1423all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1424greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1425especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1426the one that contains your sources.
1427
1428We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1429breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1430try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1431
1432 * Interesting infernals change
1433
1434GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1435section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1436target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1437stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1438
1439 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1440
1441There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1442 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1443 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1444
1445See the ChangeLog for details.
1446
1447*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1448
1449 * New machines supported (host and target)
1450
1451IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1452
1453SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1454
1455 * New malloc package
1456
1457GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1458Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1459capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1460This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1461pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1462more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1463
1464 * info proc
1465
1466The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1467'help info proc' for details.
1468
1469 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1470
1471The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1472Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1473possible.
1474
1475 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1476
1477Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1478support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1479conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1480environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1481that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1482in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1483
1484 * Cross byte order fixes
1485
1486Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1487targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1488
1489 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1490
1491If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1492system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1493`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1494program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1495called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1496Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1497and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1498the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1499option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1500starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1501
1502You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1503the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1504information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1505slower, but makes future operations faster.
1506
1507The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1508build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1509A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1510use is:
1511
1512 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1513
1514The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1515It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1516shared across multiple host platforms.
1517
1518 * longjmp() handling
1519
1520GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1521siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1522all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1523platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1524
1525 * Solaris 2.0
1526
1527Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1528this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1529reading symbols.
1530
1531 * Bug fixes
1532
1533As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1534People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1535crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1536
1537*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1538
1539 * New machines supported (host and target)
1540
1541SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1542 (except core files)
1543BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1544Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1545
1546 * New machines supported (target)
1547
1548AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1549
1550 * C++ support
1551
1552GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1553The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1554per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1555
1556GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1557`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1558extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1559good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1560will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1561released.
1562
1563 * New features for SVR4
1564
1565GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1566shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1567only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1568
1569The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1570on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1571it prints the address mappings of the process.
1572
1573If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1574bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1575
1576 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1577
1578Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1579now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1580skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1581make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1582same code linked statically.
1583
1584 * New Getopt
1585
1586GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1587version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1588continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1589Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1590added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1591future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1592
1593 * Bugs fixed
1594
1595The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1596Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1597See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1598
1599
1600*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1601
1602 * New machines supported (host and target)
1603
1604Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1605NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1606Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1607
1608 * Almost SCO Unix support
1609
1610We had hoped to support:
1611SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1612(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1613that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1614about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1615
1616 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1617
1618GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1619debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1620is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1621send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1622reqired (if any).
1623
1624 * New Readline
1625
1626GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1627is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1628required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1629
1630 * Bugs fixed
1631
1632The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1633Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1634See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1635
1636 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1637
1638GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1639supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1640symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1641
1642Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1643mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1644debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1645mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1646version 2.
1647
1648Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1649really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1650line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1651variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1652situation somewhat.
1653
1654When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1655However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1656methods.
1657
1658We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1659DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1660encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1661
1662
1663*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1664
1665 * Improved configuration
1666
1667Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1668Porting BFD is simpler.
1669
1670 * Stepping improved
1671
1672The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1673of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1674in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1675function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1676
1677 * Bug fixing
1678
1679Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1680
1681 * New host supported (not target)
1682
1683Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1684
1685
1686*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1687
1688 * Multiple source language support
1689
1690GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1691It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1692and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1693language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1694You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1695`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1696
1697 * GDB and Modula-2
1698
1699GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1700currently under development at the State University of New York at
1701Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1702continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1703
1704Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1705debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1706symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1707
1708There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1709in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1710
1711 * set write on/off
1712
1713GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1714a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1715the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1716by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1717effect immediately.
1718
1719 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1720
1721When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1722shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1723The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1724examining core files.
1725
1726 * set listsize
1727
1728You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1729The default is 10.
1730
1731 * New machines supported (host and target)
1732
1733SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1734Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1735Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1736
1737 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1738
1739IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1740
1741 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1742
1743AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1744AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1745Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1746
1747 * New remote interfaces
1748
1749AMD 29000 Adapt
1750AMD 29000 Minimon
1751
1752
1753*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1754
1755 * New Facilities
1756
1757Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1758
1759Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1760target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1761is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1762remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1763remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1764also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1765using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1766stub on the target system.
1767
1768New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1769
1770GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1771library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1772object file types such as a.out and coff.
1773
1774There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1775refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1776
1777
1778 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1779
1780All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1781by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1782
1783For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1784``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1785Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1786
1787What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1788print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1789will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1790all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1791
1792confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1793 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1794 it is already running. Default is ON.
1795
1796editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1797 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1798 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1799 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1800 Default is ON.
1801
1802history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1803 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1804 or the value of the environment variable
1805 GDBHISTFILE.
1806
1807history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1808 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1809 HISTSIZE.
1810
1811history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1812 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1813 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1814
1815history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1816 history expansion will be performed on
1817 command line input. The default is OFF.
1818
1819radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1820 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1821 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1822
1823height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1824 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1825 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1826 variable TERM.
1827
1828width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1829 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1830 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1831 variable TERM.
1832
1833Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1834``set width'' instead.
1835
1836print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1837 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1838 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1839 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1840
1841print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1842 is OFF.
1843
1844print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1845 "raw" form if off.
1846
1847print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1848 like instructions.
1849
1850print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1851
1852
1853 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1854
1855The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1856new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1857are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1858window.
1859
1860
1861 * Support for Shared Libraries
1862
1863GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1864Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1865before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1866happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1867At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1868from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1869shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1870It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1871
1872sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1873 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1874 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1875
1876info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1877
1878
1879 * Watchpoints
1880
1881A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1882expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1883tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1884quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1885problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1886more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1887
1888watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1889
1890info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1891
1892delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1893disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1894enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1895
1896
1897 * C++ multiple inheritance
1898
1899When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1900for C++ programs.
1901
1902 * C++ exception handling
1903
1904Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1905ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1906the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1907handler's context).
1908
1909catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1910 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1911 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1912
1913info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1914 current stack frame.
1915
1916
1917 * Minor command changes
1918
1919The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1920command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1921is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1922
1923The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1924at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1925frames without printing.
1926
1927 * New directory command
1928
1929'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1930The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1931about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1932with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1933find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1934
1935 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1936
1937For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1938for more details.
1939
1940GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1941two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1942Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1943where the program that you are debugging will run.
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