gdb/
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
8d5b6c2b 4*** Changes since GDB 7.4
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6* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
7 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
8 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
9 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
10 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
11 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
12
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13* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
14 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
15 record/replay support.
16
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17* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
18
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19* Python scripting
20
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21 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
22 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
23
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24 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
25
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26 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
27 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
28
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29 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
30
31 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
32 the source at which the symbol was defined.
33
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34 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
35 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
36 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
37 symbol's value.
38
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39 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
40 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
41
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42 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
43 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
44 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
45
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46* Go language support.
47 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
48 language.
49
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50* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
51 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
52
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53* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
54 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
55
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56* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
57 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
58 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
59 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
60 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
61 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
62
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63* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
64 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
65 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
66 build/libcpp/expr.c.
67
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68* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
69 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
70
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71* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
72 since December 2007.
73
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74* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
75 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
76 command does. For instance:
77
78 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
79
80 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
81 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
82 created, using the "condition" command.
83
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84* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
85 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
86
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87* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
88
89* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
90 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
91 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
92 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new option
93 --use-deprecated-index-sections will cause GDB to use any older
94 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but
95 the ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost
96 in symbol files with older .gdb_index sections.
97
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98* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
99
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100* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
101 target.
102
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103* New commands
104
105 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
106 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
107
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108 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
109 several hits.
110
57651221 111 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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112 C++ and Java objects.
113
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114 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
115 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
116 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
117 configured with '--with-python'.
118
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119 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
120 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
121 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
122 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
123 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
124 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
125 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
126
127 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
128 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
129 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
130 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
131
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132* New targets
133
134Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 135HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 136
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137* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
138 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
139 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
140 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
141 evaluates to true.
142
143* New options
144
145set breakpoint condition-evaluation
146show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 147 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
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148 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
149 available mode.
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150 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
151 target.
152
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153set auto-load off
154 Disable auto-loading globally.
155
156show auto-load
157 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
158
159set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
160show auto-load gdb-scripts
161 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
162
163set auto-load python-scripts on|off
164show auto-load python-scripts
165 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
166
167set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
168show auto-load local-gdbinit
169 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
170
171set auto-load libthread-db on|off
172show auto-load libthread-db
173 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
174
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175set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
176show auto-load safe-path
177 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
178 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
179
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180set debug auto-load on|off
181show debug auto-load
182 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
183
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184* New remote packets
185
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186z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
187
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188 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
189 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
190 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
191 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
192
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193QProgramSignals:
194
195 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
196 program without GDB involvement.
197
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198* New command line options
199
200--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
201 before loading inferior.
202--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
203 execute it before loading inferior.
204
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205*** Changes in GDB 7.4
206
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207* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
208 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
209 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
210 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
211 inferior changes.
212
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213* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
214 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
215
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216* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
217 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
218 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
219 target hardware watchpoint.
220
221 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
222 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
223 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
224 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
225
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226* Python scripting
227
32d1c362 228 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 229 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
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230 existing one.
231
3a7bf607 232 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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233 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
234 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
235 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
236 now "message", which just prints the error message without
237 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 238
baacfb07 239 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 240 Python API.
713389e0 241
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242 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
243 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 244 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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245 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
246 corresponding value.
247
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248 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
249 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
250 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
251 on GDB start-up.
252
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253 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
254 static_block will return the global and static blocks
255 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
256 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
257
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258 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
259
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260 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
261 "gdb.breakpoints".
262
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263 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
264 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
265 available in the CLI.
266
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267 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
268 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
269 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
270 "some_type.items()".
271
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272 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
273 new object file.
274
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275 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
276 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
277 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
278 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
279 any anonymous fields.
280
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281* MI changes
282
283 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
284 "solib-event".
285
286 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
287 "=breakpoint-modified".
288
289 ** New command -ada-task-info.
290
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291* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
292 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
293 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
294 lives.
295
296 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
297 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
298 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
299 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
300 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
301
302 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
303 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
304
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305* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
306 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
307 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
308 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
309 use this option to specify where to find it.
310
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311* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
312 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
313 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
314 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
315 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
316 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
317 section in the user manual for more details.
318
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319* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
320 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
321 become available after that.
322
71eba9c2 323* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 324
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325* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
326 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
327 gcc version 4.7.
328
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329* New commands
330
331!SHELL COMMAND
332 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
333 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
334
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335* Changed commands
336
337watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
338 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
339 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
340
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341info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
342 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
343 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
344
71eba9c2 345info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
346 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
347 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
348 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
349 name starts with a hyphen.
350
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351collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
352 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
353 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
354 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
355 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
356 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
357 number of bytes that will be collected.
358
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359tstart [NOTES]
360 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
361 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
362 setting the variable trace-notes.
363
364tstop [NOTES]
365 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
366 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
367 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
368 trace-stop-notes.
369
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370* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
371 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
372 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
373 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
374 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
375 is running.
376
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377* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
378 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
379 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
380
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381* New options
382
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383set extended-prompt
384show extended-prompt
385 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
386 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
387 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
388 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
389 prompt is displayed.
390
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391set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
392show print entry-values
393 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
394 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
395 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
396
397set debug entry-values
398show debug entry-values
399 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
400 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
401
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402set basenames-may-differ
403show basenames-may-differ
404 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
405 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
406 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
407 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
408 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
409 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
410 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
411 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
412
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413set trace-user
414show trace-user
415set trace-notes
416show trace-notes
417 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
418 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
419 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
420 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
421
422set trace-stop-notes
423show trace-stop-notes
424 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
425 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
426 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
427 started by someone else.
428
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429* New remote packets
430
431QTEnable
432
433 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
434
435QTDisable
436
437 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
438
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439QTNotes
440
441 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
442
443qTP
444
445 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
446
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447qTMinFTPILen
448
449 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
450 be placed.
451
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452* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
453 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
454
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455* New targets
456
457Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
458
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459* New Simulators
460
461Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
462
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463*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
464
465* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
466
d6e00af6 467*** Changes in GDB 7.3
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469* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
470 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
471 matches the given regular expression.
472
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473* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
474
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475* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
476 dumping the instruction opcodes.
477
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478* New command line options
479
480-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
481 This is mostly for testing purposes.
482
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483* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
484 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
485
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486* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
487 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
488 source path list instead of augmenting it.
489
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490* GDB now understands thread names.
491
492 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
493 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
494
495 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
496 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
497
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498* OpenCL C
499 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
500 has been integrated into GDB.
501
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502* Python scripting
503
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504 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
505 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
506 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
507
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508 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
509 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
510 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
511 and allows for more dynamic content.
512
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513 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
514 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
515 have an is_valid method.
516
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517 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
518 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
519 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
520
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521 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
522
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523 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
524 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
525 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
526 that function like so:
527
528 result = some_value (10,20)
529
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530 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
531 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
532 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
533
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534 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
535 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
536 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
537 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
538 New function: register_pretty_printer.
539
540 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
541 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
542
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543 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
544
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545 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
546 selected thread.
547
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548 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
549 holds the thread's name.
550
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551 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
552 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 553 occurring in the process being debugged.
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554 The following events are currently supported:
555 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
556 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
557 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
558
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559* C++ Improvements:
560
561 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
562 instantiation. For example, if you have:
563
564 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
565
566 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
567 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
568 was added to GCC 4.5.
569
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570 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
571 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
572 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
573 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
574 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
575 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
576
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577* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
578 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
579 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
580 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
581 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
582
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583* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
584 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
585 execution to a label.
586
587* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
588 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
589 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
590 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
591
b56df873 592* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 593 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
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TT
594 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
595 of scope.
596
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PA
597* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
598
599 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
600 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
601 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
602 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
603 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
604 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
605
606 (gdb) info threads
607 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
608
609 While now you see this:
610
611 (gdb) info threads
612 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
613
614 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
615 dumps.
616
617 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
618 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
619 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
620 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
621
f1310107
TJB
622* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
623 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
624 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
625 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
626 section in the user manual for more details.
627
248c9dbc
JB
628* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
629
1aee7009
JB
630 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
631 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 632
eb826dc6
MF
633 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
634
44603653
JB
635* New native configurations
636
637ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
638
91021223
MF
639* New targets:
640
641Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
642
6e1bb179
JB
643* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
644 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
645 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
646 in the GDB user manual.
647
50c97f38
TT
648* Guile support was removed.
649
448a92bf
MF
650* New features in the GNU simulator
651
652 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
653
66ee2731
MF
654 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
655
76b8507d 656*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 657
ba25b921
PA
658* Shared library support for remote targets by default
659
660 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
661 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
662 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
663 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
664 was always disabled for such configurations.
665
4656f5c6
SW
666* C++ Improvements:
667
668 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
669
670 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
671 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
672 For example:
673 namespace A
674 {
675 class B { };
676 void foo (B) { }
677 }
678 ...
679 A::B b
680 foo(b)
681 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
682 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
683 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
684
685 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
686
687 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
688 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
689 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
690 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
691 entry.
692 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
693 mentioned flavors of operators.
694
254e6b9e
DE
695 ** static const class members
696
697 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
698 class definition has been fixed.
699
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PM
700* Windows Thread Information Block access.
701
702 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
703 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
704 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
705 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
706 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
707 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
708
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709* Static tracepoints
710
711 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
712 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
713 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
714 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
715 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
716 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
717 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
718 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
719 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
720 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
721 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
722 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
723 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
724 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
725 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
726 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
727 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
728 the "New remote packets" section below.
729
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SS
730* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
731
732 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
733 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
734 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
735 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
736
737* Observer mode
738
739 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
740 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
741 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
742 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
743 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
744 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
745 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
746
747* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
748 current thread.
749
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PM
750* New remote packets
751
752qGetTIBAddr
753
754 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
755
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PA
756qRelocInsn
757
758 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
759 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
760 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
761 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
762 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
763 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
764
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PA
765qTfSTM, qTsSTM
766
767 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
768
769qTSTMat
770
771 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
772 program.
773
774qXfer:statictrace:read
775
776 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
777 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
778 to gdb's qSupported query.
779
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SS
780QAllow
781
782 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
783
784QTDPsrc
785
786 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
787 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
788
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DE
789* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
790 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
791 a directory.
792
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PA
793* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
794
0fb4aa4b
PA
795 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
796 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
797 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
798 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
799
800 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
801 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
802 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
803 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
804 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
805 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
806 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
807
808 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
809 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 810
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PM
811 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
812
c8d5aac9
L
813* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
814 it understands register description.
815
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TT
816* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
817
8685c86f
L
818* X86 general purpose registers
819
820 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
821 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
822 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
823 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
824 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
825
95a42b64 826* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
827 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
828 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
829 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
830 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
831 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 832
8bd10a10
CM
833* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
834 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
835 in the specified file.
836
ab38a727
PA
837* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
838 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
839 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
840 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
841 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
842 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
843 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
844 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
845 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
846 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
847
6149aea9
PA
848* New commands
849
f1421989
HZ
850eval template, expressions...
851 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
852 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
853
ab38a727
PA
854set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
855show target-file-system-kind
856 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
857 names.
858
6149aea9
PA
859save breakpoints <filename>
860 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
861 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
862 definitions, use the `source' command.
863
864`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
865is now deprecated.
866
0fb4aa4b
PA
867info static-tracepoint-markers
868 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
869
870strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
871 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
872 function, line, address, or marker ID.
873
ca11e899
SS
874set observer on|off
875show observer
876 Enable and disable observer mode.
877
878set may-write-registers on|off
879set may-write-memory on|off
880set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
881set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
882set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
883set may-interrupt on|off
884 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
885 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
886 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
887 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
888 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
889 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
890 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
891
892set record memory-query on|off
893show record memory-query
894 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
895 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
896
53a71c06
CR
897* Changed commands
898
899disassemble
900 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
901
f3e9a817
PM
902* Python scripting
903
9279c692
JB
904** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
905 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
906 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
907 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
908 GDB using Python' in the manual.
909
adc36818 910** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
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PM
911 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
912 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
913 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 914
fa33c3cd 915** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
916 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
917
918** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
919
920** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 921
967cf477
DE
922** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
923
8a1ea21f
DE
924** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
925 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
926 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
927
a7bdde9e
VP
928* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
929there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
930tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
931regular breakpoints.
932
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PA
933* New targets
934
935ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
936
6aecb9c2
JB
937* D language support.
938 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
939 language.
940
431e49aa
TJB
941* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
942 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
943 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
944 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
945 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
946
947* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
948 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
949 conditions of the form:
950
951 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
952
953 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
954 interface mentioned above.
955
bfbf3774 956*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 957
4eef138c
TT
958* C++ Improvements
959
960 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
961
962 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
963 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
964 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
965 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
966 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
967
4eef138c
TT
968 ** Bug Fixes
969
970 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
971 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
972 qualified name.
973
974 ** Cast Operators
975
976 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
977 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
978
2d1c1221
ME
979* New targets
980
981Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 982Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
983
984* New Simulators
985
986Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 987Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 988
6c95b8df
PA
989* Multi-program debugging.
990
991 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
992 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
993 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
994 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
995 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
996 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
997 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
998 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
999
d5551862
SS
1000* New tracing features
1001
1002 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1003
1004 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1005
1006 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1007 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1008 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1009 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1010 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1011 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1012 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1013 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1014 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1015 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1016
d5551862 1017 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1018
1019 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1020 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1021 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1022 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1023 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1024 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1025 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1026 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1027 the regular trace command.
1028
d5551862
SS
1029 ** Disconnected tracing
1030
1031 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1032 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1033 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1034 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1035 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1036
00bf0b85
SS
1037 ** Trace files
1038
1039 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1040 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1041 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1042 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1043 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1044 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1045 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1046
1047 ** Circular trace buffer
1048
1049 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1050 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1051 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1052 not be available for all target agents.
1053
21a0512e
PP
1054* Changed commands
1055
1056disassemble
1057 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1058 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1059
0fe7935b
DJ
1060info variables
1061 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1062 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1063
fb2e7cb4
JB
1064source
1065 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1066 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1067 support.
1068
1069 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1070 "set script-extension" (see below).
1071
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PA
1072* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1073
399cd161
MS
1074record save [<FILENAME>]
1075 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1076 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1077
1078record restore <FILENAME>
1079 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1080 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1081
6c95b8df
PA
1082add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1083 Add a new inferior.
1084
1085clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1086 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1087 inferior has loaded.
1088
1089remove-inferior ID
1090 Remove an inferior.
1091
1092maint info program-spaces
1093 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1094
9a7071a8
JB
1095set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1096show remote interrupt-sequence
1097 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1098 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1099 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1100 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1101 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1102
1103set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1104show remote interrupt-on-connect
1105 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1106 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1107 Linux kernel.
1108
1109set remotebreak [on | off]
1110show remotebreak
1111Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1112
f61e138d
SS
1113tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1114 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1115
1116info tvariables
1117 List trace state variables and their values.
1118
1119delete tvariable $NAME ...
1120 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1121
6da95a67
SS
1122teval EXPR, ...
1123 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1124 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1125
7a697b8d
SS
1126ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1127 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1128
b0f02ee9
JK
1129* New expression syntax
1130
1131 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1132 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1133
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PA
1134* New options
1135
1136set follow-exec-mode new|same
1137show follow-exec-mode
1138 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1139 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1140 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1141
236f1d4d
SS
1142set default-collect EXPR, ...
1143show default-collect
1144 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1145 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1146 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1147
d5551862
SS
1148set disconnected-tracing
1149show disconnected-tracing
1150 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1151 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1152 upon disconnection.
1153
4daf5ac0
SS
1154set circular-trace-buffer
1155show circular-trace-buffer
1156 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1157 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1158 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1159 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1160
fb2e7cb4
JB
1161set script-extension off|soft|strict
1162show script-extension
1163 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1164 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1165 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1166 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1167 evaluation failed.
1168 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1169
2b71fc8e
JB
1170set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1171show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1172 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1173 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1174 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1175 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1176 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1177 is on.
1178
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TT
1179* Python API Improvements
1180
1181 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1182 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1183 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1184
1185 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1186 `is_base_class' attribute.
1187
1188 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1189
1190 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1191 evaluate an expression.
1192
f61e138d
SS
1193* New remote packets
1194
1195QTDV
1196 Define a trace state variable.
1197
1198qTV
1199 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1200
d5551862
SS
1201QTDisconnected
1202 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1203
4daf5ac0
SS
1204QTBuffer:circular
1205 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1206
d5551862
SS
1207qTfP, qTsP
1208 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1209
2d483d34
MS
1210* Bug fixes
1211
1212Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1213
6e0e5977
JB
1214Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1215much more reliable. In particular:
1216 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1217 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1218 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1219 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1220 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1221 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1222 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1223 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1224 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1225 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1226 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1227 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1228 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1229 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1230 non-threaded programs.
1231
93c26624
JK
1232PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1233This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1234libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1235executable program.
1236
abc7453d 1237*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1238
4efc6507
DE
1239* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1240dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1241them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1242for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1243"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1244
782b2b07
SS
1245* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1246breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1247or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1248the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1249for tracepoint actions.
1250
53a71c06
CR
1251* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1252raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1253modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1254
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1255* Process record and replay
1256
1257 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1258 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1259 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1260 execute commands.
1261
64644d9b
MS
1262* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1263step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1264set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1265reverse execution.
1266
b9412953
DD
1267* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1268feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
12692.6.28 or later.
1270
6c7a06a3
TT
1271* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1272target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1273char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1274literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1275U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1276`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1277system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1278the installation instructions for more information.
1279
f1838a98
UW
1280* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1281remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1282with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1283the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1284
55333a84
DE
1285* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1286and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1287
7f6a6314
PM
1288* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1289now complete on file names.
1290
65d12d83
TT
1291* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1292completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1293For instance, consider:
1294
1295 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1296 # struct example variable;
1297 (gdb) p variable.
1298
1299If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1300completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1301
edb3359d
DJ
1302* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1303the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1304
2fae03e8
TT
1305* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1306operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1307macros.
1308
47a3467a 1309* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1310the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1311implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1312
1313* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1314registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1315can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1316and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1317
08388c79
DE
1318* New remote packets
1319
1320qSearch:memory:
1321 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1322
a6f3e723
SL
1323QStartNoAckMode
1324 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1325 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1326 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1327
d7713ae0
EZ
1328vKill
1329 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1330 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1331
07e059b5
VP
1332qXfer:osdata:read
1333 Obtains additional operating system information
1334
47a3467a
PA
1335qXfer:siginfo:read
1336qXfer:siginfo:write
1337 Read or write additional signal information.
1338
060871df
PA
1339* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1340
1341 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1342 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1343 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1344
c055b101 1345* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1346DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1347
1348* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1349and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1350`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1351
31fffb02
CS
1352* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1353with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1354
88d8a8e0
JB
1355* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1356
7f99b190
JB
1357* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1358
ccd213ac
DJ
1359* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1360which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1361
1fddbabb 1362* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1363list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1364
a0ef4274
DJ
1365* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1366conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1367have also been fixed.
1368
bfb8797a 1369* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1370From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1371are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1372
71c25dea
TT
1373* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1374example, given:
1375
1376 template<typename T> class C { };
1377 C<char const *> c;
1378
1379GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1380
1381 ptype C<char const *>
1382 ptype C<char const*>
1383 ptype C<const char *>
1384 ptype C<const char*>
1385
ccd213ac
DJ
1386* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1387
1388 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1389 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1390
7ae0e2a2
UW
1391 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1392 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1393 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1394
a6f3e723
SL
1395 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1396 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1397
da8bd9a3
DJ
1398 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1399 gdbserver.
1400
d70e31dd
DE
1401 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1402 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1403
1404 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1405 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1406 as appropriate.
1407
d57a3c85
TJB
1408* Python scripting
1409
1410 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1411 available is determined at configure time.
1412
d8906c6f
TJB
1413 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1414
aadc346a
JB
1415* Ada tasking support
1416
1417 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1418 been introduced:
1419
1420 info tasks
1421 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1422 info task N
1423 Print detailed information about task number N.
1424 task
1425 Print the task number of the current task.
1426 task N
1427 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1428
adb483fe
DJ
1429* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1430add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1431
2277426b
PA
1432* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1433
1434 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1435 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1436 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1437 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1438 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1439 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1440 below.
1441
08d16641
PA
1442* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1443"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1444information.
1445
e35359c5
UW
1446* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1447to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1448architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1449See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1450more information.
1451
85e747d2
UW
1452* Multi-architecture debugging.
1453
1454 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
1455 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
1456 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
1457 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
1458 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
1459
1460* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
1461use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
1462Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
1463powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
1464--enable-targets configure option.
1465
11ade57a
PA
1466* Non-stop mode debugging.
1467
1468 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
1469 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
1470 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
1471 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
1472 section in the user manual for more information.
1473
1474 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
1475 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
1476 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
1477 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
1478 extensions on linux targets.
1479
d7713ae0 1480* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 1481
a96d9b2e
SDJ
1482catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
1483 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
1484 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
1485 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
1486 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
1487 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
1488 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
1489 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
1490 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
1491
08388c79
DE
1492find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
1493 val1 [, val2, ...]
1494 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1495
d57a3c85
TJB
1496maint set python print-stack
1497maint show python print-stack
1498 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
1499
1500python [CODE]
1501 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
1502
d7713ae0
EZ
1503macro define
1504macro list
1505macro undef
1506 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
1507 interactively.
1508
1509info os processes
1510 Show operating system information about processes.
1511
2277426b
PA
1512info inferiors
1513 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
1514
1515inferior NUM
1516 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
1517
1518detach inferior NUM
1519 Detach from inferior number NUM.
1520
1521kill inferior NUM
1522 Kill inferior number NUM.
1523
d7713ae0
EZ
1524* New options
1525
3285f3fe
UW
1526set spu stop-on-load
1527show spu stop-on-load
1528 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1529
ff1a52c6
UW
1530set spu auto-flush-cache
1531show spu auto-flush-cache
1532 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
1533 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
1534
d7713ae0
EZ
1535set sh calling-convention
1536show sh calling-convention
1537 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
1538
e0a3ce09 1539set debug timestamp
75feb17d 1540show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
1541 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
1542
1543set disassemble-next-line
1544show disassemble-next-line
1545 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
1546 the debuggee stops.
1547
1548set remote noack-packet
1549show remote noack-packet
1550 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
1551 under "New remote packets."
1552
1553set remote query-attached-packet
1554show remote query-attached-packet
1555 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
1556
1557set remote read-siginfo-object
1558show remote read-siginfo-object
1559 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
1560 packet.
1561
1562set remote write-siginfo-object
1563show remote write-siginfo-object
1564 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
1565 packet.
1566
40ab02ce
MS
1567set remote reverse-continue
1568show remote reverse-continue
1569 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
1570
1571set remote reverse-step
1572show remote reverse-step
1573 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
1574
d7713ae0
EZ
1575set displaced-stepping
1576show displaced-stepping
1577 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
1578 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
1579 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
1580
1581set debug displaced
1582show debug displaced
1583 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
1584
1585maint set internal-error
1586maint show internal-error
1587 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
1588
1589maint set internal-warning
1590maint show internal-warning
1591 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 1592
ccd213ac
DJ
1593set exec-wrapper
1594show exec-wrapper
1595unset exec-wrapper
1596 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 1597
aad4b048
JB
1598set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
1599show multiple-symbols
1600 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
1601 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
1602 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
1603
74960c60
VP
1604set breakpoint always-inserted
1605show breakpoint always-inserted
1606 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
1607 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
1608 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
1609
0428b8f5
DJ
1610set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1611show arm fallback-mode
1612set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
1613show arm force-mode
1614 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
1615 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
1616 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
1617 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
1618
10568435
JK
1619set disable-randomization
1620show disable-randomization
1621 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
1622 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
1623 multiple debugging sessions.
1624
d7713ae0
EZ
1625set non-stop
1626show non-stop
1627 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
1628 a breakpoint.
1629
b3eb342c 1630set target-async
d7713ae0 1631show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
1632 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
1633 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
1634 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
1635 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
1636
6c7a06a3
TT
1637set target-wide-charset
1638show target-wide-charset
1639 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
1640 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
1641
84603566
SL
1642set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
1643show tcp auto-retry
1644set tcp connect-timeout
1645show tcp connect-timeout
1646 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
1647 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
1648 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
1649
17a37d48
PP
1650set libthread-db-search-path
1651show libthread-db-search-path
1652 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
1653 libthread_db.
1654
d4db2f36
PA
1655set schedule-multiple (on|off)
1656show schedule-multiple
1657 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
1658 the current process.
1659
4e5d721f
DE
1660set stack-cache
1661show stack-cache
1662 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
1663 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
1664 affecting correctness.
1665
910c5da8
JB
1666set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
1667show interactive-mode
1668 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
1669 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
1670 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
1671 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
1672 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
1673
2277426b
PA
1674* Removed commands
1675
1676info forks
1677 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
1678 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
1679 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
1680 command.
1681
1682fork NUM
1683 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
1684 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
1685 alias for the `fork' command.
1686
1687process PID
1688 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
1689 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
1690 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
1691
1692delete fork NUM
1693 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
1694 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
1695 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
1696 fork' command.
1697
1698detach fork NUM
1699 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
1700 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
1701 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
1702 fork' command.
1703
a80b95ba
TG
1704* New native configurations
1705
1706x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
1707
b8bfd3ed
JB
1708x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
1709
75a2d5e7
TT
1710* New targets
1711
c28c63d8 1712Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 1713x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 1714x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 1715S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 1716
6de3146c
PA
1717* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
1718 (mingw32ce) debugging.
1719
d5cbbe6e
JB
1720* Removed commands
1721
1722catch load
1723catch unload
1724 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
1725
75feb17d 1726*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 1727
af5ca30d
NH
1728* New native configurations
1729
1730NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 1731Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
1732
1733* New targets
1734
1735NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 1736Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 1737
7a404eba
PA
1738* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1739
1740 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
1741 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
1742 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
1743 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
1744
430ebac9
PA
1745* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
1746(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
1747
fe6fbf8b 1748* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 1749is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
1750
1751* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
1752including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
1753and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 1754
10665d76
JB
1755* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
1756accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
1757more than one contiguous range of addresses.
1758
7cc46491
DJ
1759* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
1760
d71340b8
DJ
1761* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
1762registers on PowerPC targets.
1763
523c4513
DJ
1764* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
1765targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
1766
a6b151f1
DJ
1767* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
1768commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
1769
2d717e4f
DJ
1770* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
1771extended-remote mode.
1772
24a836bd 1773* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
1774The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
1775error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
1776The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 1777
d0c678e6
UW
1778* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
1779building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
1780target architectures.
1781
d64a946d
TJB
1782* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
1783Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
1784now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
1785stored in two consecutive float registers.
1786
ee163bf5
VP
1787* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
1788breakpoints now.
1789
b93b6ca7 1790* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
1791Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
1792include:
b93b6ca7
JB
1793 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
1794 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
1795 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
1796 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
1797 of an assignment
1798 - Improved command completion in Ada
1799 - Several bug fixes
1800
d001be7a
DJ
1801* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
1802process.
1803
a6b151f1
DJ
1804* New commands
1805
6d53d0af
JB
1806set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
1807show print frame-arguments
1808 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
1809 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
1810
a6b151f1
DJ
1811remote put
1812remote get
1813remote delete
1814 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1815
1816* New MI commands
1817
1818-target-file-put
1819-target-file-get
1820-target-file-delete
1821 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
1822
1823* New remote packets
1824
1825vFile:open:
1826vFile:close:
1827vFile:pread:
1828vFile:pwrite:
1829vFile:unlink:
1830 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 1831
2d717e4f
DJ
1832vAttach
1833 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
1834 mode.
1835
1836vRun
1837 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
1838
8d5f9c6f 1839*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 1840
19d378fc
MS
1841* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
1842bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
1843Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
1844
3a40aaa0
UW
1845* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
1846symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
1847-Bsymbolic linker option.
1848
a6ec25f2
BW
1849* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
1850recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
1851is not supported.
1852
6dd09645
JB
1853* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
1854frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
1855
c9bb8148
DJ
1856* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
185732-bit or 64-bit register values.
1858
0d5de010
DJ
1859* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
1860
23181151
DJ
1861* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
1862target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
1863a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
1864
ea37ba09
DJ
1865* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
1866automatically displayed as character or string data.
1867
1868* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
1869arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
1870as strings.
e1f48ead 1871
123dc839
DJ
1872* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
1873for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 1874only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 1875
05a4558a
DJ
1876* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
1877iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 1878
7c963485
PA
1879* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
1880ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
1881has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
1882
b18be20d
DJ
1883* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
1884
0ca420ce
UW
1885* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
1886
31d99776
DJ
1887* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
1888layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
1889segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
1890
a4642986
MR
1891* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
1892immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
1893
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1894* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
1895"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
1896packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
1897where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
1898Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
1899
1900* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
1901(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
1902
1903* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
1904according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 1905
c9bb8148
DJ
1906* New commands
1907
23776285
MR
1908set remoteflow
1909show remoteflow
1910 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
1911 when debugging using remote targets.
1912
c9bb8148
DJ
1913set mem inaccessible-by-default
1914show mem inaccessible-by-default
1915 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1916 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1917 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
1918 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
1919 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
1920
1921set breakpoint auto-hw
1922show breakpoint auto-hw
1923 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
1924 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
1925 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
1926 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
1927 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
1928 including "next" and "finish".
1929
0e420bd8
JB
1930catch exception
1931catch exception unhandled
1932 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
1933
1934catch assert
1935 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
1936
f822c95b
DJ
1937set sysroot
1938show sysroot
1939 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
1940 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
1941 an alias to "set sysroot".
1942
83cc5c53
UW
1943info spu
1944 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
1945 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
1946 architecture.
1947
bd372731
MK
1948* New native configurations
1949
1950OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
1951
23181151
DJ
1952set tdesc filename
1953unset tdesc filename
1954show tdesc filename
1955 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
1956 not query the target for its built-in description.
1957
c9bb8148
DJ
1958* New targets
1959
54fe9172 1960OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 1961MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 1962Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 1963
6dd09645
JB
1964* New remote packets
1965
1966QPassSignals:
1967 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
1968 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
1969
23181151
DJ
1970qXfer:features:read:
1971 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
1972 features.
6dd09645 1973
83cc5c53
UW
1974qXfer:spu:read:
1975qXfer:spu:write:
1976 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
1977 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
1978
cfa9d6d9
DJ
1979qXfer:libraries:read:
1980 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
1981 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
1982 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
1983 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
1984
483367ee
DJ
1985* Removed targets
1986
1987Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1988
d08950c4
UW
1989alpha*-*-osf1*
1990alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 1991d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
1992hppa*-*-hiux*
1993i[34567]86-ncr-*
1994i[34567]86-*-dgux*
1995i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
1996i[34567]86-*-netware*
1997i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
1998i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
1999i[34567]86-*-sco*
2000i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2001i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2002i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2003i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2004i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2005i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2006i[34567]86-*-isc*
2007m68*-cisco*-*
2008m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2009mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2010rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2011sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2012
7ce59000
DJ
2013* Other removed features
2014
2015target abug
2016target cpu32bug
2017target est
2018target rom68k
2019
2020 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2021
ea35711c
DJ
2022target hms
2023target e7000
2024target sh3
2025target sh3e
2026
2027 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2028 H8/300.
2029
2030target ocd
2031
2032 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2033 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2034 interfaces.
2035
7ce59000
DJ
2036DWARF 1 support
2037
2038 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2039 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2040
54d61198
DJ
2041Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2042
2043 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2044 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2045 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2046 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2047
ea35711c
DJ
2048MIPS ".pdr" sections
2049
2050 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2051 in debugging information.
2052
2053Scheme support
2054
2055 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2056 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2057
1a69e1e4
DJ
2058set mips stack-arg-size
2059set mips saved-gpreg-size
2060
2061 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2062
6dd09645 2063*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2064
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2065* New targets
2066
2067Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2068Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2069
6aec2e11
DJ
2070* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2071(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2072running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2073
2074* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2075Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2076supported.
2077
17218d91
DJ
2078* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2079broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2080
9ebce043
DJ
2081* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2082stub provides the required support.
2083
7d3d3ece
DJ
2084* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2085longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2086
4f8253f3
JB
2087* New commands
2088
2089set substitute-path
2090unset substitute-path
2091show substitute-path
2092 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2093 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2094 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2095 between compilation and debugging.
2096
9fa66fd7
AS
2097set trace-commands
2098show trace-commands
2099 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2100 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2101 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2102
1f5befc1
DJ
2103* REMOVED features
2104
2105The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2106
2ec3381a
DJ
2107Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2108an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2109
3d00d119
DJ
2110The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2111
be2a5f71
DJ
2112* New remote packets
2113
2114qSupported:
2115 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2116 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2117 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2118 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2119 target.
2120
0876f84a
DJ
2121qXfer:auxv:read:
2122 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2123 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2124
9ebce043
DJ
2125qXfer:memory-map:read:
2126 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2127 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2128
2129vFlashErase:
2130vFlashWrite:
2131vFlashDone:
2132 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2133
0876f84a
DJ
2134* Removed remote packets
2135
2136qPart:auxv:read:
2137 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2138 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2139
e374b601 2140*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2141
96309189
MS
2142* New targets
2143
2144Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2145
2146Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2147
53e5f3cf
AS
2148* New commands
2149
2150init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2151 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2152
ac264b3b
MS
2153The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2154
2155checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2156
2157restart <n> Return the program state to a
2158 previously saved state.
2159
2160info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2161
2162delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2163
2164set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2165 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2166
2167info forks List forks of the user program that
2168 are available to be debugged.
2169
2170fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2171 forks of the user program that are
2172 available to be debugged.
2173
2174delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2175 that are available to be debugged (and
2176 kill the forked process).
2177
2178detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2179 that are available to be debugged (and
2180 allow the process to continue).
2181
3950dc3f
NS
2182* New architecture
2183
2184Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2185
0ea3f30e
DJ
2186* Improved Windows host support
2187
2188GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2189native console support, and remote communications using either
2190network sockets or serial ports.
2191
f79daebb
GM
2192* Improved Modula-2 language support
2193
2194GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2195basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2196pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2197printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2198written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2199GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2200
acab6ab2
MM
2201* REMOVED features
2202
2203The ARM rdi-share module.
2204
f4267320
DJ
2205The Netware NLM debug server.
2206
53e5f3cf 2207*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2208
e0ecbda1
MK
2209* New native configurations
2210
02a677ac 2211OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2212OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2213
d64a6579
KB
2214* New targets
2215
2216Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2217
b33a6190
AS
2218* New command line options
2219
2220--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2221--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2222 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2223--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2224 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2225 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2226 with the --command (-x) option.
2227
11dced61
AC
2228* Deprecated commands removed
2229
2230The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2231removed:
2232
2233 Command Replacement
2234 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2235 othernames set arm disassembler
2236 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2237 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2238 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2239 regs info registers
2240
6fe85783
MK
2241* New BSD user-level threads support
2242
2243It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2244library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2245configurations are:
2246
2247FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2248FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2249OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2250
2251Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2252are not yet supported.
2253
5260ca71
MS
2254* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2255(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2256
e84ecc99
AC
2257* REMOVED configurations and files
2258
2259VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2260Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2261National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2262
31e35378
JB
2263* New "set print array-indexes" command
2264
2265After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2266when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2267behavior.
2268
e85e5c83
MK
2269* VAX floating point support
2270
2271GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2272
d91e9901
AS
2273* User-defined command support
2274
2275In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2276to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2277section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2278
f2cb65ca
MC
2279*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2280
f47b1503
AS
2281* New command line option
2282
2283GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2284debugging.
2285
f2cb65ca
MC
2286* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2287
2288GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2289information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2290by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2291proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2292to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2293
d08c0230
AC
2294* Internationalization
2295
2296When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2297internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2298continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2299
117ea3cf
PH
2300* Ada
2301
2302Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2303implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2304into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2305
d08c0230
AC
2306* New native configurations
2307
2308GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2309
2310* Remote 'p' packet
2311
2312GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2313packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2314
2315* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2316
2317GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2318The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2319features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2320i386 application).
2321
2322GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2323compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2324continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2325configurations:
2326
2327hppa-*-hpux
2328ia64-*-aix
2329mips-*-irix*
2330*-*-lynx
2331mips-*-linux-gnu
2332sds protocol
2333xdr protocol
2334powerpc bdm protocol
2335
2336Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2337made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2338
2339* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2340
2341Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2342been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2343configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2344permanently REMOVED.
2345
2346h8300-*-*
2347mcore-*-*
2348mn10300-*-*
2349ns32k-*-*
2350sh64-*-*
2351v850-*-*
2352
ebb7c577
AC
2353*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2354
2355* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2356
2357When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2358heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2359been fixed.
2360
2361* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2362
2363When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2364fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2365IRIX long double values).
2366
2367* VAX and "next"
2368
2369A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2370command. This problem has been fixed.
2371
860660cb 2372*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2373
0dea2468
AC
2374* Fix for ``many threads''
2375
2376On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2377rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2378error message:
2379
2380 ptrace: No such process.
2381 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2382
2383This problem has been fixed.
2384
2c07db7a
AC
2385* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2386
2387Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2388GDB to dump core).
2389
c23968a2
JB
2390* New ``start'' command.
2391
2392This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2393
71009278
MK
2394* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2395
2396Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2397live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2398platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2399
2400FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2401FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2402NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2403NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2404NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2405OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2406OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2407OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2408OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2409
3c0b7db2
AC
2410* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2411
2412Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2413These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2414of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2415call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2416signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2417
73cc75f3
AC
2418Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2419features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2420include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2421
7243600a
BF
2422* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2423
6f606e1c
MK
2424* New native configurations
2425
97dc871c 2426GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2427OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2428OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2429OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2430OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2431NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2432OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2433
a1b461bf
AC
2434* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2435
2436GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2437The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2438including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2439migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2440compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2441work, was also included.
2442
2443GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2444module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2445
2446h8300-*-*
2447mcore-*-*
2448mn10300-*-*
2449ns32k-*-*
2450sh64-*-*
2451v850-*-*
2452xstormy16-*-*
2453
2454Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2455made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
2456
3c7012f5
AC
2457* REMOVED configurations and files
2458
2459Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2460Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2461Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2462Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2463Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2464AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2465Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
2466decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2467riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2468sonymips mips-sony-*
2469sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
2470
e5fe55f7
AC
2471*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
2472
2473* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
2474
2475The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
2476GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
2477command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
2478program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
2479with GDB".
2480
2481* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
2482
2483Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
2484libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
2485cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
2486GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
2487shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
2488the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
2489are created.
2490
2491Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
2492
2493* Fixed ISO-C build problems
2494
2495The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
2496non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
2497compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
2498
2499* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
2500
2501Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
2502wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
2503
2504* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
2505
2506The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
2507permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
2508systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
2509
2510* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
2511
2512Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
2513has been updated to use constant array sizes.
2514
2515* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
2516
2517GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
2518its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
2519panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
2520
2521* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
2522
2523When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
2524by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
2525not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
2526
faae5abe 2527*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 2528
9175c9a3
MC
2529* Removed --with-mmalloc
2530
2531Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
2532conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
2533
3cc87ec0
MK
2534* Changes in AMD64 configurations
2535
2536The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
2537the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
2538and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
2539you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
2540
f0424ef6
MK
2541* Revised SPARC target
2542
2543The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
2544FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
2545support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
2546from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
2547(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 2548
59659be2
ILT
2549* New C++ demangler
2550
2551GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
2552names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
2553with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
2554programs.
2555
9e08b29b
DJ
2556* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2557
2558GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
2559arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
2560encountered these.
2561
8dfe8985
DC
2562* C++ nested types and namespaces
2563
2564GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
2565improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
2566is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
2567Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
2568namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
2569"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
2570frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
2571if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
2572GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
2573
cced5e27
MK
2574* New native configurations
2575
2576NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 2577OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 2578OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
2579OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2580OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 2581
b4b4b794
KI
2582* New debugging protocols
2583
2584M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
2585
7989c619
AC
2586* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
2587
2588The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
2589and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
2590tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
2591
5994185b
AC
2592* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2593
2594Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2595been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2596configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2597permanently REMOVED.
2598
2599Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
2600Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
2601Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
2602Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
2603Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
2604AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
2605Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
2606decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
2607riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
2608sonymips mips-sony-*
2609sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 2610
0ddabb4c
AC
2611* REMOVED configurations and files
2612
2613SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2614SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
2615Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2616Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2617H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2618HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2619HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2620HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
2621PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 2622386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
2623Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2624 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2625 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
2626SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
2627SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
2628Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2629Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 2630
c7f1390e
DJ
2631*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
2632
1fe43d45
AC
2633* Objective-C
2634
2635Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
2636integrated into GDB.
2637
e6beb428
AC
2638* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
2639
2640DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
2641information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
2642By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
2643backtraces.
2644
2645The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
2646have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
2647DWARF 2 CFI support.
2648
2649* Hosted file I/O.
2650
2651GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
2652file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
2653remote protocol documentation for details.
2654
2655* All targets using the new architecture framework.
2656
2657All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
2658architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
2659to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
2660ppc32 on ppc64).
2661
2662* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
2663
2664GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
2665per-thread variables.
2666
2667* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
2668
2669GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
2670GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
2671
2672* Separate debug info.
2673
2674GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
2675automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
2676of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
2677system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
2678and optional debug files.
2679
2680* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
2681
2682DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
2683describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
2684debugger.
2685
2686GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
2687for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
2688
2689* Java
2690
2691A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
2692Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
2693considered "useable".
2694
85f8f974
DJ
2695* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
2696
2697The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
2698commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
2699kernel.
2700
0fac0b41
DJ
2701* GDB supports logging output to a file
2702
2703There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
2704used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 2705
6ad8ae5c
DJ
2706* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
2707
2708The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
2709disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
2710command.
2711
e286caf2 2712* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
2713
2714The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
2715registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
2716
d28f9cdf
DJ
2717* Profiling support
2718
2719A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
2720be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
2721session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
2722"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
2723data, for more informative profiling results.
2724
da0f9dcd
AC
2725* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
2726
2727The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
2728option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 2729"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
2730
2731Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
2732removed.
2733
fb9b6b35
JJ
2734Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
2735Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
2736Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
2737 in a subsequent -var-update.
2738
954a4db8
MK
2739* New native configurations.
2740
2741FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2742
6760f9e6
JB
2743* Multi-arched targets.
2744
b4263afa 2745HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 2746Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 2747
1b831c93
AC
2748* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2749
2750Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2751been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2752configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2753permanently REMOVED.
2754
8b0e5691 2755Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 2756Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 2757H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
2758HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
2759HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2760HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 2761PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
2762Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
2763 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
2764 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
2765Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2766Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 2767
5835abe7
NC
2768* REMOVED configurations and files
2769
2770V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
2771Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2772IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
2773i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2774i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2775i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
2776HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2777 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2778 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
2779Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2780Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2781Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2782OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2783I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 2784
a094c6fb
AC
2785* MIPS $fp behavior changed
2786
2787The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
2788the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
2789context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
2790address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
2791The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
2792
299ffc64 2793*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 2794
46248966
AC
2795* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
2796
2797When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
2798`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
2799in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
2800library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
2801shared libs like mad''.
2802
b9d14705 2803* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 2804
b9d14705
DJ
2805Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
2806the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
2807arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
2808powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 2809
e0e9281e
JB
2810* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
2811
2812GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
2813and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
2814they expand.
2815
dd73b9bb
AC
2816The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
2817invocations in expression, and shows the result.
2818
2819The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
2820macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
2821
e0e9281e
JB
2822Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
2823information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
2824your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
2825information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
2826
2250ee0c
CV
2827* Multi-arched targets.
2828
6e3ba3b8
JT
2829DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
2830DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 2831NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 2832National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
2833Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
2834Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 2835
cd9bfe15 2836* New targets.
e33ce519 2837
456f8b9d
DB
2838Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
2839
e33ce519 2840
da8ca43d
JT
2841* New native configurations
2842
2843Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 2844SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 2845MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 2846UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 2847
cd9bfe15
AC
2848* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2849
2850Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2851been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2852configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2853permanently REMOVED.
2854
92eb23c5 2855Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 2856OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 2857IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 2858Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 2859Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 2860Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
2861i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
2862i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
2863i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
2864HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
2865 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
2866 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 2867I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 2868
db034ac5
AC
2869* OBSOLETE languages
2870
2871CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
2872
cd9bfe15
AC
2873* REMOVED configurations and files
2874
2875AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2876A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2877AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2878AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2879AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2880
2881testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
2882
20f01a46
DH
2883* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
2884
2885This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
2886commands. The default is 1024.
2887
a5941fbf
MK
2888* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
2889
2890Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
2891
89743e04
MS
2892* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
2893
2894These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
2895to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
2896from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 2897
9fb14e79
JB
2898* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
2899
2900The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
2901including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
2902of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
2903
2037aebb
AC
2904*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
2905
2906* New targets.
2907
2908Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
2909
2910* Bug fixes
2911
2912gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
2913mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
2914Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
2915
2916gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
2917dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
2918Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
2919
2920Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
2921Surprisingly enough, it works now.
2922By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
2923
2924i386 hardware watchpoint support:
2925avoid misses on second run for some targets.
2926By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
2927
37057839 2928*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 2929
1a703748
MS
2930* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
2931
2932This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
2933really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
2934In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
2935target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
2936This can be a significant performance improvement on some
2937(notably embedded) targets.
2938
cefd4ef5
MS
2939* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
2940
55241689
AC
2941This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
2942process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
2943GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
2944hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 2945
352ed7b4
MS
2946* New command line option
2947
2948GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
2949
2950* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2951
2952There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
2953command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
2954a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
2955be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
2956open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
2957issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
2958a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
2959it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
2960GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
2961is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
2962
fe419ffc
RE
2963* Changes in ARM configurations.
2964
2965Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
2966configuration is fully multi-arch.
2967
eb7cedd9
MK
2968* New native configurations
2969
fe419ffc 2970ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 2971x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 2972AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 2973Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 2974
c9f63e6b
CV
2975* New targets
2976
2977Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
2978
9b4ff276
AC
2979* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2980
2981Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2982been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2983configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2984permanently REMOVED.
2985
2986AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
2987A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2988AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2989AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2990AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2991
b4ceaee6 2992testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 2993
e2caac18
AC
2994* REMOVED configurations and files
2995
2996TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 2997WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
2998PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2999PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3000PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3001Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3002Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3003 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3004SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3005Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3006Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3007ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3008Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3009
c2a727fa
TT
3010* Changes to command line processing
3011
3012The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3013for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3014
467d8519
TT
3015* Changes to key bindings
3016
3017There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3018
7072a954
AC
3019*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3020
3021Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3022
3023Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3024corrupted.
3025
3026Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3027
3028Numerous documentation fixes.
3029
3030Numerous testsuite fixes.
3031
34f47bc4 3032*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3033
3034* New native configurations
3035
3036Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3037x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3038MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3039MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3040ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3041s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3042
bf64bfd6
AC
3043* New targets
3044
def90278 3045Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3046CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3047UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3048
17e78a56 3049* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3050
3051x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3052Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3053Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3054 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3055TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3056WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3057Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3058PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3059PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3060PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3061SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3062Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3063ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3064Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3065
17e78a56
AC
3066stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3067kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3068
7fcca85b
AC
3069Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3070been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3071configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3072permanently REMOVED.
3073
a196c81c 3074* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3075
3076Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3077Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3078Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3079ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3080Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3081ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3082
6d6b80e5 3083* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3084
6d6b80e5 3085GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3086sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3087present.
3088
bf64bfd6
AC
3089* Other news:
3090
e23194cb
EZ
3091* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3092
3093* The MI enabled by default.
3094
3095The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3096revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3097engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3098using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3099which is now deprecated.
3100
3101* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3102
3103GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3104main features are supported:
3105
3106 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3107
3108 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3109 extension;
3110
3111 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3112
3113 - a Pascal expression parser.
3114
3115However, some important features are not yet supported.
3116
3117 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3118
3119 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3120
3121 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3122 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3123
3124 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3125
3126 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3127
3128* Changes in completion.
3129
3130Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3131to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3132users expect at the shell prompt.
3133
3134Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3135`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3136program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3137files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3138be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3139considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3140name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3141
3142`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3143
3144* New platform-independent commands:
3145
3146It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3147hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3148documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3149
3150* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3151
d7275149
MK
3152Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3153revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3154many threads as your system allows you to have.
3155
e23194cb
EZ
3156Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3157
d7275149
MK
3158Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3159multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3160
3161* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3162
3163Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3164
e23194cb
EZ
3165GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3166debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3167supported.)
3168
3169* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3170
3171Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3172breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3173implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3174put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3175and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3176registers.
3177
3178The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3179debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3180watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3181
3182* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3183
3184New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3185the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3186
3187New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3188display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3189IDT.
3190
3191New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3192from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3193New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3194a given linear address.
3195
3196GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3197program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3198which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3199
3200DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3201
6c56c069
EZ
3202It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3203
e23194cb
EZ
3204* Changes in documentation.
3205
3206All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3207Documentation License.
3208
3209Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3210manual.
3211
3212TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3213
3214Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3215manual.
3216
3217The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3218documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3219hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3220
5d6640b1
AC
3221* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3222
3223The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3224``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3225contents of this file.
3226
1a1d8446
AC
3227* gdba.el deleted
3228
3229GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3230
9debab2f 3231*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3232
c63ce875
EZ
3233* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3234
3235Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3236programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3237displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3238greater level of detail.
3239
3240* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3241
3242It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3243bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3244on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3245written.
3246
3247* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3248
3249The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3250necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3251machines ``out of the box''.
3252
3253The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3254possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3255signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3256would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3257interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3258
3259It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3260standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3261even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3262and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3263terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3264
3265The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3266enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3267also works.
3268
3269DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3270GDB.
3271
3272It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3273directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3274times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3275breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3276
ed9a39eb
JM
3277* New native configurations
3278
3279ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3280PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3281
7a292a7a
SS
3282* New targets
3283
96baa820 3284Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3285x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3286PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3287TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3288
085dd6e6
JM
3289* OBSOLETE configurations
3290
3291Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3292Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3293Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3294ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3295Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3296
9debab2f
AC
3297Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3298but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3299these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3300be permanently REMOVED.
3301
5330533d
SS
3302* Gould support removed
3303
3304Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3305
bc9e5bbf
AC
3306* New features for SVR4
3307
3308On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3309without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3310load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3311
3312* Many C++ enhancements
3313
3314C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3315in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3316
adf40b2e
JM
3317* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3318
3319A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3320sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3321with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3322``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3323
3324 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3325 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3326
43e526b9
JM
3327* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3328
3329A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3330expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3331instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3332
3333The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3334added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3335
96baa820
JM
3336* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3337
3338The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3339``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3340include ``set remote P-packet''.
3341
11cf8741
JM
3342* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3343
3344The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3345accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3346``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3347
7876dd43
DB
3348* ``apropos'' command added.
3349
3350The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3351documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3352try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3353
bc9e5bbf
AC
3354* New MI interface
3355
3356A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3357interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3358process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3359"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3360enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3361
3362 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3363
c906108c
SS
3364*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3365
3366* New native configurations
3367
3368HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3369HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3370M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3371
3372* New targets
3373
3374Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3375Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3376Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3377
3378* OBSOLETE configurations
3379
3380Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3381
3382Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3383but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3384these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3385be permanently REMOVED.
3386
3387* ANSI/ISO C
3388
3389As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3390buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3391containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3392use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3393available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3394configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3395information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3396already.
3397
3398* Readline 2.2
3399
3400GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3401
3402* set extension-language
3403
3404You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3405languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3406you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3407 set extension-language .c c++
3408The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3409and their associated languages.
3410
3411* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3412
3413When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3414you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3415PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3416
3417 set processor NAME
3418
3419sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3420following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3421
3422 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3423 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3424 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3425 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3426 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3427 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3428 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3429 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3430 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3431 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3432 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3433
3434At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3435special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3436registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3437only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3438
3439* HP-UX support
3440
3441Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3442more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3443library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3444support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3445for xdb and dbx commands.
3446
3447* Catchpoints
3448
3449HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3450generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
3451to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
3452
3453This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
3454argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
3455output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
3456
3457* Debugging across forks
3458
3459On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
3460in the inferior.
3461
3462* TUI
3463
3464HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
3465it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
3466configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
3467
3468* GDB remote protocol additions
3469
3470A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
3471Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
3472fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
3473allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
3474
3475For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
3476full 64-bit address. The command
3477
3478 set remoteaddresssize 32
3479
3480can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
3481the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
3482will be discarded.
3483
3484In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
3485command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
3486
3487 maint packet heythere
3488
3489sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
3490disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
3491time.
3492
3493The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
3494target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
3495downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
3496
3497* Tracing can collect general expressions
3498
3499You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
3500further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
3501doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
3502
3503* mask-address variable for Mips
3504
3505For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
3506a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
3507of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
3508
3509* Higher serial baud rates
3510
3511GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
3512230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
3513to achieve all of these rates.)
3514
3515* i960 simulator
3516
3517The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
3518builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
3519
3520
3521*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
3522
3523* New native configurations
3524
3525Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
3526Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
3527Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3528PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3529PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3530Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
3531Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
3532
3533* New targets
3534
3535Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3536Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
3537Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3538Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
3539MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
3540MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
3541MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
3542Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
3543Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3544Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3545NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
3546
3547* New debugging protocols
3548
3549ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
3550M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
3551DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
3552PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3553PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3554Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
3555
3556* DWARF 2
3557
3558All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
3559format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
3560information.
3561
3562* Java frontend
3563
3564GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
3565only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
3566
3567* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
3568
3569For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
3570loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
3571locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
3572
3573* Live range splitting
3574
3575GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
3576range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
3577more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
3578
3579* Hurd support
3580
3581GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
3582updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
3583
3584* ARM Thumb support
3585
3586GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
3587instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
3588instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
3589accordingly.
3590
3591* MIPS16 support
3592
3593GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
3594instruction set.
3595
3596* Overlay support
3597
3598GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
3599linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
3600will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
3601control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
3602additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
3603in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
3604
3605* info symbol
3606
3607The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
3608the symbol at the specified address.
3609
3610* Trace support
3611
3612The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
3613asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
3614extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
3615includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
3616file tracepoint.c for more details.
3617
3618* MIPS simulator
3619
3620Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
3621by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
3622of most MIPS variants.
3623
3624* Sparc simulator
3625
3626Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
3627by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
3628Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
3629
3630* set architecture
3631
3632For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
3633basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
3634architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
3635the possible architectures.
3636
3637*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
3638
3639* New native configurations
3640
3641Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
3642M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
3643PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
3644PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
3645PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3646RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
3647
3648* New targets
3649
3650ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
3651I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3652MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
3653MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
3654PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
3655Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
3656Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3657
3658* PowerPC simulator
3659
3660The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
3661contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
3662PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
3663basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
3664performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
3665
3666* Solaris 2.5
3667
3668GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
3669
3670* Windows 95/NT native
3671
3672GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
3673To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
3674which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
3675Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
3676ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
3677
3678* dont-repeat command
3679
3680If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
3681command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
3682useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
3683extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
3684
3685* Send break instead of ^C
3686
3687The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
3688rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
3689GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
3690
3691* Remote protocol timeout
3692
3693The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
3694that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
3695to read from the target. The default value is 2.
3696
3697* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
3698
3699By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
3700loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
3701stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
3702when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
3703in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
3704
3705Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
3706/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
3707automatically on hpux10.
3708
3709* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
3710
3711Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
3712
3713* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
3714
3715When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
3716may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
3717the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
3718every character. The default value is 1050.
3719
3720* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
3721
3722If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
3723a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
3724replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
3725details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
3726remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
3727to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
3728
3729* Speedups for remote debugging
3730
3731GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
3732the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
3733and more efficient S-record downloading.
3734
3735* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
3736
3737GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
3738Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
3739
3740*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
3741
3742* Psymtabs for XCOFF
3743
3744The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
3745can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
3746
3747* Remote targets use caching
3748
3749Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
3750remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
3751it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
3752debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
3753off' turns the the data cache off.
3754
3755* Remote targets may have threads
3756
3757The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
3758in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
3759gdb/remote.c for details.
3760
3761* NetROM support
3762
3763If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
3764support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
3765acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
3766write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
3767support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
3768another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
3769sequence is something like
3770
3771 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
3772 load <prog>
3773 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
3774
3775* Macintosh host
3776
3777GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
3778may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
3779it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
3780available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
3781device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
3782directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
3783scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
3784mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
3785
3786* Autoconf
3787
3788GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
3789but does simplify configuration and building.
3790
3791* hpux10
3792
3793GDB now supports hpux10.
3794
3795*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
3796
3797* New native configurations
3798
3799x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
3800x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
3801NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
3802Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
3803
3804* New targets
3805
3806A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3807HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
3808CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
3809PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
3810WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3811
3812* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
3813
3814GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
3815possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
3816filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
3817the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
3818if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
3819
3820* Arguments to user-defined commands
3821
3822User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
3823Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
3824trivial example:
3825define adder
3826 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
3827
3828To execute the command use:
3829adder 1 2 3
3830
3831Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
3832Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
3833use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
3834
3835* New `if' and `while' commands
3836
3837This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
3838commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
3839expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
3840execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
3841terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
3842`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
3843if the expression is zero.
3844
3845* Fortran source language mode
3846
3847GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
3848Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
3849variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
3850with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
3851Fortran compilers.
3852
3853* Better HPUX support
3854
3855Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
3856running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
3857processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
3858for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
3859that behavior do the following before running the program:
3860
3861 adb -w a.out
3862 __dld_flags?W 0x5
3863 control-d
3864
3865This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
3866To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
3867
3868 adb -w a.out
3869 __dld_flags?W 0x4
3870 control-d
3871
3872You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
3873the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
3874external linkage.
3875
3876GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
3877HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
3878
3879* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
3880
3881You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
3882commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
3883current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
3884"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
3885associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
3886configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
3887
3888* New DOS host serial code
3889
3890This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
3891no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
3892a PC's serial port.
3893
3894*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
3895
3896* New "complete" command
3897
3898This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
3899were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
3900
3901* Trailing space optional in prompt
3902
3903"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
3904allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
3905
3906* Breakpoint hit counts
3907
3908"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
3909has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
3910can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
3911to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
3912less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
3913that breakpoint.
3914
3915* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
3916
3917"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
3918an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
3919arrays actually contain only short strings.
3920
3921* Shared library breakpoints
3922
3923In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
3924breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
3925
3926* Hardware watchpoints
3927
3928There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
3929targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
3930
55241689 3931Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
3932
3933* Annotations
3934
3935Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
3936and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
3937
3938* Improved Irix 5 support
3939
3940GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
3941
3942* Improved HPPA support
3943
3944GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
3945
3946* New native configurations
3947
3948Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
3949HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3950Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
3951RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
3952
3953* New targets
3954
3955OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3956MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
3957Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
3958
3959* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
3960
3961There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
3962This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
3963
3964* Fixes
3965
3966As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
3967and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
3968
3969*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
3970
3971* Irix 5 is now supported
3972
3973* HPPA support
3974
3975GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
3976to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
3977GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
3978of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
3979can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
3980
3981
3982*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
3983
3984* User visible changes:
3985
3986* Remote Debugging
3987
3988The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
3989target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
3990debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
3991integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
3992debugging info for the mips target).
3993
3994* DEC Alpha native support
3995
3996GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
3997debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
3998work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
3999Alpha-specific notes.
4000
4001* Preliminary thread implementation
4002
4003GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4004
4005* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4006
4007This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4008to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4009for details).
4010
4011* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4012
4013This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4014mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4015call methods, ...etc.
4016
4017*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4018
4019 * User visible changes:
4020
4021Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4022supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4023other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4024somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4025
4026Filename completion now works.
4027
4028When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4029arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4030addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4031
4032All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4033vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4034should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4035your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4036to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4037
4038 * DEC alpha support
4039
4040This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4041cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4042
4043
4044*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4045
4046 * Testsuite
4047
4048This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4049The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4050via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4051
4052 * C++ demangling
4053
4054'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4055emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4056Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4057disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4058use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4059
4060 * Simulators
4061
4062GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4063So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4064Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4065
4066 * New targets supported
4067
4068H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4069H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4070SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4071Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4072IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4073
4074Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4075version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4076GO32 memory extender.
4077
4078 * New remote protocols
4079
4080MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4081
4082 * New source languages supported
4083
4084This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4085used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4086into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4087
4088
4089*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4090
4091 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4092
4093GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4094version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4095University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4096compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4097format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4098(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4099
4100Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4101
4102 * Faster and better demangling
4103
4104We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4105demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4106character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4107only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4108This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4109increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4110symbol lookups.
4111
4112`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4113from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4114compiler does not actually implement.
4115
4116 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4117
4118In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4119inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4120recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4121very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4122The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4123circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4124fix.
4125
4126The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4127release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4128
4129 * Improved configure script
4130
4131The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4132you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4133host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4134done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4135
4136We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4137version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4138`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4139The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4140only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4141We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4142
4143 * Documentation improvements
4144
4145There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4146produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4147before submitting changes.
4148
4149The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4150M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4151`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4152you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4153a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4154
4155*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4156We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4157been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4158or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4159`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4160around this problem.
4161
4162 * New features
4163
4164GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4165the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4166`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4167the target program.
4168
4169The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4170how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4171
4172 * New native hosts supported
4173
4174HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4175386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4176
4177 * New targets supported
4178
4179AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4180
4181 * New file formats supported
4182
4183BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4184HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4185
4186 * Major bug fixes
4187
4188Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4189
4190We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4191printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4192
4193We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4194for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4195release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4196
4197You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4198will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4199
4200We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4201for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4202especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4203libraries.
4204
4205The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4206information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4207command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4208any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4209when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4210
4211 * Internal improvements
4212
4213GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4214debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4215
4216GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4217Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4218symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4219contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4220shared code that handles any of them.
4221
4222 * New command line options
4223
4224We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4225
4226 * Mmalloc licensing
4227
4228The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4229General Public License.
4230
4231*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4232
4233 * Host/native/target split
4234
4235GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4236hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4237target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4238local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4239ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4240
4241The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4242GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4243is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4244code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4245any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4246built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4247handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4248
4249GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4250It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4251plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4252
4253 * New hosts supported
4254
4255HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4256386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4257386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4258
4259 * New targets supported
4260
4261Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
426268030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4263
4264 * New native hosts supported
4265
4266386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4267 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4268386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4269
4270 * New file formats supported
4271
4272BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4273supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4274format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4275
4276 * New commands
4277
4278`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4279`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4280These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4281
4282`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4283
4284You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4285scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4286prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4287executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4288
4289 * C++ improvements
4290
4291We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4292info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4293symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4294
4295Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4296
4297 * Major bug fixes
4298
4299The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4300fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4301by the compiler.
4302
4303We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4304support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4305
4306John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4307slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4308that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4309purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4310the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4311mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4312
4313Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4314about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4315completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4316we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4317
4318 * AMD 29k support
4319
4320A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4321specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4322calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4323usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4324in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4325
4326We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4327Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4328of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4329resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4330
4331 * Remote interfaces
4332
4333We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4334with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4335message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4336This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4337needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4338breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4339each instruction being stepped through.
4340
4341The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4342registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4343
4344There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4345find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4346Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4347processor with a serial port.
4348
4349 * Configuration
4350
4351Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4352`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4353supported, and what files each one uses.
4354
4355 * Library changes
4356
4357There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4358disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4359Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4360disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4361
4362The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4363Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4364can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4365grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4366
4367 * Documentation
4368
4369The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4370reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4371as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4372encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4373system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4374bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4375
4376And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4377
4378
4379*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4380
4381 * Better support for C++ function names
4382
4383GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4384names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4385(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4386single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4387Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4388
4389GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4390the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4391You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4392lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4393for the list of formats.
4394
4395 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4396
4397Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4398C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4399directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4400can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4401usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4402about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4403this problem.)
4404
4405 * New 'maintenance' command
4406
4407All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4408the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4409can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4410
4411 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4412 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4413 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4414 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4415 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4416 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4417
4418The following commands are new:
4419
4420 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4421 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4422 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4423
4424 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4425
4426We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4427(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4428be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4429read after argv processing.
4430
4431 * New hosts supported
4432
4433Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4434
55241689 4435GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4436
4437We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4438is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4439for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4440masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4441fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4442It costs extra.
4443
4444 * New targets supported
4445
4446Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4447
4448 * More smarts about finding #include files
4449
4450GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
4451all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
4452greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
4453especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
4454the one that contains your sources.
4455
4456We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
4457breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
4458try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
4459
4460 * Interesting infernals change
4461
4462GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
4463section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
4464target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
4465stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
4466
4467 * Bug fixes (of course!)
4468
4469There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
4470 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
4471 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
4472
4473See the ChangeLog for details.
4474
4475*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
4476
4477 * New machines supported (host and target)
4478
4479IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
4480
4481SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4482
4483 * New malloc package
4484
4485GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
4486Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
4487capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
4488This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
4489pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
4490more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
4491
4492 * info proc
4493
4494The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
4495'help info proc' for details.
4496
4497 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
4498
4499The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
4500Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
4501possible.
4502
4503 * File name changes for MS-DOS
4504
4505Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
4506support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
4507conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
4508environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
4509that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
4510in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
4511
4512 * Cross byte order fixes
4513
4514Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
4515targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
4516
4517 * New -mapped and -readnow options
4518
4519If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
4520system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
4521`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
4522program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
4523called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
4524Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
4525and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
4526the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
4527option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
4528starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
4529
4530You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
4531the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
4532information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
4533slower, but makes future operations faster.
4534
4535The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
4536build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
4537A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
4538use is:
4539
4540 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
4541
4542The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
4543It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
4544shared across multiple host platforms.
4545
4546 * longjmp() handling
4547
4548GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
4549siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
4550all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
4551platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
4552
4553 * Solaris 2.0
4554
4555Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
4556this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
4557reading symbols.
4558
4559 * Bug fixes
4560
4561As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
4562People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
4563crashes and trashed symbol tables.
4564
4565*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
4566
4567 * New machines supported (host and target)
4568
4569SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4570 (except core files)
4571BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
4572Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
4573
4574 * New machines supported (target)
4575
4576AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4577
4578 * C++ support
4579
4580GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
4581The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
4582per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
4583
4584GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
4585`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
4586extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
4587good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
4588will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
4589released.
4590
4591 * New features for SVR4
4592
4593GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
4594shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
4595only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
4596
4597The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
4598on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
4599it prints the address mappings of the process.
4600
4601If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
4602bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
4603
4604 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
4605
4606Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
4607now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
4608skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
4609make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
4610same code linked statically.
4611
4612 * New Getopt
4613
4614GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
4615version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
4616continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
4617Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
4618added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
4619future by other options that begin with the same letter.
4620
4621 * Bugs fixed
4622
4623The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4624Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4625See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4626
4627
4628*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
4629
4630 * New machines supported (host and target)
4631
4632Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
4633NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
4634Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4635
4636 * Almost SCO Unix support
4637
4638We had hoped to support:
4639SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
4640(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
4641that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
4642about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
4643
4644 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
4645
4646GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
4647debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
4648is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
4649send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
4650reqired (if any).
4651
4652 * New Readline
4653
4654GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
4655is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
4656required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
4657
4658 * Bugs fixed
4659
4660The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
4661Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
4662See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
4663
4664 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
4665
4666GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
4667supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
4668symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
4669
4670Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
4671mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
4672debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
4673mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
4674version 2.
4675
4676Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
4677really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
4678line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
4679variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
4680situation somewhat.
4681
4682When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
4683However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
4684methods.
4685
4686We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
4687DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
4688encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
4689
4690
4691*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
4692
4693 * Improved configuration
4694
4695Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
4696Porting BFD is simpler.
4697
4698 * Stepping improved
4699
4700The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
4701of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
4702in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
4703function that has debugging information is called within the line.
4704
4705 * Bug fixing
4706
4707Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
4708
4709 * New host supported (not target)
4710
4711Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
4712
4713
4714*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
4715
4716 * Multiple source language support
4717
4718GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
4719It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
4720and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
4721language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
4722You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
4723`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
4724
4725 * GDB and Modula-2
4726
4727GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
4728currently under development at the State University of New York at
4729Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
4730continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
4731
4732Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
4733debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
4734symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
4735
4736There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
4737in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
4738
4739 * set write on/off
4740
4741GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
4742a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
4743the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
4744by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
4745effect immediately.
4746
4747 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
4748
4749When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
4750shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
4751The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
4752examining core files.
4753
4754 * set listsize
4755
4756You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
4757The default is 10.
4758
4759 * New machines supported (host and target)
4760
4761SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4762Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
4763Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
4764
4765 * New hosts supported (not targets)
4766
4767IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
4768
4769 * New targets supported (not hosts)
4770
4771AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4772AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4773Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
4774
4775 * New remote interfaces
4776
4777AMD 29000 Adapt
4778AMD 29000 Minimon
4779
4780
4781*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
4782
4783 * New Facilities
4784
4785Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
4786
4787Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
4788target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
4789is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
4790remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
4791remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
4792also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
4793using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
4794stub on the target system.
4795
4796New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
4797
4798GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
4799library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
4800object file types such as a.out and coff.
4801
4802There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
4803refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
4804
4805
4806 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
4807
4808All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
4809by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
4810
4811For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
4812``Show prompt'' produces the response:
4813Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
4814
4815What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
4816print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
4817will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
4818all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
4819
4820confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
4821 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
4822 it is already running. Default is ON.
4823
4824editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
4825 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
4826 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
4827 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
4828 Default is ON.
4829
4830history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
4831 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
4832 or the value of the environment variable
4833 GDBHISTFILE.
4834
4835history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
4836 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
4837 HISTSIZE.
4838
4839history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
4840 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
4841 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
4842
4843history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
4844 history expansion will be performed on
4845 command line input. The default is OFF.
4846
4847radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
4848 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
4849 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
4850
4851height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
4852 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
4853 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4854 variable TERM.
4855
4856width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
4857 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
4858 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
4859 variable TERM.
4860
4861Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
4862``set width'' instead.
4863
4864print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
4865 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
4866 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
4867 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
4868
4869print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
4870 is OFF.
4871
4872print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
4873 "raw" form if off.
4874
4875print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
4876 like instructions.
4877
4878print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
4879
4880
4881 * Support for Epoch Environment.
4882
4883The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
4884new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
4885are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
4886window.
4887
4888
4889 * Support for Shared Libraries
4890
4891GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
4892Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
4893before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
4894happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
4895At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
4896from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
4897shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
4898It can be abbreviated ``share''.
4899
4900sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
4901 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
4902 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
4903
4904info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
4905
4906
4907 * Watchpoints
4908
4909A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
4910expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
4911tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
4912quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
4913problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
4914more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
4915
4916watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
4917
4918info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
4919
4920delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4921disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4922enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
4923
4924
4925 * C++ multiple inheritance
4926
4927When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
4928for C++ programs.
4929
4930 * C++ exception handling
4931
4932Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
4933ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
4934the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
4935handler's context).
4936
4937catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
4938 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
4939 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
4940
4941info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
4942 current stack frame.
4943
4944
4945 * Minor command changes
4946
4947The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
4948command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
4949is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
4950
4951The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
4952at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
4953frames without printing.
4954
4955 * New directory command
4956
4957'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
4958The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
4959about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
4960with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
4961find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
4962
4963 * Configuring GDB for compilation
4964
4965For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
4966for more details.
4967
4968GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
4969two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
4970Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
4971where the program that you are debugging will run.
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