* arm-dis.c (coprocessor): Alter fmsrr disassembly syntax.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
CommitLineData
c906108c
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
e374b601
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4*** Changes since GDB 6.5
5
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6* REMOVED features
7
8The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
9
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10* New remote packets
11
12qSupported:
13 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
14 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
15 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
16 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
17 target.
18
e374b601 19*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 20
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21* New targets
22
23Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
24
25Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
26
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27* New commands
28
29init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
30 only if it doesn't already have a value.
31
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32The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
33
34checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
35
36restart <n> Return the program state to a
37 previously saved state.
38
39info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
40
41delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
42
43set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
44 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
45
46info forks List forks of the user program that
47 are available to be debugged.
48
49fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
50 forks of the user program that are
51 available to be debugged.
52
53delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
54 that are available to be debugged (and
55 kill the forked process).
56
57detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
58 that are available to be debugged (and
59 allow the process to continue).
60
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61* New architecture
62
63Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
64
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65* Improved Windows host support
66
67GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
68native console support, and remote communications using either
69network sockets or serial ports.
70
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71* Improved Modula-2 language support
72
73GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
74basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
75pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
76printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
77written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
78GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
79
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80* REMOVED features
81
82The ARM rdi-share module.
83
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84The Netware NLM debug server.
85
53e5f3cf 86*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 87
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88* New native configurations
89
02a677ac 90OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
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91OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
92
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93* New targets
94
95Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
96
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97* New command line options
98
99--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
100--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
101 the child (debugged) program exited with.
102--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
103 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
104 specified multiple times and in conjunction
105 with the --command (-x) option.
106
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107* Deprecated commands removed
108
109The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
110removed:
111
112 Command Replacement
113 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
114 othernames set arm disassembler
115 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
116 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
117 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
118 regs info registers
119
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120* New BSD user-level threads support
121
122It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
123library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
124configurations are:
125
126FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
127FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
128OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
129
130Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
131are not yet supported.
132
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133* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
134(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
135
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136* REMOVED configurations and files
137
138VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 139Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 140National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 141
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142* New "set print array-indexes" command
143
144After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
145when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
146behavior.
147
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148* VAX floating point support
149
150GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
151
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152* User-defined command support
153
154In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
155to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
156section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
157
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158*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
159
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160* New command line option
161
162GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
163debugging.
164
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165* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
166
167GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
168information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
169by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
170proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
171to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 172
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173* Internationalization
174
175When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
176internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
177continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
178
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179* Ada
180
181Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
182implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
183into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
184
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185* New native configurations
186
187GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
188
189* Remote 'p' packet
190
191GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
192packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
193
194* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
195
196GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
197The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
198features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
199i386 application).
200
201GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
202compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
203continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
204configurations:
205
206hppa-*-hpux
207ia64-*-aix
208mips-*-irix*
209*-*-lynx
210mips-*-linux-gnu
211sds protocol
212xdr protocol
213powerpc bdm protocol
214
215Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
216made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
217
218* OBSOLETE configurations and files
219
220Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
221been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
222configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
223permanently REMOVED.
224
225h8300-*-*
226mcore-*-*
227mn10300-*-*
228ns32k-*-*
229sh64-*-*
230v850-*-*
231
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232*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
233
234* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
235
236When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
237heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
238been fixed.
239
240* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
241
242When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
243fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
244IRIX long double values).
245
246* VAX and "next"
247
248A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
249command. This problem has been fixed.
250
860660cb 251*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 252
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253* Fix for ``many threads''
254
255On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
256rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
257error message:
258
259 ptrace: No such process.
260 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
261
262This problem has been fixed.
263
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264* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
265
266Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
267GDB to dump core).
268
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269* New ``start'' command.
270
271This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
272
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273* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
274
275Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
276live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
277platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
278
279FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
280FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
281NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
282NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
283NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
284OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
285OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
286OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
287OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
288
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289* Signal trampoline code overhauled
290
291Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
292These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
293of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
294call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
295signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
296
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297Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
298features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
299include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 300
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301* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
302
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303* New native configurations
304
97dc871c 305GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 306OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
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307OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
308OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 309OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 310NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 311OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 312
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313* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
314
315GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
316The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
317including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
318migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
319compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
320work, was also included.
321
322GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
323module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
324
325h8300-*-*
326mcore-*-*
327mn10300-*-*
328ns32k-*-*
329sh64-*-*
330v850-*-*
331xstormy16-*-*
332
333Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
334made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
335
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336* REMOVED configurations and files
337
338Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
339Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
340Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
341Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
342Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
343AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
344Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
345decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
346riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
347sonymips mips-sony-*
348sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
349
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350*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
351
352* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
353
354The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
355GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
356command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
357program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
358with GDB".
359
360* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
361
362Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
363libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
364cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
365GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
366shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
367the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
368are created.
369
370Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
371
372* Fixed ISO-C build problems
373
374The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
375non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
376compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
377
378* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
379
380Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
381wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
382
383* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
384
385The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
386permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
387systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
388
389* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
390
391Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
392has been updated to use constant array sizes.
393
394* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
395
396GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
397its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
398panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
399
400* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
401
402When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
403by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
404not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
405
faae5abe 406*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 407
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408* Removed --with-mmalloc
409
410Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
411conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
412
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413* Changes in AMD64 configurations
414
415The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
416the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
417and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
418you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
419
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420* Revised SPARC target
421
422The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
423FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
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424support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
425from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
426(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 427
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428* New C++ demangler
429
430GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
431names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
432with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
433programs.
434
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435* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
436
437GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
438arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
439encountered these.
440
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441* C++ nested types and namespaces
442
443GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
444improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
445is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
446Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
447namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
448"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
449frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
450if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
451GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
452
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453* New native configurations
454
455NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 456OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 457OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
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458OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
459OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 460
b4b4b794
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461* New debugging protocols
462
463M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
464
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465* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
466
467The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
468and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
469tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
470
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471* OBSOLETE configurations and files
472
473Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
474been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
475configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
476permanently REMOVED.
477
478Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
479Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
480Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
481Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
482Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
483AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
484Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
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485decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
486riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
487sonymips mips-sony-*
488sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 489
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490* REMOVED configurations and files
491
492SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
493SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
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494Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
495Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
496H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
497HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
498HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
499HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
500PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 501386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
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502Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
503 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
504 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
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505SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
506SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
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AC
507Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
508Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 509
c7f1390e
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510*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
511
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512* Objective-C
513
514Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
515integrated into GDB.
516
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517* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
518
519DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
520information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
521By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
522backtraces.
523
524The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
525have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
526DWARF 2 CFI support.
527
528* Hosted file I/O.
529
530GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
531file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
532remote protocol documentation for details.
533
534* All targets using the new architecture framework.
535
536All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
537architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
538to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
539ppc32 on ppc64).
540
541* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
542
543GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
544per-thread variables.
545
546* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
547
548GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
549GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
550
551* Separate debug info.
552
553GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
554automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
555of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
556system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
557and optional debug files.
558
559* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
560
561DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
562describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
563debugger.
564
565GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
566for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
567
568* Java
569
570A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
571Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
572considered "useable".
573
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574* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
575
576The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
577commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
578kernel.
579
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580* GDB supports logging output to a file
581
582There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
583used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 584
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585* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
586
587The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
588disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
589command.
590
e286caf2 591* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
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592
593The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
594registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
595
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596* Profiling support
597
598A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
599be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
600session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
601"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
602data, for more informative profiling results.
603
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604* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
605
606The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
607option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 608"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
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609
610Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
611removed.
612
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613Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
614Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
615Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
616 in a subsequent -var-update.
617
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618* New native configurations.
619
620FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
621
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622* Multi-arched targets.
623
b4263afa 624HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 625Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 626
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627* OBSOLETE configurations and files
628
629Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
630been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
631configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
632permanently REMOVED.
633
8b0e5691 634Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 635Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 636H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
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AC
637HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
638HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
639HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 640PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
641Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
642 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
643 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
644Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
645Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 646
5835abe7
NC
647* REMOVED configurations and files
648
649V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
650Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
651IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
652i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
653i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
654i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
655HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
656 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
657 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
658Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
659Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
660Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
661OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
662I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 663
a094c6fb
AC
664* MIPS $fp behavior changed
665
666The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
667the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
668context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
669address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
670The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
671
299ffc64 672*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 673
46248966
AC
674* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
675
676When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
677`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
678in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
679library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
680shared libs like mad''.
681
b9d14705 682* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 683
b9d14705
DJ
684Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
685the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
686arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
687powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 688
e0e9281e
JB
689* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
690
691GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
692and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
693they expand.
694
dd73b9bb
AC
695The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
696invocations in expression, and shows the result.
697
698The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
699macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
700
e0e9281e
JB
701Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
702information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
703your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
704information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
705
2250ee0c
CV
706* Multi-arched targets.
707
6e3ba3b8
JT
708DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
709DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 710NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 711National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
712Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
713Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 714
cd9bfe15 715* New targets.
e33ce519 716
456f8b9d
DB
717Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
718
e33ce519 719
da8ca43d
JT
720* New native configurations
721
722Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 723SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 724MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 725UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 726
cd9bfe15
AC
727* OBSOLETE configurations and files
728
729Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
730been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
731configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
732permanently REMOVED.
733
92eb23c5 734Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 735OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 736IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 737Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 738Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 739Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
740i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
741i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
742i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
743HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
744 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
745 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 746I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 747
db034ac5
AC
748* OBSOLETE languages
749
750CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
751
cd9bfe15
AC
752* REMOVED configurations and files
753
754AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
755A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
756AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
757AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
758AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
759
760testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
761
20f01a46
DH
762* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
763
764This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
765commands. The default is 1024.
766
a5941fbf
MK
767* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
768
769Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
770
89743e04
MS
771* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
772
773These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
774to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
775from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 776
9fb14e79
JB
777* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
778
779The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
780including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
781of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
782
2037aebb
AC
783*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
784
785* New targets.
786
787Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
788
789* Bug fixes
790
791gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
792mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
793Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
794
795gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
796dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
797Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
798
799Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
800Surprisingly enough, it works now.
801By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
802
803i386 hardware watchpoint support:
804avoid misses on second run for some targets.
805By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
806
37057839 807*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 808
1a703748
MS
809* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
810
811This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
812really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
813In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
814target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
815This can be a significant performance improvement on some
816(notably embedded) targets.
817
cefd4ef5
MS
818* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
819
55241689
AC
820This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
821process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
822GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
823hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 824
352ed7b4
MS
825* New command line option
826
827GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
828
829* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
830
831There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
832command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
833a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
834be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
835open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
836issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
837a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
838it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
839GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
840is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
841
fe419ffc
RE
842* Changes in ARM configurations.
843
844Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
845configuration is fully multi-arch.
846
eb7cedd9
MK
847* New native configurations
848
fe419ffc 849ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 850x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 851AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 852Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 853
c9f63e6b
CV
854* New targets
855
856Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
857
9b4ff276
AC
858* OBSOLETE configurations and files
859
860Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
861been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
862configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
863permanently REMOVED.
864
865AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
866A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
867AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
868AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
869AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
870
b4ceaee6 871testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 872
e2caac18
AC
873* REMOVED configurations and files
874
875TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 876WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
877PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
878PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
879PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 880Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
881Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
882 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 883SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 884Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
885Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
886ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 887Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 888
c2a727fa
TT
889* Changes to command line processing
890
891The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
892for the inferior from gdb's command line.
893
467d8519
TT
894* Changes to key bindings
895
896There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
897
7072a954
AC
898*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
899
900Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
901
902Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
903corrupted.
904
905Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
906
907Numerous documentation fixes.
908
909Numerous testsuite fixes.
910
34f47bc4 911*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
912
913* New native configurations
914
915Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
916x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 917MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
918MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
919ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 920s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 921
bf64bfd6
AC
922* New targets
923
def90278 924Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 925CRIS cris-axis
55241689 926UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 927
17e78a56 928* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
929
930x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 931Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
932Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
933 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
934TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
935WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 936Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
937PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
938PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
939PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 940SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
941Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
942ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 943Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 944
17e78a56
AC
945stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
946kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
947
7fcca85b
AC
948Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
949been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
950configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
951permanently REMOVED.
952
a196c81c 953* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
954
955Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
956Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
957Pyramid pyramid-*-*
958ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
959Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 960ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 961
6d6b80e5 962* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 963
6d6b80e5 964GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
965sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
966present.
967
bf64bfd6
AC
968* Other news:
969
e23194cb
EZ
970* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
971
972* The MI enabled by default.
973
974The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
975revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
976engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
977using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
978which is now deprecated.
979
980* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
981
982GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
983main features are supported:
984
985 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
986
987 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
988 extension;
989
990 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
991
992 - a Pascal expression parser.
993
994However, some important features are not yet supported.
995
996 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
997
998 - there are some problems with boolean types;
999
1000 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1001 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1002
1003 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1004
1005 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1006
1007* Changes in completion.
1008
1009Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1010to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1011users expect at the shell prompt.
1012
1013Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1014`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1015program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1016files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1017be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1018considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1019name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1020
1021`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1022
1023* New platform-independent commands:
1024
1025It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1026hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1027documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1028
1029* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1030
d7275149
MK
1031Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1032revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1033many threads as your system allows you to have.
1034
e23194cb
EZ
1035Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1036
d7275149
MK
1037Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1038multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
1039
1040* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
1041
1042Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1043
e23194cb
EZ
1044GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1045debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1046supported.)
1047
1048* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1049
1050Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1051breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1052implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1053put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1054and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1055registers.
1056
1057The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1058debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1059watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1060
1061* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1062
1063New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1064the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1065
1066New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1067display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1068IDT.
1069
1070New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1071from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1072New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1073a given linear address.
1074
1075GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1076program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1077which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1078
1079DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1080
6c56c069
EZ
1081It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1082
e23194cb
EZ
1083* Changes in documentation.
1084
1085All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1086Documentation License.
1087
1088Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1089manual.
1090
1091TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1092
1093Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1094manual.
1095
1096The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1097documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1098hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
1099
5d6640b1
AC
1100* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
1101
1102The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
1103``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
1104contents of this file.
1105
1a1d8446
AC
1106* gdba.el deleted
1107
1108GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 1109
9debab2f 1110*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 1111
c63ce875
EZ
1112* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
1113
1114Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
1115programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
1116displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
1117greater level of detail.
1118
1119* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
1120
1121It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
1122bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
1123on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
1124written.
1125
1126* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
1127
1128The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
1129necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
1130machines ``out of the box''.
1131
1132The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
1133possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
1134signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
1135would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
1136interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
1137
1138It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
1139standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
1140even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
1141and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
1142terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
1143
1144The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
1145enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
1146also works.
1147
1148DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
1149GDB.
1150
1151It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
1152directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
1153times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
1154breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
1155
ed9a39eb
JM
1156* New native configurations
1157
1158ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 1159PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 1160
7a292a7a
SS
1161* New targets
1162
96baa820 1163Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
1164x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
1165PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
1166TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1167
085dd6e6
JM
1168* OBSOLETE configurations
1169
1170Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1171Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 1172Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 1173ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 1174Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 1175
9debab2f
AC
1176Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1177but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1178these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1179be permanently REMOVED.
1180
5330533d
SS
1181* Gould support removed
1182
1183Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
1184
bc9e5bbf
AC
1185* New features for SVR4
1186
1187On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
1188without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
1189load symbols from the running process's executable file.
1190
1191* Many C++ enhancements
1192
1193C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
1194in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
1195
adf40b2e
JM
1196* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
1197
1198A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
1199sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
1200with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
1201``|<program> <args>'' vis:
1202
1203 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
1204 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
1205
43e526b9
JM
1206* MIPS 64 remote protocol
1207
1208A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
1209expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
1210instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
1211
1212The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
1213added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1214
96baa820
JM
1215* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
1216
1217The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
1218``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
1219include ``set remote P-packet''.
1220
11cf8741
JM
1221* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
1222
1223The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
1224accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
1225``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
1226
7876dd43
DB
1227* ``apropos'' command added.
1228
1229The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
1230documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
1231try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
1232
bc9e5bbf
AC
1233* New MI interface
1234
1235A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
1236interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
1237process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
1238"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
1239enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
1240
1241 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
1242
c906108c
SS
1243*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1244
1245* New native configurations
1246
1247HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1248HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 1249M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
1250
1251* New targets
1252
1253Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1254Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1255Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1256
1257* OBSOLETE configurations
1258
1259Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1260
1261Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1262but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1263these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1264be permanently REMOVED.
1265
1266* ANSI/ISO C
1267
1268As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1269buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1270containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1271use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1272available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1273configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1274information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1275already.
1276
1277* Readline 2.2
1278
1279GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1280
1281* set extension-language
1282
1283You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1284languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1285you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1286 set extension-language .c c++
1287The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1288and their associated languages.
1289
1290* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1291
1292When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1293you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1294PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1295
1296 set processor NAME
1297
1298sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1299following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1300
1301 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1302 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1303 403 IBM PowerPC 403
1304 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1305 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1306 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1307 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1308 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1309 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1310 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1311 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1312
1313At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1314special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1315registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1316only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1317
1318* HP-UX support
1319
1320Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1321more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1322library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1323support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1324for xdb and dbx commands.
1325
1326* Catchpoints
1327
1328HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1329generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1330to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1331
1332This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1333argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1334output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1335
1336* Debugging across forks
1337
1338On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1339in the inferior.
1340
1341* TUI
1342
1343HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1344it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1345configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1346
1347* GDB remote protocol additions
1348
1349A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1350Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1351fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1352allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1353
1354For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1355full 64-bit address. The command
1356
1357 set remoteaddresssize 32
1358
1359can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1360the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1361will be discarded.
1362
1363In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1364command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1365
1366 maint packet heythere
1367
1368sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1369disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1370time.
1371
1372The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1373target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1374downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1375
1376* Tracing can collect general expressions
1377
1378You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1379further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1380doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1381
1382* mask-address variable for Mips
1383
1384For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1385a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1386of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1387
1388* Higher serial baud rates
1389
1390GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1391230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1392to achieve all of these rates.)
1393
1394* i960 simulator
1395
1396The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1397builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1398
1399
1400*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1401
1402* New native configurations
1403
1404Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1405Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1406Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1407PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1408PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1409Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1410Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1411
1412* New targets
1413
1414Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1415Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1416Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1417Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1418MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1419MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1420MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1421Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1422Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1423Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1424NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1425
1426* New debugging protocols
1427
1428ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1429M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1430DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1431PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1432PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1433Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1434
1435* DWARF 2
1436
1437All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1438format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1439information.
1440
1441* Java frontend
1442
1443GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1444only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1445
1446* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1447
1448For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1449loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1450locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1451
1452* Live range splitting
1453
1454GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1455range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1456more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1457
1458* Hurd support
1459
1460GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1461updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1462
1463* ARM Thumb support
1464
1465GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1466instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1467instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1468accordingly.
1469
1470* MIPS16 support
1471
1472GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1473instruction set.
1474
1475* Overlay support
1476
1477GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1478linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1479will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1480control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1481additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1482in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1483
1484* info symbol
1485
1486The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1487the symbol at the specified address.
1488
1489* Trace support
1490
1491The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1492asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1493extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1494includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1495file tracepoint.c for more details.
1496
1497* MIPS simulator
1498
1499Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1500by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1501of most MIPS variants.
1502
1503* Sparc simulator
1504
1505Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1506by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1507Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1508
1509* set architecture
1510
1511For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1512basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1513architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1514the possible architectures.
1515
1516*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1517
1518* New native configurations
1519
1520Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1521M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1522PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1523PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1524PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1525RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1526
1527* New targets
1528
1529ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1530I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1531MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1532MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1533PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1534Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
1535Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1536
1537* PowerPC simulator
1538
1539The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1540contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1541PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1542basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1543performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1544
1545* Solaris 2.5
1546
1547GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1548
1549* Windows 95/NT native
1550
1551GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1552To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1553which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1554Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1555ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1556
1557* dont-repeat command
1558
1559If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1560command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1561useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1562extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1563
1564* Send break instead of ^C
1565
1566The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1567rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1568GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1569
1570* Remote protocol timeout
1571
1572The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1573that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1574to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1575
1576* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1577
1578By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1579loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1580stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1581when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1582in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1583
1584Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1585/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1586automatically on hpux10.
1587
1588* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1589
1590Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1591
1592* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1593
1594When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1595may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1596the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1597every character. The default value is 1050.
1598
1599* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1600
1601If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1602a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1603replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1604details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1605remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1606to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1607
1608* Speedups for remote debugging
1609
1610GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1611the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1612and more efficient S-record downloading.
1613
1614* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1615
1616GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1617Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1618
1619*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1620
1621* Psymtabs for XCOFF
1622
1623The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1624can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1625
1626* Remote targets use caching
1627
1628Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1629remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1630it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1631debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1632off' turns the the data cache off.
1633
1634* Remote targets may have threads
1635
1636The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1637in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1638gdb/remote.c for details.
1639
1640* NetROM support
1641
1642If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1643support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1644acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1645write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1646support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1647another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1648sequence is something like
1649
1650 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1651 load <prog>
1652 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1653
1654* Macintosh host
1655
1656GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1657may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1658it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1659available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1660device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1661directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1662scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1663mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1664
1665* Autoconf
1666
1667GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1668but does simplify configuration and building.
1669
1670* hpux10
1671
1672GDB now supports hpux10.
1673
1674*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1675
1676* New native configurations
1677
1678x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1679x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1680NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1681Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1682
1683* New targets
1684
1685A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1686HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1687CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1688PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1689WDC 65816 w65-*-*
1690
1691* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1692
1693GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1694possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1695filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1696the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1697if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1698
1699* Arguments to user-defined commands
1700
1701User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1702Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1703trivial example:
1704define adder
1705 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1706
1707To execute the command use:
1708adder 1 2 3
1709
1710Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1711Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1712use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1713
1714* New `if' and `while' commands
1715
1716This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1717commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1718expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1719execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1720terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1721`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1722if the expression is zero.
1723
1724* Fortran source language mode
1725
1726GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1727Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1728variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1729with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1730Fortran compilers.
1731
1732* Better HPUX support
1733
1734Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1735running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1736processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1737for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1738that behavior do the following before running the program:
1739
1740 adb -w a.out
1741 __dld_flags?W 0x5
1742 control-d
1743
1744This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1745To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1746
1747 adb -w a.out
1748 __dld_flags?W 0x4
1749 control-d
1750
1751You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1752the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1753external linkage.
1754
1755GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1756HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1757
1758* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1759
1760You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1761commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1762current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1763"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1764associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1765configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1766
1767* New DOS host serial code
1768
1769This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1770no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1771a PC's serial port.
1772
1773*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1774
1775* New "complete" command
1776
1777This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1778were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1779
1780* Trailing space optional in prompt
1781
1782"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1783allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1784
1785* Breakpoint hit counts
1786
1787"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1788has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1789can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1790to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1791less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1792that breakpoint.
1793
1794* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1795
1796"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1797an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1798arrays actually contain only short strings.
1799
1800* Shared library breakpoints
1801
1802In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1803breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1804
1805* Hardware watchpoints
1806
1807There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1808targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1809
55241689 1810Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
1811
1812* Annotations
1813
1814Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1815and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1816
1817* Improved Irix 5 support
1818
1819GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1820
1821* Improved HPPA support
1822
1823GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1824
1825* New native configurations
1826
1827Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1828HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1829Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1830RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1831
1832* New targets
1833
1834OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1835MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1836Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
1837
1838* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1839
1840There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1841This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1842
1843* Fixes
1844
1845As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1846and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1847
1848*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1849
1850* Irix 5 is now supported
1851
1852* HPPA support
1853
1854GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1855to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1856GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1857of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1858can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1859
1860
1861*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1862
1863* User visible changes:
1864
1865* Remote Debugging
1866
1867The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1868target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1869debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1870integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1871debugging info for the mips target).
1872
1873* DEC Alpha native support
1874
1875GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1876debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1877work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1878Alpha-specific notes.
1879
1880* Preliminary thread implementation
1881
1882GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1883
1884* LynxOS native and target support for 386
1885
1886This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1887to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1888for details).
1889
1890* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1891
1892This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1893mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1894call methods, ...etc.
1895
1896*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1897
1898 * User visible changes:
1899
1900Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1901supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1902other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1903somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1904
1905Filename completion now works.
1906
1907When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1908arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1909addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1910
1911All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1912vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1913should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1914your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1915to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1916
1917 * DEC alpha support
1918
1919This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1920cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1921
1922
1923*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1924
1925 * Testsuite
1926
1927This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1928The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1929via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1930
1931 * C++ demangling
1932
1933'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1934emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1935Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1936disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1937use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1938
1939 * Simulators
1940
1941GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1942So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1943Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1944
1945 * New targets supported
1946
1947H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1948H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1949SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1950Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1951IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1952
1953Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1954version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1955GO32 memory extender.
1956
1957 * New remote protocols
1958
1959MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1960
1961 * New source languages supported
1962
1963This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1964used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1965into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1966
1967
1968*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1969
1970 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1971
1972GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1973version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1974University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1975compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1976format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1977(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1978
1979Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1980
1981 * Faster and better demangling
1982
1983We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1984demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1985character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1986only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1987This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1988increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1989symbol lookups.
1990
1991`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1992from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1993compiler does not actually implement.
1994
1995 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1996
1997In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1998inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1999recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2000very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2001The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2002circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2003fix.
2004
2005The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2006release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2007
2008 * Improved configure script
2009
2010The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2011you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2012host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2013done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2014
2015We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2016version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2017`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2018The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2019only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2020We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2021
2022 * Documentation improvements
2023
2024There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2025produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2026before submitting changes.
2027
2028The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2029M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2030`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2031you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2032a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2033
2034*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2035We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2036been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2037or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2038`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2039around this problem.
2040
2041 * New features
2042
2043GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2044the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2045`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2046the target program.
2047
2048The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2049how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2050
2051 * New native hosts supported
2052
2053HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2054386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2055
2056 * New targets supported
2057
2058AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2059
2060 * New file formats supported
2061
2062BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2063HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2064
2065 * Major bug fixes
2066
2067Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2068
2069We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2070printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2071
2072We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2073for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2074release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2075
2076You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2077will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2078
2079We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2080for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2081especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2082libraries.
2083
2084The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2085information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2086command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2087any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2088when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2089
2090 * Internal improvements
2091
2092GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2093debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2094
2095GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2096Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2097symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2098contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2099shared code that handles any of them.
2100
2101 * New command line options
2102
2103We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
2104
2105 * Mmalloc licensing
2106
2107The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
2108General Public License.
2109
2110*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
2111
2112 * Host/native/target split
2113
2114GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
2115hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
2116target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
2117local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
2118ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
2119
2120The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
2121GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
2122is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
2123code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
2124any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
2125built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
2126handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
2127
2128GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
2129It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
2130plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
2131
2132 * New hosts supported
2133
2134HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
2135386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2136386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
2137
2138 * New targets supported
2139
2140Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
214168030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
2142
2143 * New native hosts supported
2144
2145386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
2146 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
2147386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
2148
2149 * New file formats supported
2150
2151BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
2152supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
2153format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
2154
2155 * New commands
2156
2157`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
2158`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
2159These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
2160
2161`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
2162
2163You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
2164scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
2165prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
2166executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
2167
2168 * C++ improvements
2169
2170We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
2171info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
2172symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
2173
2174Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
2175
2176 * Major bug fixes
2177
2178The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
2179fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
2180by the compiler.
2181
2182We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
2183support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
2184
2185John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
2186slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
2187that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
2188purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
2189the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
2190mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
2191
2192Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
2193about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
2194completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
2195we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
2196
2197 * AMD 29k support
2198
2199A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
2200specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
2201calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
2202usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
2203in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
2204
2205We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
2206Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
2207of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
2208resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
2209
2210 * Remote interfaces
2211
2212We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
2213with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
2214message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
2215This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
2216needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
2217breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
2218each instruction being stepped through.
2219
2220The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
2221registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
2222
2223There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
2224find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
2225Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
2226processor with a serial port.
2227
2228 * Configuration
2229
2230Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
2231`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
2232supported, and what files each one uses.
2233
2234 * Library changes
2235
2236There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
2237disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
2238Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
2239disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
2240
2241The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
2242Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
2243can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
2244grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2245
2246 * Documentation
2247
2248The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2249reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2250as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2251encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2252system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2253bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2254
2255And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2256
2257
2258*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2259
2260 * Better support for C++ function names
2261
2262GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2263names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2264(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2265single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2266Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2267
2268GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2269the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2270You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2271lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2272for the list of formats.
2273
2274 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2275
2276Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2277C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2278directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2279can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2280usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2281about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2282this problem.)
2283
2284 * New 'maintenance' command
2285
2286All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2287the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2288can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2289
2290 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2291 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2292 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2293 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2294 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2295 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2296
2297The following commands are new:
2298
2299 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2300 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2301 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2302
2303 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2304
2305We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2306(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2307be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2308read after argv processing.
2309
2310 * New hosts supported
2311
2312Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2313
55241689 2314GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
2315
2316We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2317is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2318for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2319masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2320fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2321It costs extra.
2322
2323 * New targets supported
2324
2325Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2326
2327 * More smarts about finding #include files
2328
2329GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2330all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2331greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2332especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2333the one that contains your sources.
2334
2335We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2336breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2337try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2338
2339 * Interesting infernals change
2340
2341GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2342section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2343target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2344stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2345
2346 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2347
2348There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2349 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2350 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2351
2352See the ChangeLog for details.
2353
2354*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2355
2356 * New machines supported (host and target)
2357
2358IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2359
2360SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2361
2362 * New malloc package
2363
2364GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2365Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2366capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2367This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2368pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2369more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2370
2371 * info proc
2372
2373The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2374'help info proc' for details.
2375
2376 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2377
2378The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2379Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2380possible.
2381
2382 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2383
2384Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2385support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2386conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2387environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2388that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2389in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2390
2391 * Cross byte order fixes
2392
2393Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2394targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2395
2396 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2397
2398If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2399system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2400`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2401program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2402called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2403Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2404and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2405the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2406option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2407starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2408
2409You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2410the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2411information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2412slower, but makes future operations faster.
2413
2414The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2415build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2416A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2417use is:
2418
2419 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2420
2421The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2422It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2423shared across multiple host platforms.
2424
2425 * longjmp() handling
2426
2427GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2428siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2429all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2430platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2431
2432 * Solaris 2.0
2433
2434Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2435this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2436reading symbols.
2437
2438 * Bug fixes
2439
2440As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2441People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2442crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2443
2444*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2445
2446 * New machines supported (host and target)
2447
2448SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2449 (except core files)
2450BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2451Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2452
2453 * New machines supported (target)
2454
2455AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2456
2457 * C++ support
2458
2459GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2460The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2461per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2462
2463GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2464`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2465extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2466good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2467will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2468released.
2469
2470 * New features for SVR4
2471
2472GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2473shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2474only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2475
2476The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2477on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2478it prints the address mappings of the process.
2479
2480If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2481bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2482
2483 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2484
2485Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2486now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2487skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2488make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2489same code linked statically.
2490
2491 * New Getopt
2492
2493GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2494version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2495continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2496Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2497added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2498future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2499
2500 * Bugs fixed
2501
2502The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2503Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2504See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2505
2506
2507*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2508
2509 * New machines supported (host and target)
2510
2511Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2512NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2513Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2514
2515 * Almost SCO Unix support
2516
2517We had hoped to support:
2518SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2519(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2520that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2521about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2522
2523 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2524
2525GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2526debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2527is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2528send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2529reqired (if any).
2530
2531 * New Readline
2532
2533GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2534is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2535required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2536
2537 * Bugs fixed
2538
2539The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2540Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2541See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2542
2543 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2544
2545GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2546supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2547symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2548
2549Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2550mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2551debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2552mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2553version 2.
2554
2555Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2556really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2557line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2558variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2559situation somewhat.
2560
2561When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2562However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2563methods.
2564
2565We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2566DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2567encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2568
2569
2570*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2571
2572 * Improved configuration
2573
2574Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2575Porting BFD is simpler.
2576
2577 * Stepping improved
2578
2579The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2580of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2581in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2582function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2583
2584 * Bug fixing
2585
2586Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2587
2588 * New host supported (not target)
2589
2590Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2591
2592
2593*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2594
2595 * Multiple source language support
2596
2597GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2598It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2599and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2600language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2601You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2602`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2603
2604 * GDB and Modula-2
2605
2606GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2607currently under development at the State University of New York at
2608Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2609continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2610
2611Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2612debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2613symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2614
2615There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2616in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2617
2618 * set write on/off
2619
2620GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2621a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2622the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2623by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2624effect immediately.
2625
2626 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2627
2628When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2629shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2630The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2631examining core files.
2632
2633 * set listsize
2634
2635You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2636The default is 10.
2637
2638 * New machines supported (host and target)
2639
2640SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2641Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2642Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2643
2644 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2645
2646IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2647
2648 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2649
2650AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2651AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2652Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2653
2654 * New remote interfaces
2655
2656AMD 29000 Adapt
2657AMD 29000 Minimon
2658
2659
2660*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2661
2662 * New Facilities
2663
2664Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2665
2666Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2667target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2668is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2669remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2670remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2671also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2672using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2673stub on the target system.
2674
2675New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2676
2677GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2678library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2679object file types such as a.out and coff.
2680
2681There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2682refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2683
2684
2685 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2686
2687All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2688by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2689
2690For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2691``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2692Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2693
2694What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2695print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2696will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2697all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2698
2699confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2700 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2701 it is already running. Default is ON.
2702
2703editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2704 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2705 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2706 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2707 Default is ON.
2708
2709history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2710 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2711 or the value of the environment variable
2712 GDBHISTFILE.
2713
2714history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2715 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2716 HISTSIZE.
2717
2718history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2719 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2720 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2721
2722history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2723 history expansion will be performed on
2724 command line input. The default is OFF.
2725
2726radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2727 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2728 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2729
2730height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2731 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2732 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2733 variable TERM.
2734
2735width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2736 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2737 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2738 variable TERM.
2739
2740Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2741``set width'' instead.
2742
2743print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2744 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2745 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2746 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2747
2748print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2749 is OFF.
2750
2751print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2752 "raw" form if off.
2753
2754print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2755 like instructions.
2756
2757print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2758
2759
2760 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2761
2762The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2763new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2764are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2765window.
2766
2767
2768 * Support for Shared Libraries
2769
2770GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2771Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2772before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2773happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2774At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2775from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2776shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2777It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2778
2779sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2780 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2781 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2782
2783info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2784
2785
2786 * Watchpoints
2787
2788A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2789expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2790tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2791quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2792problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2793more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2794
2795watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2796
2797info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2798
2799delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2800disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2801enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2802
2803
2804 * C++ multiple inheritance
2805
2806When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2807for C++ programs.
2808
2809 * C++ exception handling
2810
2811Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2812ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2813the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2814handler's context).
2815
2816catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2817 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2818 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2819
2820info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2821 current stack frame.
2822
2823
2824 * Minor command changes
2825
2826The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2827command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2828is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2829
2830The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2831at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2832frames without printing.
2833
2834 * New directory command
2835
2836'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2837The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2838about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2839with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2840find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2841
2842 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2843
2844For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2845for more details.
2846
2847GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2848two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2849Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2850where the program that you are debugging will run.
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