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[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
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1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
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4*** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
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6* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
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9* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
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17* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
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19* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
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21* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
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35* Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38
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39* New targets
40
41Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
42Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
42059f0e 43Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
a1217d97 44
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45* Removed native configurations
46
47Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
48been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
49
50arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
51i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
53i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
54m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
55sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57
bd712aed 58* New commands:
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59catch rethrow
60 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
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61maint check-psymtabs
62 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
63maint check-symtabs
64 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
65maint expand-symtabs
66 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
b340913d 67
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68show configuration
69 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
70
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71maint set|show per-command
72maint set|show per-command space
73maint set|show per-command time
74maint set|show per-command symtab
75 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
76
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77* New options
78
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79set debug symfile off|on
80show debug symfile
81 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
82 symbol tables within those files
83
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84set print raw frame-arguments
85show print raw frame-arguments
86 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
87 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
88
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89set remote trace-status-packet
90show remote trace-status-packet
91 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
92
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93set debug nios2
94show debug nios2
95 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
96
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97set range-stepping
98show range-stepping
99 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
100
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101* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
102 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
103 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
104 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
105 "set height 0".
106
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107* New command-line options
108--configuration
109 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
110
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111* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
112 buffer in Common Trace Format.
113
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114* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
115 GDB command gcore.
116
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117* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
118
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119* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
120 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
121
122* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
123 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
124
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125* MI changes
126
127 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
128 Trace Format now.
129
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130 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
131
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132 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
133 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
134 are displayed.
135
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136 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
137 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
138
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139 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
140 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
141 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
142
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143 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
144 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
145 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
146 main subprogram.
147
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148* New system-wide configuration scripts
149 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
150 configuration scripts for the following systems:
151 ** ElinOS
152 ** Wind River Linux
153
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154* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
155 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
156 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
157 below.
158
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159* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
160 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
161
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162* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
163 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
164 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
165
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166* New remote packets
167
168vCont;r
169
170 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
171 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
172 involvemement at each single-step.
173
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174qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
175 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
176 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
177 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
178 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
179 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
180 speedup.
181
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182* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
183
184 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
185 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
186
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187 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
188 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
189 trace state variables.
190
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191 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
192 target.
193
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194* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
195 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
196
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197* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
198
2d450646 199*** Changes in GDB 7.6
80c8d323 200
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201* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
202 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
203 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
204 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
205
206set|show record full insn-number-max
207set|show record full stop-at-limit
208set|show record full memory-query
209
210* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
211 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
212 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
213 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
214 This new recording method can be enabled using:
215
216record btrace
217
218 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
219 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
220
221* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
222 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
223 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
224
225record instruction-history prints the execution history at
226 instruction granularity
227
228record function-call-history prints the execution history at
229 function granularity
230
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231* New native configurations
232
51d66578 233ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 234FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
4f4352f7 235x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 236Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
543bf33d 237
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238* New targets
239
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240ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
241ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
249729c4 242Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
3c095f49 243x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
ea5f3910 244Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
249729c4 245
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246* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
247 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
248 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
249 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
250 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
251 --data-directory command-line option.
252
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253* New command line options:
254
255-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
256 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
257
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258* Removed command line options
259
260-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
261 Emacs.
262
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263* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
264 type formatting.
265
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266* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
267
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268* Python scripting
269
270 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
271
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272 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
273
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274 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
275
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276 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
277
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278 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
279 of architecture in the Python API.
280
281 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
282 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
283
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284* New Python-based convenience functions:
285
286 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
287 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
288 ** $_strlen(str)
289 ** $_regex(str, regex)
290
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291* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
292 given an argument.
293
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294* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
295 default for GCC since November 2000.
296
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297* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
298
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299* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
300 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
301
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302* New configure options
303
304--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
305 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
306 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
307 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
308 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
309 options allow the user to override that default.
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310--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
311 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
312 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
23a80689 313
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314* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
315
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316catch signal
317 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
318 conditions to be attached.
319
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320maint info bfds
321 List the BFDs known to GDB.
322
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323python-interactive [command]
324pi [command]
325 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
326 and print the result of expressions.
327
328py [command]
329 "py" is a new alias for "python".
330
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331enable type-printer [name]...
332disable type-printer [name]...
333 Enable or disable type printers.
334
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335* Removed commands
336
337 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
338 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
339 instead.
340
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341* New options
342
343set print type methods (on|off)
344show print type methods
345 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
346 The default is to show them.
347
348set print type typedefs (on|off)
349show print type typedefs
350 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
351 The default is to show them.
352
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353set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
354show filename-display
355 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
356 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
357
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358set trace-buffer-size
359show trace-buffer-size
360 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
361
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362set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
363show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
364 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
365
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366set debug aarch64
367show debug aarch64
368 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
369 The default is off.
370
371set debug coff-pe-read
372show debug coff-pe-read
373 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
374 exported symbols.
375
376set debug mach-o
377show debug mach-o
378 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
379 processing.
380
381set debug notification
382show debug notification
383 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
384
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385* MI changes
386
387 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
388 "=cmd-param-changed".
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389 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
390 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
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391 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
392 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
393 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
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394 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
395 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
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396 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
397 "=memory-changed".
ed8a1c2d 398 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
ec83d211 399 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
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400 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
401 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
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402 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
403 library load/unload events.
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404 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
405 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
406 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
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407 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
408 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
409 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
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410 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
411 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
5b9afe8a 412
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413* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
414 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
415 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
416 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
417
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418* New remote packets
419
420QTBuffer:size
421 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
422 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
423
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424Qbtrace:bts
425 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
426 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
427 qSupported query.
428
429Qbtrace:off
430 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
431 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
432
433qXfer:btrace:read
434 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
435 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
436
80c8d323 437*** Changes in GDB 7.5
d6e00af6 438
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439* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
440 for more x32 ABI info.
441
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442* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
443
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444* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
445
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446* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
447 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
448 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
449 "info os files" lists file descriptors
450 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
451 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
452 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
453 "info os msg" lists message queues
454 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
455
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456* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
457 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
458 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
459 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
460 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
461 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
462
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463* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
464 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
465 record/replay support.
466
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467* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
468
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469* Python scripting
470
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471 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
472 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
473
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474 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
475
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476 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
477 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
478
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479 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
480
481 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
482 the source at which the symbol was defined.
483
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484 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
485 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
486 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
487 symbol's value.
488
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489 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
490 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
491
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492 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
493 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
494 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
495
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496 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
497 object associated with a PC value.
498
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499 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
500 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
501
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502* Go language support.
503 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
504 language.
505
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506* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
507 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
508
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509* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
510 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
511
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512* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
513 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
514 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
515 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
516 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
517 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
518
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519* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
520 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
521 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
522 build/libcpp/expr.c.
523
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524* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
525 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
526
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527* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
528 since December 2007.
529
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530* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
531 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
532 command does. For instance:
533
534 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
535
536 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
537 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
538 created, using the "condition" command.
539
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540* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
541 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
542
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543* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
544
545* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
546 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
547 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
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548 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
549 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
550 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
551 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
552 files with older .gdb_index sections.
481860b3 553
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554 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
555 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
556 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
557 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
558 the .gdb_index section.
559
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560* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
561
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562* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
563 target.
564
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565* MI changes
566
567 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
568
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569 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
570
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571* New commands
572
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573 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
574 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
575 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
576
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577 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
578 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
579
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580 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
581 several hits.
582
57651221 583 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
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584 C++ and Java objects.
585
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586 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
587 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
588 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
589 configured with '--with-python'.
590
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591 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
592 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
593 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
594 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
595 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
596 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
597 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
598
599 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
600 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
601 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
602 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
603
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604 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
605 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
606 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
607 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
608
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609 ** "set print symbol"
610 "show print symbol"
611 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
612 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
613 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
614
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615* Deprecated commands
616
617 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
618 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
619
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620* New targets
621
622Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
60c9a3c0 623HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
a58b110a 624
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625* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
626 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
627 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
628 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
629 evaluates to true.
630
631* New options
632
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MR
633set mips compression
634show mips compression
635 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
636 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
637 mips16
638 micromips
639 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
640
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641set breakpoint condition-evaluation
642show breakpoint condition-evaluation
cf65ecd3 643 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
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644 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
645 available mode.
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646 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
647 target.
648
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649set auto-load off
650 Disable auto-loading globally.
651
652show auto-load
653 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
654
655set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
656show auto-load gdb-scripts
657 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
658
659set auto-load python-scripts on|off
660show auto-load python-scripts
661 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
662
663set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
664show auto-load local-gdbinit
665 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
666
667set auto-load libthread-db on|off
668show auto-load libthread-db
669 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
670
7349ff92 671set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
9cc815f5 672show auto-load scripts-directory
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673 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
674 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
675 of the directories listed by this option.
676 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
677
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678set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
679show auto-load safe-path
680 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
681 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
682
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683set debug auto-load on|off
684show debug auto-load
685 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
686
d3ce09f5 687set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
e7e0cddf 688show dprintf-style
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SS
689 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
690 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
691 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
692 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
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693
694set dprintf-function <expr>
695show dprintf-function
696set dprintf-channel <expr>
697show dprintf-channel
698 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
699 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
700
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701set disconnected-dprintf on|off
702show disconnected-dprintf
703 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
704 after GDB disconnects.
705
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706* New configure options
707
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708--with-auto-load-dir
709 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
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710 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
711 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
712 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
713 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
7349ff92 714
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715--with-auto-load-safe-path
716 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
7349ff92 717 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
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718
719--without-auto-load-safe-path
720 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
721 security feature.
722
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723* New remote packets
724
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PA
725z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
726
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727 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
728 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
729 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
730 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
731
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PA
732QProgramSignals:
733
734 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
735 program without GDB involvement.
736
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JK
737* New command line options
738
739--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
740 before loading inferior.
741--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
742 execute it before loading inferior.
743
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JB
744*** Changes in GDB 7.4
745
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TT
746* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
747 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
748 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
749 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
750 inferior changes.
751
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JL
752* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
753 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
754
480a3f21
PW
755* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
756 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
757 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
758 target hardware watchpoint.
759
760 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
761 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
762 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
763 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
764
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765* Python scripting
766
32d1c362 767 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
7d0aff21 768 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
32d1c362
DE
769 existing one.
770
3a7bf607 771 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
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DE
772 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
773 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
774 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
775 now "message", which just prints the error message without
776 the stack trace.
3a7bf607 777
baacfb07 778 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
3a7bf607 779 Python API.
713389e0 780
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781 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
782 modules library. This module provides functionality for
baacfb07 783 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
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784 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
785 corresponding value.
786
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787 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
788 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
789 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
790 on GDB start-up.
791
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792 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
793 static_block will return the global and static blocks
794 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
795 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
796
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DE
797 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
798
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KP
799 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
800 "gdb.breakpoints".
801
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KP
802 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
803 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
804 available in the CLI.
805
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806 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
807 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
808 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
809 "some_type.items()".
810
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KP
811 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
812 new object file.
813
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PK
814 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
815 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
816 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
817 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
818 any anonymous fields.
819
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TT
820* MI changes
821
822 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
823 "solib-event".
824
825 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
826 "=breakpoint-modified".
827
828 ** New command -ada-task-info.
829
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DE
830* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
831 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
832 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
833 lives.
834
835 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
836 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
837 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
838 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
839 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
840
841 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
842 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
843
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DE
844* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
845 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
846 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
847 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
848 use this option to specify where to find it.
849
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TJB
850* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
851 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
852 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
853 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
854 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
855 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
856 section in the user manual for more details.
857
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JK
858* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
859 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
860 become available after that.
861
71eba9c2 862* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
edc84990 863
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JK
864* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
865 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
866 gcc version 4.7.
867
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DE
868* New commands
869
870!SHELL COMMAND
871 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
872 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
873
9c06b0b4
TJB
874* Changed commands
875
876watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
877 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
878 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
879
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DE
880info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
881 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
882 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
883
71eba9c2 884info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
885 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
886 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
887 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
888 name starts with a hyphen.
889
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SS
890collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
891 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
892 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
893 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
894 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
895 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
896 number of bytes that will be collected.
897
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SS
898tstart [NOTES]
899 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
900 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
901 setting the variable trace-notes.
902
903tstop [NOTES]
904 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
905 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
906 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
907 trace-stop-notes.
908
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909* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
910 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
911 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
912 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
913 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
914 is running.
915
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SS
916* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
917 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
918 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
919
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JK
920* New options
921
45cfd468
DE
922set debug dwarf2-read
923show debug dwarf2-read
924 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
925 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
926
927set debug symtab-create
928show debug symtab-create
929 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
930 creation. The default is off.
931
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PM
932set extended-prompt
933show extended-prompt
934 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
935 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
936 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
937 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
938 prompt is displayed.
939
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JK
940set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
941show print entry-values
942 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
943 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
944 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
945
946set debug entry-values
947show debug entry-values
948 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
949 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
950
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DE
951set basenames-may-differ
952show basenames-may-differ
953 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
954 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
955 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
956 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
957 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
958 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
959 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
960 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
961
f196051f
SS
962set trace-user
963show trace-user
964set trace-notes
965show trace-notes
966 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
967 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
968 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
969 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
970
971set trace-stop-notes
972show trace-stop-notes
973 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
974 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
975 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
976 started by someone else.
977
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KY
978* New remote packets
979
980QTEnable
981
982 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
983
984QTDisable
985
986 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
987
f196051f
SS
988QTNotes
989
990 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
991
992qTP
993
994 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
995
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SS
996qTMinFTPILen
997
998 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
999 be placed.
1000
1a532630
PP
1001* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1002 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1003
11315641
YQ
1004* New targets
1005
1006Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1007
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DD
1008* New Simulators
1009
1010Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1011
e8d56f18
JB
1012*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1013
1014* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1015
d6e00af6 1016*** Changes in GDB 7.3
797054e6 1017
60f98dde
MS
1018* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1019 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1020 matches the given regular expression.
1021
eee5b35e
DD
1022* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1023
b716877b
AB
1024* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1025 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1026
aae1c79a
DE
1027* New command line options
1028
1029-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1030 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1031
a86caf66
DE
1032* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1033 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1034
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DE
1035* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1036 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1037 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1038
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TT
1039* GDB now understands thread names.
1040
1041 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1042 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1043
1044 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1045 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1046
f4b8a18d
KW
1047* OpenCL C
1048 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1049 has been integrated into GDB.
1050
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PM
1051* Python scripting
1052
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PM
1053 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1054 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1055 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1056
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PM
1057 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1058 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1059 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1060 and allows for more dynamic content.
1061
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PM
1062 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1063 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1064 have an is_valid method.
1065
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PM
1066 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1067 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1068 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1069
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DE
1070 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1071
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PM
1072 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1073 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1074 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1075 that function like so:
1076
1077 result = some_value (10,20)
1078
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DE
1079 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1080 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1081 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1082
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DE
1083 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1084 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1085 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1086 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1087 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1088
1089 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1090 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1091
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DE
1092 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1093
d8e22779
TT
1094 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1095 selected thread.
1096
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TT
1097 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1098 holds the thread's name.
1099
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SW
1100 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1101 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
824446ad 1102 occurring in the process being debugged.
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HZ
1103 The following events are currently supported:
1104 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1105 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1106 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1107
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TT
1108* C++ Improvements:
1109
1110 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1111 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1112
1113 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1114
1115 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1116 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1117 was added to GCC 4.5.
1118
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TT
1119 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1120 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1121 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1122 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1123 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1124 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1125
4aac0db7
UW
1126* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1127 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1128 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1129 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1130 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1131
283e6a52
TT
1132* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1133 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1134 execution to a label.
1135
1136* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1137 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1138 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1139 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1140
b56df873 1141* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
14c0d4e1 1142 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
b56df873
TT
1143 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1144 of scope.
1145
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PA
1146* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1147
1148 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1149 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1150 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1151 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1152 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1153 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1154
1155 (gdb) info threads
1156 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1157
1158 While now you see this:
1159
1160 (gdb) info threads
1161 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1162
1163 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1164 dumps.
1165
1166 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1167 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1168 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1169 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1170
f1310107
TJB
1171* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1172 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1173 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1174 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1175 section in the user manual for more details.
1176
248c9dbc
JB
1177* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1178
1aee7009
JB
1179 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1180 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
248c9dbc 1181
eb826dc6
MF
1182 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1183
44603653
JB
1184* New native configurations
1185
1186ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1187
91021223
MF
1188* New targets:
1189
1190Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1191
6e1bb179
JB
1192* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1193 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1194 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1195 in the GDB user manual.
1196
50c97f38
TT
1197* Guile support was removed.
1198
448a92bf
MF
1199* New features in the GNU simulator
1200
1201 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1202
66ee2731
MF
1203 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1204
76b8507d 1205*** Changes in GDB 7.2
bfbf3774 1206
ba25b921
PA
1207* Shared library support for remote targets by default
1208
1209 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1210 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1211 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1212 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1213 was always disabled for such configurations.
1214
4656f5c6
SW
1215* C++ Improvements:
1216
1217 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1218
1219 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1220 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1221 For example:
1222 namespace A
1223 {
1224 class B { };
1225 void foo (B) { }
1226 }
1227 ...
1228 A::B b
1229 foo(b)
1230 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1231 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1232 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1233
1234 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1235
1236 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1237 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1238 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1239 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1240 entry.
1241 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1242 mentioned flavors of operators.
1243
254e6b9e
DE
1244 ** static const class members
1245
1246 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1247 class definition has been fixed.
1248
711e434b
PM
1249* Windows Thread Information Block access.
1250
1251 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1252 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1253 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1254 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1255 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1256 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1257
0fb4aa4b
PA
1258* Static tracepoints
1259
1260 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1261 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1262 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1263 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1264 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1265 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1266 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1267 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1268 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1269 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1270 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1271 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1272 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1273 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1274 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1275 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1276 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1277 the "New remote packets" section below.
1278
ca11e899
SS
1279* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1280
1281 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1282 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1283 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1284 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1285
1286* Observer mode
1287
1288 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1289 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1290 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1291 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1292 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1293 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1294 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1295
1296* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1297 current thread.
1298
711e434b
PM
1299* New remote packets
1300
1301qGetTIBAddr
1302
1303 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1304
dde08ee1
PA
1305qRelocInsn
1306
1307 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1308 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1309 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1310 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1311 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1312 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1313
0fb4aa4b
PA
1314qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1315
1316 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1317
1318qTSTMat
1319
1320 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1321 program.
1322
1323qXfer:statictrace:read
1324
1325 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1326 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1327 to gdb's qSupported query.
1328
ca11e899
SS
1329QAllow
1330
1331 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1332
1333QTDPsrc
1334
1335 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1336 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1337
3f7b2faa
DE
1338* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1339 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1340 a directory.
1341
d337e9f0
PA
1342* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1343
0fb4aa4b
PA
1344 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1345 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1346 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1347 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1348
1349 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1350 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1351 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1352 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1353 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1354 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1355 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1356
1357 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1358 for static tracepoints support.
d337e9f0 1359
c24d0242
PM
1360 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1361
c8d5aac9
L
1362* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1363 it understands register description.
1364
7c953934
TT
1365* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1366
8685c86f
L
1367* X86 general purpose registers
1368
1369 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1370 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1371 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1372 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1373 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1374
95a42b64 1375* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
86b17b60
PA
1376 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1377 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1378 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1379 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1380 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
95a42b64 1381
8bd10a10
CM
1382* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1383 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1384 in the specified file.
1385
ab38a727
PA
1386* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1387 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1388 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1389 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1390 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1391 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1392 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1393 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1394 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1395 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1396
6149aea9
PA
1397* New commands
1398
f1421989
HZ
1399eval template, expressions...
1400 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1401 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1402
ab38a727
PA
1403set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1404show target-file-system-kind
1405 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1406 names.
1407
6149aea9
PA
1408save breakpoints <filename>
1409 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1410 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1411 definitions, use the `source' command.
1412
1413`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1414is now deprecated.
1415
0fb4aa4b
PA
1416info static-tracepoint-markers
1417 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1418
1419strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1420 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1421 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1422
ca11e899
SS
1423set observer on|off
1424show observer
1425 Enable and disable observer mode.
1426
1427set may-write-registers on|off
1428set may-write-memory on|off
1429set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1430set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1431set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1432set may-interrupt on|off
1433 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1434 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1435 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1436 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1437 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1438 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1439 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1440
1441set record memory-query on|off
1442show record memory-query
1443 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1444 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1445
53a71c06
CR
1446* Changed commands
1447
1448disassemble
1449 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1450
f3e9a817
PM
1451* Python scripting
1452
9279c692
JB
1453** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1454 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1455 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1456 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1457 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1458
adc36818 1459** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
595939de
PM
1460 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1461 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1462 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
f870a310 1463
fa33c3cd 1464** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
07ca107c
DE
1465 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1466
1467** New exception gdb.GdbError.
fa33c3cd
DE
1468
1469** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
f3e9a817 1470
967cf477
DE
1471** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1472
8a1ea21f
DE
1473** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1474 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1475 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1476
a7bdde9e
VP
1477* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1478there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1479tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1480regular breakpoints.
1481
05071a4d
PA
1482* New targets
1483
1484ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1485
6aecb9c2
JB
1486* D language support.
1487 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1488 language.
1489
431e49aa
TJB
1490* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1491 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1492 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1493 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1494 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1495
1496* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1497 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1498 conditions of the form:
1499
1500 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1501
1502 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1503 interface mentioned above.
1504
bfbf3774 1505*** Changes in GDB 7.1
abc7453d 1506
4eef138c
TT
1507* C++ Improvements
1508
1509 ** Namespace Support
71dee663
SW
1510
1511 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1512 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1513 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1514 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1515 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1516
4eef138c
TT
1517 ** Bug Fixes
1518
1519 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1520 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1521 qualified name.
1522
1523 ** Cast Operators
1524
1525 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1526 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1527
2d1c1221
ME
1528* New targets
1529
1530Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
34207b9e 1531Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2d1c1221
ME
1532
1533* New Simulators
1534
1535Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
34207b9e 1536Renesas RX rx
2d1c1221 1537
6c95b8df
PA
1538* Multi-program debugging.
1539
1540 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1541 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1542 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1543 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1544 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1545 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1546 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1547 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1548
d5551862
SS
1549* New tracing features
1550
1551 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1552
1553 ** Trace state variables
f61e138d
SS
1554
1555 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1556 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1557 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1558 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1559 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1560 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1561 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1562 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1563 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1564 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
7a697b8d 1565
d5551862 1566 ** Fast tracepoints
7a697b8d
SS
1567
1568 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1569 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1570 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1571 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1572 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1573 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1574 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1575 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1576 the regular trace command.
1577
d5551862
SS
1578 ** Disconnected tracing
1579
1580 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1581 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1582 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1583 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1584 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1585
00bf0b85
SS
1586 ** Trace files
1587
1588 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1589 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1590 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1591 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1592 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1593 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1594 <name>".
4daf5ac0
SS
1595
1596 ** Circular trace buffer
1597
1598 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1599 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1600 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1601 not be available for all target agents.
1602
21a0512e
PP
1603* Changed commands
1604
1605disassemble
1606 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1607 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1608
0fe7935b
DJ
1609info variables
1610 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1611 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1612
fb2e7cb4
JB
1613source
1614 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1615 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1616 support.
1617
1618 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1619 "set script-extension" (see below).
1620
6c95b8df
PA
1621* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1622
399cd161
MS
1623record save [<FILENAME>]
1624 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1625 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1626
1627record restore <FILENAME>
1628 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1629 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1630
6c95b8df
PA
1631add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1632 Add a new inferior.
1633
1634clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1635 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1636 inferior has loaded.
1637
1638remove-inferior ID
1639 Remove an inferior.
1640
1641maint info program-spaces
1642 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1643
9a7071a8
JB
1644set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1645show remote interrupt-sequence
1646 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1647 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1648 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1649 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1650 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1651
1652set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1653show remote interrupt-on-connect
1654 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1655 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1656 Linux kernel.
1657
1658set remotebreak [on | off]
1659show remotebreak
1660Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1661
f61e138d
SS
1662tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1663 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1664
1665info tvariables
1666 List trace state variables and their values.
1667
1668delete tvariable $NAME ...
1669 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1670
6da95a67
SS
1671teval EXPR, ...
1672 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1673 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1674
7a697b8d
SS
1675ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1676 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1677
b0f02ee9
JK
1678* New expression syntax
1679
1680 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1681 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1682
6c95b8df
PA
1683* New options
1684
1685set follow-exec-mode new|same
1686show follow-exec-mode
1687 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1688 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1689 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1690
236f1d4d
SS
1691set default-collect EXPR, ...
1692show default-collect
1693 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1694 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1695 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1696
d5551862
SS
1697set disconnected-tracing
1698show disconnected-tracing
1699 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1700 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1701 upon disconnection.
1702
4daf5ac0
SS
1703set circular-trace-buffer
1704show circular-trace-buffer
1705 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1706 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1707 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1708 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1709
fb2e7cb4
JB
1710set script-extension off|soft|strict
1711show script-extension
1712 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1713 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1714 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1715 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1716 evaluation failed.
1717 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1718
2b71fc8e
JB
1719set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1720show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1721 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1722 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1723 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1724 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1725 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1726 is on.
1727
de2e5182
TT
1728* Python API Improvements
1729
1730 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1731 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1732 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1733
1734 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1735 `is_base_class' attribute.
1736
1737 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1738
1739 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1740 evaluate an expression.
1741
f61e138d
SS
1742* New remote packets
1743
1744QTDV
1745 Define a trace state variable.
1746
1747qTV
1748 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1749
d5551862
SS
1750QTDisconnected
1751 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1752
4daf5ac0
SS
1753QTBuffer:circular
1754 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1755
d5551862
SS
1756qTfP, qTsP
1757 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1758
2d483d34
MS
1759* Bug fixes
1760
1761Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1762
6e0e5977
JB
1763Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1764much more reliable. In particular:
1765 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1766 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1767 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1768 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1769 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1770 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1771 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1772 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1773 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1774 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1775 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1776 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1777 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1778 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1779 non-threaded programs.
1780
93c26624
JK
1781PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1782This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1783libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1784executable program.
1785
abc7453d 1786*** Changes in GDB 7.0
75feb17d 1787
4efc6507
DE
1788* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1789dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1790them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1791for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1792"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1793
782b2b07
SS
1794* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1795breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1796or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1797the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1798for tracepoint actions.
1799
53a71c06
CR
1800* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1801raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1802modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
e6158f16 1803
e7a8dbfb
HZ
1804* Process record and replay
1805
1806 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1807 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1808 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1809 execute commands.
1810
64644d9b
MS
1811* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1812step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1813set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1814reverse execution.
1815
b9412953
DD
1816* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1817feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
18182.6.28 or later.
1819
6c7a06a3
TT
1820* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1821target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1822char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1823literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1824U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1825`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1826system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1827the installation instructions for more information.
1828
f1838a98
UW
1829* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1830remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1831with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1832the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1833
55333a84
DE
1834* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1835and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1836
7f6a6314
PM
1837* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1838now complete on file names.
1839
65d12d83
TT
1840* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1841completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1842For instance, consider:
1843
1844 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1845 # struct example variable;
1846 (gdb) p variable.
1847
1848If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1849completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1850
edb3359d
DJ
1851* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1852the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1853
2fae03e8
TT
1854* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1855operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1856macros.
1857
47a3467a 1858* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
58d6951d
DJ
1859the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1860implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1861
1862* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1863registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1864can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1865and simulator targets may also provide them.
47a3467a 1866
08388c79
DE
1867* New remote packets
1868
1869qSearch:memory:
1870 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1871
a6f3e723
SL
1872QStartNoAckMode
1873 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1874 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1875 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1876
d7713ae0
EZ
1877vKill
1878 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1879 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1880
07e059b5
VP
1881qXfer:osdata:read
1882 Obtains additional operating system information
1883
47a3467a
PA
1884qXfer:siginfo:read
1885qXfer:siginfo:write
1886 Read or write additional signal information.
1887
060871df
PA
1888* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1889
1890 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1891 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1892 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1893
c055b101 1894* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
a0ef4274 1895DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
c055b101
CV
1896
1897* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
a0ef4274
DJ
1898and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1899`set/show sh calling-convention'.
c055b101 1900
31fffb02
CS
1901* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1902with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1903
88d8a8e0
JB
1904* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1905
7f99b190
JB
1906* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1907
ccd213ac
DJ
1908* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1909which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1910
1fddbabb 1911* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
31fffb02 1912list of section offsets.
1fddbabb 1913
a0ef4274
DJ
1914* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1915conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1916have also been fixed.
1917
bfb8797a 1918* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
158c7665
PH
1919From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1920are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
bfb8797a 1921
71c25dea
TT
1922* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1923example, given:
1924
1925 template<typename T> class C { };
1926 C<char const *> c;
1927
1928GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1929
1930 ptype C<char const *>
1931 ptype C<char const*>
1932 ptype C<const char *>
1933 ptype C<const char*>
1934
ccd213ac
DJ
1935* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1936
1937 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1938 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1939
7ae0e2a2
UW
1940 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1941 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1942 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1943
a6f3e723
SL
1944 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1945 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1946
da8bd9a3
DJ
1947 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1948 gdbserver.
1949
d70e31dd
DE
1950 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1951 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1952
1953 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1954 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1955 as appropriate.
1956
d57a3c85
TJB
1957* Python scripting
1958
1959 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1960 available is determined at configure time.
1961
d8906c6f
TJB
1962 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1963
aadc346a
JB
1964* Ada tasking support
1965
1966 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1967 been introduced:
1968
1969 info tasks
1970 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1971 info task N
1972 Print detailed information about task number N.
1973 task
1974 Print the task number of the current task.
1975 task N
1976 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1977
adb483fe
DJ
1978* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1979add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1980
2277426b
PA
1981* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1982
1983 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1984 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1985 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1986 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1987 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
1988 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
1989 below.
1990
08d16641
PA
1991* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
1992"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
1993information.
1994
e35359c5
UW
1995* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
1996to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
1997architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
1998See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
1999more information.
2000
85e747d2
UW
2001* Multi-architecture debugging.
2002
2003 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2004 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2005 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2006 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2007 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2008
2009* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2010use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2011Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2012powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2013--enable-targets configure option.
2014
11ade57a
PA
2015* Non-stop mode debugging.
2016
2017 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2018 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2019 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2020 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2021 section in the user manual for more information.
2022
2023 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2024 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2025 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2026 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2027 extensions on linux targets.
2028
d7713ae0 2029* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
75feb17d 2030
a96d9b2e
SDJ
2031catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2032 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2033 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2034 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2035 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2036 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2037 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2038 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2039 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2040
08388c79
DE
2041find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2042 val1 [, val2, ...]
2043 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2044
d57a3c85
TJB
2045maint set python print-stack
2046maint show python print-stack
2047 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2048
2049python [CODE]
2050 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2051
d7713ae0
EZ
2052macro define
2053macro list
2054macro undef
2055 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2056 interactively.
2057
2058info os processes
2059 Show operating system information about processes.
2060
2277426b
PA
2061info inferiors
2062 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2063
2064inferior NUM
2065 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2066
2067detach inferior NUM
2068 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2069
2070kill inferior NUM
2071 Kill inferior number NUM.
2072
d7713ae0
EZ
2073* New options
2074
3285f3fe
UW
2075set spu stop-on-load
2076show spu stop-on-load
2077 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2078
ff1a52c6
UW
2079set spu auto-flush-cache
2080show spu auto-flush-cache
2081 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2082 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2083
d7713ae0
EZ
2084set sh calling-convention
2085show sh calling-convention
2086 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2087
e0a3ce09 2088set debug timestamp
75feb17d 2089show debug timestamp
d7713ae0
EZ
2090 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2091
2092set disassemble-next-line
2093show disassemble-next-line
2094 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2095 the debuggee stops.
2096
2097set remote noack-packet
2098show remote noack-packet
2099 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2100 under "New remote packets."
2101
2102set remote query-attached-packet
2103show remote query-attached-packet
2104 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2105
2106set remote read-siginfo-object
2107show remote read-siginfo-object
2108 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2109 packet.
2110
2111set remote write-siginfo-object
2112show remote write-siginfo-object
2113 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2114 packet.
2115
40ab02ce
MS
2116set remote reverse-continue
2117show remote reverse-continue
2118 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2119
2120set remote reverse-step
2121show remote reverse-step
2122 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2123
d7713ae0
EZ
2124set displaced-stepping
2125show displaced-stepping
2126 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2127 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2128 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2129
2130set debug displaced
2131show debug displaced
2132 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2133
2134maint set internal-error
2135maint show internal-error
2136 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2137
2138maint set internal-warning
2139maint show internal-warning
2140 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
75feb17d 2141
ccd213ac
DJ
2142set exec-wrapper
2143show exec-wrapper
2144unset exec-wrapper
2145 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
fa4727a6 2146
aad4b048
JB
2147set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2148show multiple-symbols
2149 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2150 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2151 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2152
74960c60
VP
2153set breakpoint always-inserted
2154show breakpoint always-inserted
2155 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2156 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2157 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2158
0428b8f5
DJ
2159set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2160show arm fallback-mode
2161set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2162show arm force-mode
2163 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2164 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2165 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2166 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2167
10568435
JK
2168set disable-randomization
2169show disable-randomization
2170 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2171 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2172 multiple debugging sessions.
2173
d7713ae0
EZ
2174set non-stop
2175show non-stop
2176 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2177 a breakpoint.
2178
b3eb342c 2179set target-async
d7713ae0 2180show target-async
b3eb342c
VP
2181 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2182 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2183 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2184 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2185
6c7a06a3
TT
2186set target-wide-charset
2187show target-wide-charset
2188 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2189 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2190
84603566
SL
2191set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2192show tcp auto-retry
2193set tcp connect-timeout
2194show tcp connect-timeout
2195 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2196 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2197 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2198
17a37d48
PP
2199set libthread-db-search-path
2200show libthread-db-search-path
2201 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2202 libthread_db.
2203
d4db2f36
PA
2204set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2205show schedule-multiple
2206 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2207 the current process.
2208
4e5d721f
DE
2209set stack-cache
2210show stack-cache
2211 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2212 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2213 affecting correctness.
2214
910c5da8
JB
2215set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2216show interactive-mode
2217 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2218 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2219 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2220 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2221 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2222
2277426b
PA
2223* Removed commands
2224
2225info forks
2226 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2227 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2228 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2229 command.
2230
2231fork NUM
2232 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2233 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2234 alias for the `fork' command.
2235
2236process PID
2237 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2238 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2239 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2240
2241delete fork NUM
2242 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2243 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2244 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2245 fork' command.
2246
2247detach fork NUM
2248 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2249 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2250 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2251 fork' command.
2252
a80b95ba
TG
2253* New native configurations
2254
2255x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2256
b8bfd3ed
JB
2257x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2258
75a2d5e7
TT
2259* New targets
2260
c28c63d8 2261Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
75a2d5e7 2262x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4c1d2973 2263x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
5f814c3b 2264S+core 3 score-*-*
75a2d5e7 2265
6de3146c
PA
2266* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2267 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2268
d5cbbe6e
JB
2269* Removed commands
2270
2271catch load
2272catch unload
2273 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2274
75feb17d 2275*** Changes in GDB 6.8
f9ed52be 2276
af5ca30d
NH
2277* New native configurations
2278
2279NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
94a0e877 2280Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d
NH
2281
2282* New targets
2283
2284NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
94a0e877 2285Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
af5ca30d 2286
7a404eba
PA
2287* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2288
2289 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2290 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2291 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2292 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2293
430ebac9
PA
2294* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2295(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2296
fe6fbf8b 2297* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
8d5f9c6f 2298is resolved.
fe6fbf8b
VP
2299
2300* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
8d5f9c6f
DJ
2301including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2302and in inlined functions.
fe6fbf8b 2303
10665d76
JB
2304* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2305accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2306more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2307
7cc46491
DJ
2308* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2309
d71340b8
DJ
2310* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2311registers on PowerPC targets.
2312
523c4513
DJ
2313* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2314targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2315
a6b151f1
DJ
2316* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2317commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2318
2d717e4f
DJ
2319* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2320extended-remote mode.
2321
24a836bd 2322* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
d001be7a
DJ
2323The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2324error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2325The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
24a836bd 2326
d0c678e6
UW
2327* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2328building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2329target architectures.
2330
d64a946d
TJB
2331* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2332Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2333now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2334stored in two consecutive float registers.
2335
ee163bf5
VP
2336* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2337breakpoints now.
2338
b93b6ca7 2339* Improved support for debugging Ada
d001be7a
DJ
2340Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2341include:
b93b6ca7
JB
2342 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2343 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2344 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2345 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2346 of an assignment
2347 - Improved command completion in Ada
2348 - Several bug fixes
2349
d001be7a
DJ
2350* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2351process.
2352
a6b151f1
DJ
2353* New commands
2354
6d53d0af
JB
2355set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2356show print frame-arguments
2357 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2358 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2359
a6b151f1
DJ
2360remote put
2361remote get
2362remote delete
2363 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2364
2365* New MI commands
2366
2367-target-file-put
2368-target-file-get
2369-target-file-delete
2370 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2371
2372* New remote packets
2373
2374vFile:open:
2375vFile:close:
2376vFile:pread:
2377vFile:pwrite:
2378vFile:unlink:
2379 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
d0c678e6 2380
2d717e4f
DJ
2381vAttach
2382 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2383 mode.
2384
2385vRun
2386 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2387
8d5f9c6f 2388*** Changes in GDB 6.7
6dd09645 2389
19d378fc
MS
2390* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2391bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2392Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2393
3a40aaa0
UW
2394* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2395symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2396-Bsymbolic linker option.
2397
a6ec25f2
BW
2398* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2399recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2400is not supported.
2401
6dd09645
JB
2402* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2403frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2404
c9bb8148
DJ
2405* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
240632-bit or 64-bit register values.
2407
0d5de010
DJ
2408* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2409
23181151
DJ
2410* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2411target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2412a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2413
ea37ba09
DJ
2414* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2415automatically displayed as character or string data.
2416
2417* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2418arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2419as strings.
e1f48ead 2420
123dc839
DJ
2421* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2422for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
8d5f9c6f 2423only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
123dc839 2424
05a4558a
DJ
2425* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2426iWMMXt coprocessor.
fb1e4ffc 2427
7c963485
PA
2428* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2429ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2430has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2431
b18be20d
DJ
2432* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2433
0ca420ce
UW
2434* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2435
31d99776
DJ
2436* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2437layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2438segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2439
a4642986
MR
2440* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2441immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2442
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2443* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2444"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2445packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2446where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2447Windows and SymbianOS).
255e7678
DJ
2448
2449* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2450(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
f5db8714
JK
2451
2452* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2453according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
cfa9d6d9 2454
c9bb8148
DJ
2455* New commands
2456
23776285
MR
2457set remoteflow
2458show remoteflow
2459 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2460 when debugging using remote targets.
2461
c9bb8148
DJ
2462set mem inaccessible-by-default
2463show mem inaccessible-by-default
2464 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2465 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2466 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2467 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2468 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2469
2470set breakpoint auto-hw
2471show breakpoint auto-hw
2472 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2473 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2474 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2475 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2476 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2477 including "next" and "finish".
2478
0e420bd8
JB
2479catch exception
2480catch exception unhandled
2481 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2482
2483catch assert
2484 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2485
f822c95b
DJ
2486set sysroot
2487show sysroot
2488 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2489 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2490 an alias to "set sysroot".
2491
83cc5c53
UW
2492info spu
2493 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2494 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2495 architecture.
2496
bd372731
MK
2497* New native configurations
2498
2499OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2500
23181151
DJ
2501set tdesc filename
2502unset tdesc filename
2503show tdesc filename
2504 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2505 not query the target for its built-in description.
2506
c9bb8148
DJ
2507* New targets
2508
54fe9172 2509OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
c9bb8148 2510MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
c077150c 2511Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
c9bb8148 2512
6dd09645
JB
2513* New remote packets
2514
2515QPassSignals:
2516 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2517 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2518
23181151
DJ
2519qXfer:features:read:
2520 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2521 features.
6dd09645 2522
83cc5c53
UW
2523qXfer:spu:read:
2524qXfer:spu:write:
2525 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2526 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2527
cfa9d6d9
DJ
2528qXfer:libraries:read:
2529 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2530 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2531 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2532 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2533
483367ee
DJ
2534* Removed targets
2535
2536Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2537
d08950c4
UW
2538alpha*-*-osf1*
2539alpha*-*-osf2*
7ce59000 2540d10v-*-*
483367ee
DJ
2541hppa*-*-hiux*
2542i[34567]86-ncr-*
2543i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2544i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2545i[34567]86-*-netware*
2546i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2547i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2548i[34567]86-*-sco*
2549i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2550i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2551i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2552i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2553i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2554i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2555i[34567]86-*-isc*
2556m68*-cisco*-*
2557m68*-tandem-*
ad527d2e 2558mips*-*-pe
483367ee 2559rs6000-*-lynxos*
ad527d2e 2560sh*-*-pe
483367ee 2561
7ce59000
DJ
2562* Other removed features
2563
2564target abug
2565target cpu32bug
2566target est
2567target rom68k
2568
2569 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2570
ea35711c
DJ
2571target hms
2572target e7000
2573target sh3
2574target sh3e
2575
2576 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2577 H8/300.
2578
2579target ocd
2580
2581 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2582 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2583 interfaces.
2584
7ce59000
DJ
2585DWARF 1 support
2586
2587 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2588 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2589
54d61198
DJ
2590Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2591
2592 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2593 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2594 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2595 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2596
ea35711c
DJ
2597MIPS ".pdr" sections
2598
2599 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2600 in debugging information.
2601
2602Scheme support
2603
2604 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2605 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2606
1a69e1e4
DJ
2607set mips stack-arg-size
2608set mips saved-gpreg-size
2609
2610 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2611
6dd09645 2612*** Changes in GDB 6.6
e374b601 2613
ca3bf3bd
DJ
2614* New targets
2615
2616Xtensa xtensa-elf
9c309e77 2617Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
ca3bf3bd 2618
6aec2e11
DJ
2619* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2620(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2621running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2622
2623* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2624Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2625supported.
2626
17218d91
DJ
2627* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2628broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2629
9ebce043
DJ
2630* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2631stub provides the required support.
2632
7d3d3ece
DJ
2633* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2634longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2635
4f8253f3
JB
2636* New commands
2637
2638set substitute-path
2639unset substitute-path
2640show substitute-path
2641 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2642 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2643 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2644 between compilation and debugging.
2645
9fa66fd7
AS
2646set trace-commands
2647show trace-commands
2648 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2649 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2650 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2651
1f5befc1
DJ
2652* REMOVED features
2653
2654The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2655
2ec3381a
DJ
2656Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2657an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2658
3d00d119
DJ
2659The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2660
be2a5f71
DJ
2661* New remote packets
2662
2663qSupported:
2664 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2665 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2666 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2667 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2668 target.
2669
0876f84a
DJ
2670qXfer:auxv:read:
2671 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2672 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2673
9ebce043
DJ
2674qXfer:memory-map:read:
2675 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2676 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2677
2678vFlashErase:
2679vFlashWrite:
2680vFlashDone:
2681 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2682
0876f84a
DJ
2683* Removed remote packets
2684
2685qPart:auxv:read:
2686 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2687 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2688
e374b601 2689*** Changes in GDB 6.5
53e5f3cf 2690
96309189
MS
2691* New targets
2692
2693Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2694
2695Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2696
53e5f3cf
AS
2697* New commands
2698
2699init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2700 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2701
ac264b3b
MS
2702The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2703
2704checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2705
2706restart <n> Return the program state to a
2707 previously saved state.
2708
2709info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2710
2711delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2712
2713set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2714 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2715
2716info forks List forks of the user program that
2717 are available to be debugged.
2718
2719fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2720 forks of the user program that are
2721 available to be debugged.
2722
2723delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2724 that are available to be debugged (and
2725 kill the forked process).
2726
2727detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2728 that are available to be debugged (and
2729 allow the process to continue).
2730
3950dc3f
NS
2731* New architecture
2732
2733Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2734
0ea3f30e
DJ
2735* Improved Windows host support
2736
2737GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2738native console support, and remote communications using either
2739network sockets or serial ports.
2740
f79daebb
GM
2741* Improved Modula-2 language support
2742
2743GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2744basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2745pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2746printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2747written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2748GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2749
acab6ab2
MM
2750* REMOVED features
2751
2752The ARM rdi-share module.
2753
f4267320
DJ
2754The Netware NLM debug server.
2755
53e5f3cf 2756*** Changes in GDB 6.4
156a53ca 2757
e0ecbda1
MK
2758* New native configurations
2759
02a677ac 2760OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
e0ecbda1
MK
2761OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2762
d64a6579
KB
2763* New targets
2764
2765Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2766
b33a6190
AS
2767* New command line options
2768
2769--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2770--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2771 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2772--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2773 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2774 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2775 with the --command (-x) option.
2776
11dced61
AC
2777* Deprecated commands removed
2778
2779The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2780removed:
2781
2782 Command Replacement
2783 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2784 othernames set arm disassembler
2785 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2786 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2787 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2788 regs info registers
2789
6fe85783
MK
2790* New BSD user-level threads support
2791
2792It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2793library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2794configurations are:
2795
2796FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2797FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2798OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2799
2800Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2801are not yet supported.
2802
5260ca71
MS
2803* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2804(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2805
e84ecc99
AC
2806* REMOVED configurations and files
2807
2808VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
9445aa30 2809Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
9445aa30 2810National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
156a53ca 2811
31e35378
JB
2812* New "set print array-indexes" command
2813
2814After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2815when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2816behavior.
2817
e85e5c83
MK
2818* VAX floating point support
2819
2820GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2821
d91e9901
AS
2822* User-defined command support
2823
2824In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2825to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2826section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2827
f2cb65ca
MC
2828*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2829
f47b1503
AS
2830* New command line option
2831
2832GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2833debugging.
2834
f2cb65ca
MC
2835* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2836
2837GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2838information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2839by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2840proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2841to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
860660cb 2842
d08c0230
AC
2843* Internationalization
2844
2845When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2846internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2847continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2848
117ea3cf
PH
2849* Ada
2850
2851Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2852implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2853into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2854
d08c0230
AC
2855* New native configurations
2856
2857GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2858
2859* Remote 'p' packet
2860
2861GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2862packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2863
2864* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2865
2866GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2867The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2868features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2869i386 application).
2870
2871GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2872compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2873continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2874configurations:
2875
2876hppa-*-hpux
2877ia64-*-aix
2878mips-*-irix*
2879*-*-lynx
2880mips-*-linux-gnu
2881sds protocol
2882xdr protocol
2883powerpc bdm protocol
2884
2885Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2886made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2887
2888* OBSOLETE configurations and files
2889
2890Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2891been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2892configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2893permanently REMOVED.
2894
2895h8300-*-*
2896mcore-*-*
2897mn10300-*-*
2898ns32k-*-*
2899sh64-*-*
2900v850-*-*
2901
ebb7c577
AC
2902*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2903
2904* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2905
2906When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2907heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2908been fixed.
2909
2910* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2911
2912When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2913fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2914IRIX long double values).
2915
2916* VAX and "next"
2917
2918A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2919command. This problem has been fixed.
2920
860660cb 2921*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
faae5abe 2922
0dea2468
AC
2923* Fix for ``many threads''
2924
2925On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2926rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2927error message:
2928
2929 ptrace: No such process.
2930 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2931
2932This problem has been fixed.
2933
2c07db7a
AC
2934* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2935
2936Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2937GDB to dump core).
2938
c23968a2
JB
2939* New ``start'' command.
2940
2941This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2942
71009278
MK
2943* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2944
2945Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2946live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2947platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2948
2949FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2950FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2951NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2952NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2953NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2954OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2955OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2956OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2957OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2958
3c0b7db2
AC
2959* Signal trampoline code overhauled
2960
2961Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2962These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2963of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2964call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2965signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2966
73cc75f3
AC
2967Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2968features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2969include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3c0b7db2 2970
7243600a
BF
2971* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2972
6f606e1c
MK
2973* New native configurations
2974
97dc871c 2975GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
0e56aeaf 2976OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
bf2ca189
MK
2977OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2978OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
d195bc9f 2979OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2980NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
9f076e7a 2981OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
6f606e1c 2982
a1b461bf
AC
2983* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2984
2985GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2986The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2987including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
2988migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
2989compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
2990work, was also included.
2991
2992GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
2993module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
2994
2995h8300-*-*
2996mcore-*-*
2997mn10300-*-*
2998ns32k-*-*
2999sh64-*-*
3000v850-*-*
3001xstormy16-*-*
3002
3003Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3004made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3005
3c7012f5
AC
3006* REMOVED configurations and files
3007
3008Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3009Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3010Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3011Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3012Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3013AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3014Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3015decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3016riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3017sonymips mips-sony-*
3018sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3019
e5fe55f7
AC
3020*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3021
3022* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3023
3024The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3025GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3026command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3027program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3028with GDB".
3029
3030* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3031
3032Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3033libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3034cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3035GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3036shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3037the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3038are created.
3039
3040Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3041
3042* Fixed ISO-C build problems
3043
3044The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3045non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3046compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3047
3048* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3049
3050Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3051wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3052
3053* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3054
3055The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3056permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3057systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3058
3059* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3060
3061Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3062has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3063
3064* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3065
3066GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3067its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3068panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3069
3070* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3071
3072When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3073by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3074not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3075
faae5abe 3076*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
f2c06f52 3077
9175c9a3
MC
3078* Removed --with-mmalloc
3079
3080Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3081conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3082
3cc87ec0
MK
3083* Changes in AMD64 configurations
3084
3085The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3086the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3087and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3088you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3089
f0424ef6
MK
3090* Revised SPARC target
3091
3092The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3093FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
03cebad2
MK
3094support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3095from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3096(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
f0424ef6 3097
59659be2
ILT
3098* New C++ demangler
3099
3100GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3101names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3102with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3103programs.
3104
9e08b29b
DJ
3105* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3106
3107GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3108arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3109encountered these.
3110
8dfe8985
DC
3111* C++ nested types and namespaces
3112
3113GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3114improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3115is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3116Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3117namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3118"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3119frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3120if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3121GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3122
cced5e27
MK
3123* New native configurations
3124
3125NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
27d1e716 3126OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2031c21a 3127OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
f2cab569
MK
3128OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3129OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
cced5e27 3130
b4b4b794
KI
3131* New debugging protocols
3132
3133M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3134
7989c619
AC
3135* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3136
3137The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3138and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3139tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3140
5994185b
AC
3141* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3142
3143Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3144been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3145configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3146permanently REMOVED.
3147
3148Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3149Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3150Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3151Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3152Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3153AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3154Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
0748d941
AC
3155decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3156riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3157sonymips mips-sony-*
3158sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5994185b 3159
0ddabb4c
AC
3160* REMOVED configurations and files
3161
3162SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3163SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4a8269c0
AC
3164Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3165Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3166H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3167HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3168HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3169HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3170PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
cf7c5c23 3171386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4a8269c0
AC
3172Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3173 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3174 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f0424ef6
MK
3175SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3176SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4a8269c0
AC
3177Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3178Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
0ddabb4c 3179
c7f1390e
DJ
3180*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3181
1fe43d45
AC
3182* Objective-C
3183
3184Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3185integrated into GDB.
3186
e6beb428
AC
3187* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3188
3189DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3190information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3191By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3192backtraces.
3193
3194The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3195have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3196DWARF 2 CFI support.
3197
3198* Hosted file I/O.
3199
3200GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3201file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3202remote protocol documentation for details.
3203
3204* All targets using the new architecture framework.
3205
3206All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3207architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3208to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3209ppc32 on ppc64).
3210
3211* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3212
3213GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3214per-thread variables.
3215
3216* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3217
3218GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3219GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3220
3221* Separate debug info.
3222
3223GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3224automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3225of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3226system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3227and optional debug files.
3228
3229* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3230
3231DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3232describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3233debugger.
3234
3235GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3236for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3237
3238* Java
3239
3240A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3241Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3242considered "useable".
3243
85f8f974
DJ
3244* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3245
3246The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3247commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3248kernel.
3249
0fac0b41
DJ
3250* GDB supports logging output to a file
3251
3252There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3253used to capture GDB's output to a file.
f2c06f52 3254
6ad8ae5c
DJ
3255* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3256
3257The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3258disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3259command.
3260
e286caf2 3261* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5f601589
AC
3262
3263The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3264registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3265
d28f9cdf
DJ
3266* Profiling support
3267
3268A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3269be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3270session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3271"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3272data, for more informative profiling results.
3273
da0f9dcd
AC
3274* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3275
3276The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3277option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
b68767c1 3278"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
da0f9dcd
AC
3279
3280Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3281removed.
3282
fb9b6b35
JJ
3283Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3284Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3285Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3286 in a subsequent -var-update.
3287
954a4db8
MK
3288* New native configurations.
3289
3290FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3291
6760f9e6
JB
3292* Multi-arched targets.
3293
b4263afa 3294HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
85a453d5 3295Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
6760f9e6 3296
1b831c93
AC
3297* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3298
3299Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3300been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3301configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3302permanently REMOVED.
3303
8b0e5691 3304Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
67f16606 3305Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
fd2299bd 3306H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
56056df7
AC
3307HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3308HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3309HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
78c43945 3310PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
2fbce691
AC
3311Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3312 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3313 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
f81824a9
AC
3314Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3315Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
fd2299bd 3316
5835abe7
NC
3317* REMOVED configurations and files
3318
3319V850EA ISA
1b831c93
AC
3320Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3321IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3322i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3323i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3324i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3325HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3326 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3327 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3328Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3329Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3330Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3331OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3332I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5835abe7 3333
a094c6fb
AC
3334* MIPS $fp behavior changed
3335
3336The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3337the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3338context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3339address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3340The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3341
299ffc64 3342*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
37057839 3343
46248966
AC
3344* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3345
3346When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3347`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3348in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3349library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3350shared libs like mad''.
3351
b9d14705 3352* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
6da02953 3353
b9d14705
DJ
3354Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3355the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3356arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3357powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
6da02953 3358
e0e9281e
JB
3359* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3360
3361GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3362and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3363they expand.
3364
dd73b9bb
AC
3365The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3366invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3367
3368The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3369macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3370
e0e9281e
JB
3371Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3372information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3373your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3374information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3375
2250ee0c
CV
3376* Multi-arched targets.
3377
6e3ba3b8
JT
3378DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3379DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
2250ee0c 3380NEC V850 v850-*-*
6e3ba3b8 3381National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
a1789893
GS
3382Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3383Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2250ee0c 3384
cd9bfe15 3385* New targets.
e33ce519 3386
456f8b9d
DB
3387Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3388
e33ce519 3389
da8ca43d
JT
3390* New native configurations
3391
3392Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
029923d4 3393SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
45888261 3394MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
9ce5c36a 3395UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
da8ca43d 3396
cd9bfe15
AC
3397* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3398
3399Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3400been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3401configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3402permanently REMOVED.
3403
92eb23c5 3404Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
a99a9e1b 3405OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1c7cc583 3406IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
7a3085c1 3407Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
7fb623f7 3408Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
eb4c54a2 3409Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
d8ee244c
MK
3410i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3411i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3412i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
822e978b
AC
3413HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3414 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3415 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4d210288 3416I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
92eb23c5 3417
db034ac5
AC
3418* OBSOLETE languages
3419
3420CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3421
cd9bfe15
AC
3422* REMOVED configurations and files
3423
3424AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3425A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3426AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3427AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3428AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3429
3430testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3431
20f01a46
DH
3432* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3433
3434This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3435commands. The default is 1024.
3436
a5941fbf
MK
3437* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3438
3439Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3440
89743e04
MS
3441* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3442
3443These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3444to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3445from a file into memory (restore).
37057839 3446
9fb14e79
JB
3447* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3448
3449The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3450including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3451of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3452
2037aebb
AC
3453*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3454
3455* New targets.
3456
3457Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3458
3459* Bug fixes
3460
3461gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3462mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3463Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3464
3465gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3466dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3467Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3468
3469Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3470Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3471By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3472
3473i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3474avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3475By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3476
37057839 3477*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
eb7cedd9 3478
1a703748
MS
3479* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3480
3481This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3482really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3483In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3484target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3485This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3486(notably embedded) targets.
3487
cefd4ef5
MS
3488* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3489
55241689
AC
3490This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3491process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3492GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3493hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
cefd4ef5 3494
352ed7b4
MS
3495* New command line option
3496
3497GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3498
3499* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3500
3501There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3502command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3503a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3504be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3505open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3506issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3507a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3508it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3509GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3510is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3511
fe419ffc
RE
3512* Changes in ARM configurations.
3513
3514Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3515configuration is fully multi-arch.
3516
eb7cedd9
MK
3517* New native configurations
3518
fe419ffc 3519ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
eb7cedd9 3520x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
55241689 3521AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
768f0842 3522Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
eb7cedd9 3523
c9f63e6b
CV
3524* New targets
3525
3526Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3527
9b4ff276
AC
3528* OBSOLETE configurations and files
3529
3530Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3531been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3532configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3533permanently REMOVED.
3534
3535AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3536A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3537AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3538AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3539AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3540
b4ceaee6 3541testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
9b4ff276 3542
e2caac18
AC
3543* REMOVED configurations and files
3544
3545TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
7bc65f05 3546WDC 65816 w65-*-*
7768dd6c
AC
3547PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3548PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3549PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5e734e1f 3550Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1406caf7
AC
3551Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3552 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
7e24f0b1 3553SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
9b567150 3554Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3680c638
AC
3555Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3556ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
a752853e 3557Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
e2caac18 3558
c2a727fa
TT
3559* Changes to command line processing
3560
3561The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3562for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3563
467d8519
TT
3564* Changes to key bindings
3565
3566There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3567
7072a954
AC
3568*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3569
3570Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3571
3572Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3573corrupted.
3574
3575Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3576
3577Numerous documentation fixes.
3578
3579Numerous testsuite fixes.
3580
34f47bc4 3581*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
139760b7
MK
3582
3583* New native configurations
3584
3585Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3586x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
55241689 3587MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
e23194cb
EZ
3588MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3589ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
55241689 3590s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
139760b7 3591
bf64bfd6
AC
3592* New targets
3593
def90278 3594Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
24be5c34 3595CRIS cris-axis
55241689 3596UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
def90278 3597
17e78a56 3598* OBSOLETE configurations and files
bf64bfd6
AC
3599
3600x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
9b9c068d 3601Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
bb19ff3b
AC
3602Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3603 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
76f4ea53
AC
3604TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3605WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4a1968f4 3606Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1b2b2c16
AC
3607PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3608PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3609PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
24f89b68 3610SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
514e603d
AC
3611Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3612ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
d036b4d9 3613Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
bf64bfd6 3614
17e78a56
AC
3615stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3616kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3617
7fcca85b
AC
3618Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3619been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3620configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3621permanently REMOVED.
3622
a196c81c 3623* REMOVED configurations and files
7fcca85b
AC
3624
3625Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3626Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3627Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3628ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3629Tahoe tahoe-*-*
a196c81c 3630ser-ocd.c *-*-*
bf64bfd6 3631
6d6b80e5 3632* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
e23194cb 3633
6d6b80e5 3634GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
e23194cb
EZ
3635sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3636present.
3637
bf64bfd6
AC
3638* Other news:
3639
e23194cb
EZ
3640* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3641
3642* The MI enabled by default.
3643
3644The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3645revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3646engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3647using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3648which is now deprecated.
3649
3650* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3651
3652GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3653main features are supported:
3654
3655 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3656
3657 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3658 extension;
3659
3660 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3661
3662 - a Pascal expression parser.
3663
3664However, some important features are not yet supported.
3665
3666 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3667
3668 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3669
3670 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3671 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3672
3673 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3674
3675 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3676
3677* Changes in completion.
3678
3679Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3680to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3681users expect at the shell prompt.
3682
3683Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3684`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3685program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3686files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3687be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3688considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3689name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3690
3691`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3692
3693* New platform-independent commands:
3694
3695It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3696hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3697documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3698
3699* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3700
d7275149
MK
3701Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3702revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3703many threads as your system allows you to have.
3704
e23194cb
EZ
3705Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3706
d7275149
MK
3707Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3708multi-threaded programs though.
e23194cb
EZ
3709
3710* Changes in MIPS configurations.
bf64bfd6
AC
3711
3712Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3713
e23194cb
EZ
3714GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3715debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3716supported.)
3717
3718* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3719
3720Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3721breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3722implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3723put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3724and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3725registers.
3726
3727The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3728debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3729watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3730
3731* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3732
3733New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3734the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3735
3736New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3737display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3738IDT.
3739
3740New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3741from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3742New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3743a given linear address.
3744
3745GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3746program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3747which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3748
3749DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3750
6c56c069
EZ
3751It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3752
e23194cb
EZ
3753* Changes in documentation.
3754
3755All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3756Documentation License.
3757
3758Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3759manual.
3760
3761TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3762
3763Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3764manual.
3765
3766The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3767documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3768hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3769
5d6640b1
AC
3770* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3771
3772The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3773``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3774contents of this file.
3775
1a1d8446
AC
3776* gdba.el deleted
3777
3778GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
139760b7 3779
9debab2f 3780*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
7a292a7a 3781
c63ce875
EZ
3782* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3783
3784Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3785programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3786displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3787greater level of detail.
3788
3789* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3790
3791It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3792bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3793on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3794written.
3795
3796* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3797
3798The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3799necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3800machines ``out of the box''.
3801
3802The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3803possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3804signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3805would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3806interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3807
3808It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3809standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3810even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3811and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3812terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3813
3814The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3815enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3816also works.
3817
3818DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3819GDB.
3820
3821It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3822directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3823times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3824breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3825
ed9a39eb
JM
3826* New native configurations
3827
3828ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
afc05dd4 3829PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
ed9a39eb 3830
7a292a7a
SS
3831* New targets
3832
96baa820 3833Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
adf40b2e
JM
3834x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3835PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
7a292a7a
SS
3836TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3837
085dd6e6
JM
3838* OBSOLETE configurations
3839
3840Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3841Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
9846de1b 3842Pyramid pyramid-*-*
ed9a39eb 3843ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
104c1213 3844Tahoe tahoe-*-*
7a292a7a 3845
9debab2f
AC
3846Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3847but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3848these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3849be permanently REMOVED.
3850
5330533d
SS
3851* Gould support removed
3852
3853Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3854
bc9e5bbf
AC
3855* New features for SVR4
3856
3857On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3858without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3859load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3860
3861* Many C++ enhancements
3862
3863C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3864in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3865
adf40b2e
JM
3866* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3867
3868A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3869sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3870with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3871``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3872
3873 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3874 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3875
43e526b9
JM
3876* MIPS 64 remote protocol
3877
3878A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3879expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3880instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3881
3882The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3883added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3884
96baa820
JM
3885* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3886
3887The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3888``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3889include ``set remote P-packet''.
3890
11cf8741
JM
3891* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3892
3893The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3894accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3895``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3896
7876dd43
DB
3897* ``apropos'' command added.
3898
3899The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3900documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3901try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3902
bc9e5bbf
AC
3903* New MI interface
3904
3905A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3906interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
7162c0ca
EZ
3907process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3908"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3909enabled by configuring with:
bc9e5bbf
AC
3910
3911 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3912
c906108c
SS
3913*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3914
3915* New native configurations
3916
3917HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3918HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
55241689 3919M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
c906108c
SS
3920
3921* New targets
3922
3923Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3924Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3925Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3926
3927* OBSOLETE configurations
3928
3929Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3930
3931Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3932but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3933these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3934be permanently REMOVED.
3935
3936* ANSI/ISO C
3937
3938As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3939buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3940containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3941use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3942available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3943configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3944information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3945already.
3946
3947* Readline 2.2
3948
3949GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3950
3951* set extension-language
3952
3953You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3954languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3955you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3956 set extension-language .c c++
3957The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3958and their associated languages.
3959
3960* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3961
3962When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3963you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3964PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3965
3966 set processor NAME
3967
3968sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3969following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3970
3971 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3972 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3973 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3974 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3975 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3976 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3977 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3978 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3979 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3980 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3981 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3982
3983At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3984special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3985registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3986only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3987
3988* HP-UX support
3989
3990Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
3991more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
3992library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
3993support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
3994for xdb and dbx commands.
3995
3996* Catchpoints
3997
3998HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
3999generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4000to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4001
4002This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4003argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4004output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4005
4006* Debugging across forks
4007
4008On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4009in the inferior.
4010
4011* TUI
4012
4013HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4014it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4015configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4016
4017* GDB remote protocol additions
4018
4019A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4020Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4021fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4022allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4023
4024For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4025full 64-bit address. The command
4026
4027 set remoteaddresssize 32
4028
4029can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4030the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4031will be discarded.
4032
4033In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4034command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4035
4036 maint packet heythere
4037
4038sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4039disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4040time.
4041
4042The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4043target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4044downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4045
4046* Tracing can collect general expressions
4047
4048You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4049further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4050doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4051
4052* mask-address variable for Mips
4053
4054For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4055a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4056of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4057
4058* Higher serial baud rates
4059
4060GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4061230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4062to achieve all of these rates.)
4063
4064* i960 simulator
4065
4066The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4067builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4068
4069
4070*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4071
4072* New native configurations
4073
4074Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4075Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4076Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4077PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4078PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4079Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4080Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4081
4082* New targets
4083
4084Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4085Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4086Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4087Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4088MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4089MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4090MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4091Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4092Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4093Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4094NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4095
4096* New debugging protocols
4097
4098ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4099M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4100DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4101PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4102PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4103Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4104
4105* DWARF 2
4106
4107All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4108format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4109information.
4110
4111* Java frontend
4112
4113GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4114only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4115
4116* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4117
4118For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4119loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4120locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4121
4122* Live range splitting
4123
4124GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4125range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4126more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4127
4128* Hurd support
4129
4130GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4131updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4132
4133* ARM Thumb support
4134
4135GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4136instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4137instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4138accordingly.
4139
4140* MIPS16 support
4141
4142GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4143instruction set.
4144
4145* Overlay support
4146
4147GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4148linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4149will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4150control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4151additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4152in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4153
4154* info symbol
4155
4156The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4157the symbol at the specified address.
4158
4159* Trace support
4160
4161The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4162asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4163extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4164includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4165file tracepoint.c for more details.
4166
4167* MIPS simulator
4168
4169Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4170by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4171of most MIPS variants.
4172
4173* Sparc simulator
4174
4175Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4176by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4177Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4178
4179* set architecture
4180
4181For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4182basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4183architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4184the possible architectures.
4185
4186*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4187
4188* New native configurations
4189
4190Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4191M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4192PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4193PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4194PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4195RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4196
4197* New targets
4198
4199ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4200I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4201MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4202MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4203PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4204Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4205Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4206
4207* PowerPC simulator
4208
4209The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4210contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4211PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4212basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4213performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4214
4215* Solaris 2.5
4216
4217GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4218
4219* Windows 95/NT native
4220
4221GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4222To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4223which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4224Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4225ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4226
4227* dont-repeat command
4228
4229If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4230command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4231useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4232extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4233
4234* Send break instead of ^C
4235
4236The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4237rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4238GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4239
4240* Remote protocol timeout
4241
4242The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4243that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4244to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4245
4246* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4247
4248By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4249loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4250stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4251when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4252in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4253
4254Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4255/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4256automatically on hpux10.
4257
4258* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4259
4260Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4261
4262* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4263
4264When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4265may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4266the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4267every character. The default value is 1050.
4268
4269* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4270
4271If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4272a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4273replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4274details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4275remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4276to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4277
4278* Speedups for remote debugging
4279
4280GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4281the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4282and more efficient S-record downloading.
4283
4284* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4285
4286GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4287Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4288
4289*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4290
4291* Psymtabs for XCOFF
4292
4293The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4294can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4295
4296* Remote targets use caching
4297
4298Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4299remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4300it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4301debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4302off' turns the the data cache off.
4303
4304* Remote targets may have threads
4305
4306The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4307in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4308gdb/remote.c for details.
4309
4310* NetROM support
4311
4312If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4313support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4314acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4315write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4316support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4317another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4318sequence is something like
4319
4320 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4321 load <prog>
4322 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4323
4324* Macintosh host
4325
4326GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4327may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4328it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4329available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4330device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4331directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4332scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4333mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4334
4335* Autoconf
4336
4337GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4338but does simplify configuration and building.
4339
4340* hpux10
4341
4342GDB now supports hpux10.
4343
4344*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4345
4346* New native configurations
4347
4348x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4349x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4350NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4351Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4352
4353* New targets
4354
4355A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4356HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4357CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4358PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4359WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4360
4361* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4362
4363GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4364possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4365filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4366the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4367if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4368
4369* Arguments to user-defined commands
4370
4371User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4372Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4373trivial example:
4374define adder
4375 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4376
4377To execute the command use:
4378adder 1 2 3
4379
4380Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4381Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4382use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4383
4384* New `if' and `while' commands
4385
4386This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4387commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4388expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4389execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4390terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4391`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4392if the expression is zero.
4393
4394* Fortran source language mode
4395
4396GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4397Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4398variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4399with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4400Fortran compilers.
4401
4402* Better HPUX support
4403
4404Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4405running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4406processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4407for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4408that behavior do the following before running the program:
4409
4410 adb -w a.out
4411 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4412 control-d
4413
4414This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4415To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4416
4417 adb -w a.out
4418 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4419 control-d
4420
4421You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4422the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4423external linkage.
4424
4425GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4426HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4427
4428* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4429
4430You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4431commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4432current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4433"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4434associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4435configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4436
4437* New DOS host serial code
4438
4439This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4440no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4441a PC's serial port.
4442
4443*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4444
4445* New "complete" command
4446
4447This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4448were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4449
4450* Trailing space optional in prompt
4451
4452"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4453allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4454
4455* Breakpoint hit counts
4456
4457"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4458has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4459can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4460to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4461less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4462that breakpoint.
4463
4464* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4465
4466"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4467an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4468arrays actually contain only short strings.
4469
4470* Shared library breakpoints
4471
4472In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4473breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4474
4475* Hardware watchpoints
4476
4477There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4478targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4479
55241689 4480Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
c906108c
SS
4481
4482* Annotations
4483
4484Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4485and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4486
4487* Improved Irix 5 support
4488
4489GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4490
4491* Improved HPPA support
4492
4493GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4494
4495* New native configurations
4496
4497Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4498HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4499Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4500RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4501
4502* New targets
4503
4504OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4505MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4506Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4507
4508* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4509
4510There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4511This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4512
4513* Fixes
4514
4515As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4516and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4517
4518*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4519
4520* Irix 5 is now supported
4521
4522* HPPA support
4523
4524GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4525to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4526GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4527of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4528can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4529
4530
4531*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4532
4533* User visible changes:
4534
4535* Remote Debugging
4536
4537The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4538target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4539debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4540integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4541debugging info for the mips target).
4542
4543* DEC Alpha native support
4544
4545GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4546debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4547work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4548Alpha-specific notes.
4549
4550* Preliminary thread implementation
4551
4552GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4553
4554* LynxOS native and target support for 386
4555
4556This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4557to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4558for details).
4559
4560* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4561
4562This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4563mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4564call methods, ...etc.
4565
4566*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4567
4568 * User visible changes:
4569
4570Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4571supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4572other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4573somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4574
4575Filename completion now works.
4576
4577When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4578arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4579addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4580
4581All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4582vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4583should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4584your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4585to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4586
4587 * DEC alpha support
4588
4589This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4590cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4591
4592
4593*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4594
4595 * Testsuite
4596
4597This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4598The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4599via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4600
4601 * C++ demangling
4602
4603'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4604emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4605Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4606disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4607use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4608
4609 * Simulators
4610
4611GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4612So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4613Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4614
4615 * New targets supported
4616
4617H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4618H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4619SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4620Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4621IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4622
4623Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4624version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4625GO32 memory extender.
4626
4627 * New remote protocols
4628
4629MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4630
4631 * New source languages supported
4632
4633This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4634used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4635into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4636
4637
4638*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4639
4640 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4641
4642GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4643version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4644University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4645compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4646format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4647(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4648
4649Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4650
4651 * Faster and better demangling
4652
4653We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4654demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4655character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4656only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4657This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4658increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4659symbol lookups.
4660
4661`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4662from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4663compiler does not actually implement.
4664
4665 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4666
4667In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4668inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4669recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4670very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4671The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4672circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4673fix.
4674
4675The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4676release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4677
4678 * Improved configure script
4679
4680The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4681you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4682host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4683done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4684
4685We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4686version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4687`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4688The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4689only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4690We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4691
4692 * Documentation improvements
4693
4694There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4695produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4696before submitting changes.
4697
4698The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4699M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4700`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4701you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4702a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4703
4704*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4705We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4706been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4707or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4708`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4709around this problem.
4710
4711 * New features
4712
4713GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4714the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4715`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4716the target program.
4717
4718The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4719how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4720
4721 * New native hosts supported
4722
4723HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4724386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4725
4726 * New targets supported
4727
4728AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4729
4730 * New file formats supported
4731
4732BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4733HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4734
4735 * Major bug fixes
4736
4737Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4738
4739We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4740printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4741
4742We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4743for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4744release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4745
4746You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4747will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4748
4749We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4750for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4751especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4752libraries.
4753
4754The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4755information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4756command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4757any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4758when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4759
4760 * Internal improvements
4761
4762GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4763debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4764
4765GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4766Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4767symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4768contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4769shared code that handles any of them.
4770
4771 * New command line options
4772
4773We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4774
4775 * Mmalloc licensing
4776
4777The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4778General Public License.
4779
4780*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4781
4782 * Host/native/target split
4783
4784GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4785hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4786target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4787local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4788ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4789
4790The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4791GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4792is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4793code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4794any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4795built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4796handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4797
4798GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4799It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4800plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4801
4802 * New hosts supported
4803
4804HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4805386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4806386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4807
4808 * New targets supported
4809
4810Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
481168030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4812
4813 * New native hosts supported
4814
4815386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4816 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4817386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4818
4819 * New file formats supported
4820
4821BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4822supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4823format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4824
4825 * New commands
4826
4827`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4828`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4829These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4830
4831`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4832
4833You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4834scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4835prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4836executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4837
4838 * C++ improvements
4839
4840We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4841info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4842symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4843
4844Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4845
4846 * Major bug fixes
4847
4848The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4849fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4850by the compiler.
4851
4852We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4853support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4854
4855John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4856slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4857that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4858purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4859the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4860mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4861
4862Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4863about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4864completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4865we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4866
4867 * AMD 29k support
4868
4869A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4870specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4871calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4872usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4873in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4874
4875We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4876Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4877of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4878resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4879
4880 * Remote interfaces
4881
4882We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4883with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4884message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4885This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4886needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4887breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4888each instruction being stepped through.
4889
4890The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4891registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4892
4893There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4894find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4895Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4896processor with a serial port.
4897
4898 * Configuration
4899
4900Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4901`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4902supported, and what files each one uses.
4903
4904 * Library changes
4905
4906There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4907disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4908Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4909disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4910
4911The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4912Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4913can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4914grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4915
4916 * Documentation
4917
4918The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4919reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4920as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4921encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4922system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4923bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4924
4925And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4926
4927
4928*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4929
4930 * Better support for C++ function names
4931
4932GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4933names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4934(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4935single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4936Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4937
4938GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4939the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4940You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4941lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4942for the list of formats.
4943
4944 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4945
4946Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4947C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4948directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4949can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4950usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4951about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4952this problem.)
4953
4954 * New 'maintenance' command
4955
4956All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4957the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4958can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4959
4960 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4961 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4962 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4963 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4964 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4965 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4966
4967The following commands are new:
4968
4969 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4970 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4971 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4972
4973 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4974
4975We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4976(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4977be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4978read after argv processing.
4979
4980 * New hosts supported
4981
4982Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4983
55241689 4984GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
c906108c
SS
4985
4986We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4987is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
4988for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
4989masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
4990fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
4991It costs extra.
4992
4993 * New targets supported
4994
4995Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4996
4997 * More smarts about finding #include files
4998
4999GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5000all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5001greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5002especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5003the one that contains your sources.
5004
5005We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5006breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5007try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5008
5009 * Interesting infernals change
5010
5011GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5012section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5013target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5014stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5015
5016 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5017
5018There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5019 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5020 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5021
5022See the ChangeLog for details.
5023
5024*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5025
5026 * New machines supported (host and target)
5027
5028IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5029
5030SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5031
5032 * New malloc package
5033
5034GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5035Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5036capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5037This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5038pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5039more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5040
5041 * info proc
5042
5043The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5044'help info proc' for details.
5045
5046 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5047
5048The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5049Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5050possible.
5051
5052 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5053
5054Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5055support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5056conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5057environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5058that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5059in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5060
5061 * Cross byte order fixes
5062
5063Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5064targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5065
5066 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5067
5068If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5069system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5070`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5071program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5072called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5073Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5074and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5075the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5076option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5077starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5078
5079You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5080the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5081information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5082slower, but makes future operations faster.
5083
5084The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5085build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5086A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5087use is:
5088
5089 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5090
5091The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5092It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5093shared across multiple host platforms.
5094
5095 * longjmp() handling
5096
5097GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5098siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5099all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5100platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5101
5102 * Solaris 2.0
5103
5104Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5105this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5106reading symbols.
5107
5108 * Bug fixes
5109
5110As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5111People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5112crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5113
5114*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5115
5116 * New machines supported (host and target)
5117
5118SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5119 (except core files)
5120BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5121Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5122
5123 * New machines supported (target)
5124
5125AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5126
5127 * C++ support
5128
5129GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5130The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5131per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5132
5133GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5134`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5135extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5136good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5137will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5138released.
5139
5140 * New features for SVR4
5141
5142GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5143shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5144only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5145
5146The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5147on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5148it prints the address mappings of the process.
5149
5150If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5151bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5152
5153 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5154
5155Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5156now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5157skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5158make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5159same code linked statically.
5160
5161 * New Getopt
5162
5163GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5164version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5165continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5166Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5167added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5168future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5169
5170 * Bugs fixed
5171
5172The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5173Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5174See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5175
5176
5177*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5178
5179 * New machines supported (host and target)
5180
5181Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5182NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5183Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5184
5185 * Almost SCO Unix support
5186
5187We had hoped to support:
5188SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5189(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5190that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5191about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5192
5193 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5194
5195GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5196debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5197is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5198send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5199reqired (if any).
5200
5201 * New Readline
5202
5203GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5204is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5205required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5206
5207 * Bugs fixed
5208
5209The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5210Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5211See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5212
5213 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5214
5215GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5216supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5217symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5218
5219Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5220mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5221debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5222mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5223version 2.
5224
5225Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5226really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5227line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5228variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5229situation somewhat.
5230
5231When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5232However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5233methods.
5234
5235We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5236DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5237encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5238
5239
5240*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5241
5242 * Improved configuration
5243
5244Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5245Porting BFD is simpler.
5246
5247 * Stepping improved
5248
5249The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5250of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5251in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5252function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5253
5254 * Bug fixing
5255
5256Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5257
5258 * New host supported (not target)
5259
5260Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5261
5262
5263*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5264
5265 * Multiple source language support
5266
5267GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5268It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5269and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5270language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5271You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5272`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5273
5274 * GDB and Modula-2
5275
5276GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5277currently under development at the State University of New York at
5278Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5279continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5280
5281Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5282debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5283symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5284
5285There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5286in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5287
5288 * set write on/off
5289
5290GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5291a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5292the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5293by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5294effect immediately.
5295
5296 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5297
5298When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5299shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5300The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5301examining core files.
5302
5303 * set listsize
5304
5305You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5306The default is 10.
5307
5308 * New machines supported (host and target)
5309
5310SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5311Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5312Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5313
5314 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5315
5316IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5317
5318 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5319
5320AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5321AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5322Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5323
5324 * New remote interfaces
5325
5326AMD 29000 Adapt
5327AMD 29000 Minimon
5328
5329
5330*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5331
5332 * New Facilities
5333
5334Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5335
5336Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5337target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5338is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5339remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5340remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5341also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5342using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5343stub on the target system.
5344
5345New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5346
5347GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5348library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5349object file types such as a.out and coff.
5350
5351There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5352refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5353
5354
5355 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5356
5357All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5358by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5359
5360For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5361``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5362Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5363
5364What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5365print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5366will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5367all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5368
5369confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5370 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5371 it is already running. Default is ON.
5372
5373editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5374 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5375 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5376 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5377 Default is ON.
5378
5379history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5380 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5381 or the value of the environment variable
5382 GDBHISTFILE.
5383
5384history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5385 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5386 HISTSIZE.
5387
5388history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5389 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5390 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5391
5392history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5393 history expansion will be performed on
5394 command line input. The default is OFF.
5395
5396radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5397 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5398 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5399
5400height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5401 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5402 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5403 variable TERM.
5404
5405width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5406 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5407 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5408 variable TERM.
5409
5410Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5411``set width'' instead.
5412
5413print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5414 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5415 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5416 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5417
5418print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5419 is OFF.
5420
5421print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5422 "raw" form if off.
5423
5424print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5425 like instructions.
5426
5427print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5428
5429
5430 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5431
5432The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5433new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5434are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5435window.
5436
5437
5438 * Support for Shared Libraries
5439
5440GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5441Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5442before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5443happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5444At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5445from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5446shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5447It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5448
5449sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5450 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5451 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5452
5453info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5454
5455
5456 * Watchpoints
5457
5458A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5459expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5460tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5461quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5462problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5463more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5464
5465watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5466
5467info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5468
5469delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5470disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5471enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5472
5473
5474 * C++ multiple inheritance
5475
5476When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5477for C++ programs.
5478
5479 * C++ exception handling
5480
5481Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5482ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5483the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5484handler's context).
5485
5486catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5487 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5488 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5489
5490info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5491 current stack frame.
5492
5493
5494 * Minor command changes
5495
5496The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5497command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5498is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5499
5500The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5501at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5502frames without printing.
5503
5504 * New directory command
5505
5506'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5507The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5508about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5509with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5510find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5511
5512 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5513
5514For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5515for more details.
5516
5517GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5518two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5519Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5520where the program that you are debugging will run.
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