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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
4*** Changes since GDB 8.2
5
6* GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
7 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
8 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
9
10* DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
11 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
12
13* New commands
14
15frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
16 Apply a command to some frames.
17 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
18 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
19
20taas COMMAND
21 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
22 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
23
24faas COMMAND
25 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
26 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
27
28tfaas COMMAND
29 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
30 output).
31 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
32
33maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
34maint show dwarf unwinders
35 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
36
37* Changed commands
38
39thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
40 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
41 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
42 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
43
44* MI changes
45
46 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
47 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
48 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
49 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
50 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
51
52 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
53 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
54
55* New native configurations
56
57GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
58
59* New targets
60
61GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
62CSKY ELF csky*-*-elf
63CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
64
65*** Changes in GDB 8.2
66
67* The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
68 for the MIPS target.
69
70* The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
71 offset to all sections.
72
73* Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
74 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
75 address of individual sections using '-s'.
76
77* The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
78 (address of the text section).
79
80* The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
81 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
82 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
83 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
84 default.
85
86* The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
87 for the rest of the current command.
88
89* The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
90 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
91
92* 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
93 files created on FreeBSD systems.
94
95* C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
96 alignof.
97
98* Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
99 the vector length while the process is running.
100
101* New commands
102
103set debug fbsd-nat
104show debug fbsd-nat
105 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
106
107set|show varsize-limit
108 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
109 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
110 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
111
112set|show record btrace cpu
113 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
114 branch trace decode.
115
116maint check libthread-db
117 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
118 library
119
120maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
121maint show check-libthread-db
122 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
123 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
124 perform such checks.
125
126* Python API
127
128 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
129
130 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
131 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
132
133 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
134
135 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
136 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
137 of convenience variables.
138
139 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
140 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
141 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
142
143* New targets
144
145RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
146
147* Removed targets and native configurations
148
149m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
150SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
151SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
152SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
153
154* Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
155
156 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
157 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
158 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
159 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
160 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
161 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
162 reported.
163
164* Configure changes
165
166--enable-codesign=CERT
167 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
168 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
169 gdb to work properly.
170
171--disable-gdbcli has been removed
172 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
173
174*** Changes in GDB 8.1
175
176* GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
177 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
178 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
179
180* The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
181 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
182
183* New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
184 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
185 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
186 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
187 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
188
189* GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
190 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
191 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
192 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
193
194* GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
195 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
196
197* On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
198 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
199 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
200
201 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
202 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
203 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
204
205 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
206 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
207 environment" command.
208
209* Completion improvements
210
211 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
212 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
213 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
214 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
215 correctly:
216
217 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
218 (gdb) b function(int)
219
220 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
221 C++ anonymous namespaces:
222
223 (gdb) b (anon[TAB]
224 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
225 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
226 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
227
228 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
229 completion support, that better understands what you're
230 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
231 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
232 setting a breakpoint.
233
234 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
235
236 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
237
238* New command line options (gcore)
239
240-a
241 Dump all memory mappings.
242
243* Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
244
245 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
246 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
247 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
248
249 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
250
251 A::B::func()
252 B::func()
253
254 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
255 on both symbols.
256
257 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
258 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
259 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
260 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
261 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
262 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
263 a breakpoint from Python.
264
265* Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
266
267 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
268 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
269 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
270
271 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
272
273 function[abi:cxx11](int)
274 ^^^^^^^^^^^
275
276 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
277 no tag, like:
278
279 (gdb) b function(int)
280
281 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
282
283 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
284
285 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
286
287* Python Scripting
288
289 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
290 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
291 description of these.
292
293 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
294 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
295 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
296
297 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
298 manual for a further description of this feature.
299
300
301* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
302
303 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
304 specified initial working directory.
305
306 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
307 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
308
309 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
310 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
311
312 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
313 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
314
315 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
316 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
317 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
318 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
319 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
320
321 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
322 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
323 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
324
325* When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
326 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
327 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
328 in the *stopped notification.
329
330* Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
331 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
332
333* New remote packets
334
335QEnvironmentHexEncoded
336 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
337 the inferior when starting it.
338
339QEnvironmentUnset
340 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
341 before starting the remote inferior.
342
343QEnvironmentReset
344 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
345 user-set environment variables should be unset).
346
347QStartupWithShell
348 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
349
350QSetWorkingDir
351 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
352 working directory.
353
354* The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
355 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
356
357* The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
358 filter the tests to be run.
359
360* The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
361 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
362
363* New commands
364
365set|show cwd
366 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
367
368set|show compile-gcc
369 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
370 with the 'compile' commands.
371
372set debug separate-debug-file
373show debug separate-debug-file
374 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
375
376set dump-excluded-mappings
377show dump-excluded-mappings
378 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
379 dumped when generating a core file.
380
381maint info selftests
382 List the registered selftests.
383
384starti
385 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
386
387set|show debug or1k
388 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
389
390set|show print type nested-type-limit
391 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
392 type printer will show.
393
394* TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
395 `o' for nexti.
396
397* Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
398
399 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
400 'int'.
401
402 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
403 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
404 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
405 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
406
407 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
408 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
409 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
410 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
411 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
412 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
413
414 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
415 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
416 unless you tell it the variable's type:
417
418 (gdb) p var
419 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
420 (gdb) p (float) var
421 $3 = 3.14
422
423* New native configurations
424
425FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
426FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
427
428* New targets
429
430FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
431FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
432OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
433
434* Removed targets and native configurations
435
436Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
437
438*** Changes in GDB 8.0
439
440* GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
441 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
442 available in future Intel CPUs.
443
444* GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
445
446* Python Scripting
447
448 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
449 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
450
451* GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
452 instructions.
453
454* Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
455
456 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
457
458 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
459 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
460 removed.
461
462* Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
463
464 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
465 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
466
467* Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
468
469 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
470 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
471 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
472 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
473 features.
474
475* Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
476
477 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
478 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
479 debugger.
480
481* Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
482
483* User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
484 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
485
486* The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
487
488 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
489
490 define mycommand
491 set $i = 0
492 while $i < $argc
493 eval "print $arg%d", $i
494 set $i = $i + 1
495 end
496 end
497
498* Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
499
500* GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
501 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
502
503* New native configurations
504
505FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
506
507* New targets
508
509Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
510FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
511
512* Removed targets and native configurations
513
514Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
515Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
516
517* New commands
518
519flash-erase
520 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
521
522maint print arc arc-instruction address
523 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
524
525* New options
526
527set disassembler-options
528show disassembler-options
529 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
530 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
531 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
532 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
533 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
534
535* New MI commands
536
537-target-flash-erase
538 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
539 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
540
541-file-list-shared-libraries
542 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
543 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
544
545-catch-handlers
546 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
547 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
548
549*** Changes in GDB 7.12
550
551* GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
552
553 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
554 default. One must now explicitly configure with
555 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
556 option will be removed in a future release.
557
558* GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
559 GDB connection.
560
561* GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
562 memory backward from the given address. For example:
563
564 (gdb) bt
565 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
566 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
567 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
568 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
569 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
570 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
571 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
572 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
573 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
574
575* Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
576 arrays of dynamic types.
577
578* The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
579maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
580maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
581maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
582maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
583maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
584
585* GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
586 descriptions.
587
588* New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
589 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
590 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
591
592* Intel MPX bound violation handling.
593
594 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
595 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
596 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
597 signal received and code location.
598
599 For example:
600
601 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
602 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
603 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
604 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
605
606* Rust language support.
607 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
608 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
609 Rust.
610
611* Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
612
613 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
614 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
615 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
616 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
617 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
618 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
619 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
620 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
621 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
622 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
623 line.
624
625* The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
626
627 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
628 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
629
630* New commands
631
632skip -file file
633skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
634skip -function function
635skip -rfunction regular-expression
636 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
637 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
638 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
639
640maint info line-table REGEXP
641 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
642
643maint selftest
644 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
645
646new-ui INTERP TTY
647 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
648 using the TTY file for input/output.
649
650* Python Scripting
651
652 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
653 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
654 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
655 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
656 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
657
658signal-event EVENTID
659 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
660 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
661 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
662 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
663 signalling an event.
664
665* Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
666 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
667 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
668
669* Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
670 been removed:
671
672 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
673 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
674 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
675 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
676 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
677 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
678
679* Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
680 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
681 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
682 bytecode into native code.
683
684* MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
685 recording. For example:
686
687 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
688
689* MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
690
691 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
692
693* New targets
694
695Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
696
697*** Changes in GDB 7.11
698
699* GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
700
701* Per-inferior thread numbers
702
703 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
704 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
705 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
706
707 (gdb) info threads
708 Id Target Id Frame
709 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
710 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
711 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
712 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
713
714 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
715 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
716 are no longer unique between inferiors.
717
718 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
719 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
720 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
721
722 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
723 IDs.
724
725* Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
726 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
727
728 (gdb) thread 2.1
729 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
730 (gdb)
731
732* In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
733 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
734 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
735 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
736 threads 2.*".
737
738* You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
739 all threads.
740
741* The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
742 the current thread.
743
744* The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
745 current inferior.
746
747* GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
748 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
749 example:
750
751 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
752 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
753
754* Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
755
756* Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
757
758* The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
759 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
760
761* GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
762 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
763 clients.
764
765* Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
766 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
767 at the same time.
768
769* Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
770 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
771 into native code.
772
773* GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
774
775* "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
776 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
777 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
778
779* In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
780 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
781
782* New commands
783
784maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
785maint show target-non-stop
786 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
787 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
788 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
789
790maint set bfd-sharing
791maint show bfd-sharing
792 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
793
794set debug bfd-cache
795show debug bfd-cache
796 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
797
798set debug fbsd-lwp
799show debug fbsd-lwp
800 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
801
802set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
803show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
804 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
805
806set remote thread-events
807show remote thread-events
808 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
809
810set ada print-signatures on|off
811show ada print-signatures"
812 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
813 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
814
815set max-value-size
816show max-value-size
817 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
818 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
819 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
820
821* The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
822 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
823 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
824 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
825 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
826 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
827
828* The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
829 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
830
831* The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
832 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
833
834* Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
835
836 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
837 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
838 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
839 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
840 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
841 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
842
843* Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
844 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
845
846catch handlers
847 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
848
849* New remote packets
850
851exec stop reason
852 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
853
854exec-events feature in qSupported
855 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
856 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
857 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
858 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
859
860vCtrlC
861 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
862 non-stop mode.
863
864thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
865 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
866
867thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
868 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
869
870QThreadEvents
871 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
872 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
873 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
874 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
875 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
876 stop for that same thread.
877
878N stop reply
879 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
880 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
881 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
882
883QCatchSyscalls
884 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
885 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
886
887syscall_entry stop reason
888 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
889
890syscall_return stop reason
891 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
892
893* Extended-remote exec events
894
895 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
896 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
897 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
898
899set remote exec-event-feature-packet
900show remote exec-event-feature-packet
901 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
902
903 * Thread names in remote protocol
904
905 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
906 thread.
907
908* Target remote mode fork and exec events
909
910 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
911 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
912 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
913 fork and exec catchpoints.
914
915* Remote syscall events
916
917 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
918 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
919
920set remote catch-syscall-packet
921show remote catch-syscall-packet
922 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
923
924* MI changes
925
926 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
927 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
928 left.
929
930* Python Scripting
931
932 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
933 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
934 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
935 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
936 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
937 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
938
939*** Changes in GDB 7.10
940
941* Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
942 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
943 including advance SIMD instructions.
944
945* Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
946
947* GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
948 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
949 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
950 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
951 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
952 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
953 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
954
955* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
956 cpu information :
957 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
958
959* GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
960 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
961 remote serial I/O.
962
963* The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
964 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
965 and may include things like its command line arguments.
966
967* The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
968 is now available on all platforms.
969
970* Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
971 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
972 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
973 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
974 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
975 backward compatibility.
976
977* The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
978 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
979 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
980 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
981
982* GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
983 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
984 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
985 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
986 packets" below.
987
988* The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
989
990* GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
991
992* On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
993 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
994 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
995 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
996 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
997 See "New remote packets" below.
998
999* The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1000 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1001
1002* The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1003 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1004 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1005 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1006 are ignored.
1007
1008* Guile Scripting
1009
1010 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1011
1012* Python Scripting
1013
1014 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1015 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1016 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1017 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1018 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1019 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1020 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1021 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1022 "const" version of the value respectively.
1023
1024* New commands
1025
1026maint print symbol-cache
1027 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1028
1029maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1030 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1031
1032maint flush-symbol-cache
1033 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1034
1035record btrace bts
1036record bts
1037 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1038
1039compile print
1040 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1041
1042tui enable
1043tui disable
1044 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1045
1046show mpx bound
1047set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1048 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1049
1050record btrace pt
1051record pt
1052 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1053
1054maint info btrace
1055 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1056
1057maint btrace packet-history
1058 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1059
1060maint btrace clear-packet-history
1061 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1062
1063maint btrace clear
1064 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1065 anew by the next "record" command.
1066
1067* New options
1068
1069set debug dwarf-die
1070 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1071show debug dwarf-die
1072 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1073
1074set debug dwarf-read
1075 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1076show debug dwarf-read
1077 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1078
1079maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1080 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1081maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1082 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1083
1084maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1085 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1086maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1087 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1088
1089set debug dwarf-line
1090show debug dwarf-line
1091 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1092
1093set max-completions
1094show max-completions
1095 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1096 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1097 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1098 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1099
1100set history remove-duplicates
1101show history remove-duplicates
1102 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1103
1104maint set symbol-cache-size
1105maint show symbol-cache-size
1106 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1107
1108set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1109 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1110 BTS format.
1111 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1112 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1113
1114set debug linux-namespaces
1115show debug linux-namespaces
1116 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1117
1118set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1119 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1120 Intel Processor Trace format.
1121 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1122 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1123
1124maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1125 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1126 packet history.
1127
1128* The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1129 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1130
1131* Python/Guile scripting
1132
1133 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1134 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1135
1136* New remote packets
1137
1138qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1139 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1140
1141Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1142 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1143
1144Qbtrace:pt
1145 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1146 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1147 qSupported query.
1148
1149Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1150 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1151 Trace format.
1152
1153swbreak stop reason
1154 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1155 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1156 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1157 mode operation.
1158
1159hwbreak stop reason
1160 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1161 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1162
1163vFile:fstat:
1164 Return information about files on the remote system.
1165
1166qXfer:exec-file:read
1167 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1168 create a process running on the remote system.
1169
1170vFile:setfs:
1171 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1172 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1173 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1174 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1175
1176fork stop reason
1177 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1178
1179vfork stop reason
1180 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1181
1182vforkdone stop reason
1183 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1184 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1185
1186fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1187 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1188 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1189 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1190 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1191 whether these features are enabled.
1192
1193* Extended-remote fork events
1194
1195 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1196 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1197 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1198 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1199
1200* The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1201 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1202 the btrace record target.
1203 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1204
1205* GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1206 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1207
1208* GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1209 targets.
1210
1211* Removed command line options
1212
1213-xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1214
1215* Removed targets and native configurations
1216
1217HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1218Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1219
1220* New configure options
1221
1222--with-intel-pt
1223 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1224 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1225
1226--with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1227 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1228 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1229 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1230
1231*** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1232
1233* Python Scripting
1234
1235 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1236
1237*** Changes in GDB 7.9
1238
1239* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1240
1241* Python Scripting
1242
1243 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1244 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1245 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1246 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1247 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1248 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1249 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1250 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1251 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1252 selecting a new file to debug.
1253 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1254 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1255
1256 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1257 inferior.
1258
1259 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1260 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1261 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1262 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1263
1264* New Python-based convenience functions:
1265
1266 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1267 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1268 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1269 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1270
1271* GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1272 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1273 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1274 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1275 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1276 interface with this new feature are:
1277
1278 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1279 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1280
1281* New commands
1282
1283demangle [-l language] [--] name
1284 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1285 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1286 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1287 as "maint demangler-warning".
1288
1289queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1290 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1291
1292add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1293 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1294 scripts.
1295
1296maint print user-registers
1297 List all currently available "user" registers.
1298
1299compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1300 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1301 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1302
1303compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1304 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1305 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1306 provided.
1307
1308* On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1309 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1310 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1311 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1312 at resume time.
1313
1314* Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1315 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1316 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1317 switched threads meanwhile.
1318
1319* "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1320
1321 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1322 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1323 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1324 is now the default mode.
1325
1326* New options
1327
1328set debug symbol-lookup
1329show debug symbol-lookup
1330 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1331
1332* MI changes
1333
1334 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1335 inferiors that have exited.
1336
1337* New targets
1338
1339MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1340
1341* Removed targets
1342
1343Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1344
1345Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1346SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1347SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1348VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1349VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1350
1351* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1352 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1353 its alias "share", instead.
1354
1355*** Changes in GDB 7.8
1356
1357* New command line options
1358
1359-D data-directory
1360 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1361
1362* GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1363 as specified in ISO C99.
1364
1365* The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1366 with or without disassembly.
1367
1368* Guile scripting
1369
1370 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1371 available is determined at configure time.
1372 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1373 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1374
1375* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1376
1377guile [code]
1378gu [code]
1379 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1380
1381guile-repl
1382gr
1383 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1384
1385info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1386 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1387
1388* The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1389 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1390
1391* New options
1392
1393set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1394show print symbol-loading
1395 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1396 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1397 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1398 becomes less useful.
1399
1400set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1401show guile print-stack
1402 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1403
1404set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1405show auto-load guile-scripts
1406 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1407
1408maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1409maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1410 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1411 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1412 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1413 usage of this option.
1414
1415set auto-connect-native-target
1416
1417 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1418 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1419 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1420
1421set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1422show record btrace replay-memory-access
1423 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1424
1425maint set target-async (on|off)
1426maint show target-async
1427 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1428 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1429 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1430 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1431
1432set mi-async (on|off)
1433show mi-async
1434 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1435 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1436
1437* "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1438 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1439
1440* Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1441 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1442 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1443 "set target-async on" command.
1444
1445* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1446
1447 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1448 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1449 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1450 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1451 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1452
1453* The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1454 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1455 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1456
1457* The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1458 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1459 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1460 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1461 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1462 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1463 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1464
1465* The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1466 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1467
1468* The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1469 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1470 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1471
1472* The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1473 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1474 memory or registers.
1475
1476* The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1477
1478* The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1479 remote. It now works with all targets.
1480
1481* All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1482 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1483 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1484 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1485 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1486 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1487 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1488 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1489 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1490 target-stack".
1491
1492* The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1493 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1494 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1495
1496* GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1497
1498* Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1499 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1500 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1501
1502* New remote packets
1503
1504qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1505 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1506 branch trace incrementally.
1507
1508* Python Scripting
1509
1510 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1511 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1512 available.
1513 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1514 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1515 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1516 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1517 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1518
1519* New targets
1520PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1521
1522* The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1523 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1524 its alias "share", instead.
1525
1526* The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1527 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1528 instead.
1529
1530* MI changes
1531
1532 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1533 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1534 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1535 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1536 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1537 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1538 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1539 commands and CLI execution commands.
1540
1541*** Changes in GDB 7.7
1542
1543* Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1544 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1545 recording has been added.
1546
1547* GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1548
1549* GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1550 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1551
1552* New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1553 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1554 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1555 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1556 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1557 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1558 "void".
1559
1560* The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1561
1562* The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1563
1564* GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1565 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1566 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1567 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1568
1569 (gdb) p $rax
1570 $1 = <not saved>
1571
1572 (gdb) info registers rax
1573 rax <not saved>
1574
1575 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1576 "*value not available*".
1577
1578* New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1579 to binaries.
1580
1581* Python scripting
1582
1583 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1584 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1585 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1586 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1587 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1588 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1589
1590* New targets
1591
1592Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1593Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1594Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1595
1596* Removed native configurations
1597
1598Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1599been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1600
1601arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1602i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1603i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1604i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1605m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1606sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1607vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1608
1609* New commands:
1610catch rethrow
1611 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1612maint check-psymtabs
1613 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1614maint check-symtabs
1615 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1616maint expand-symtabs
1617 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1618
1619show configuration
1620 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1621
1622maint set|show per-command
1623maint set|show per-command space
1624maint set|show per-command time
1625maint set|show per-command symtab
1626 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1627
1628remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1629remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1630 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1631 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1632 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1633
1634info exceptions
1635info exceptions REGEXP
1636 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1637 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1638 are listed.
1639
1640* New options
1641
1642set debug symfile off|on
1643show debug symfile
1644 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1645 symbol tables within those files
1646
1647set print raw frame-arguments
1648show print raw frame-arguments
1649 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1650 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1651
1652set remote trace-status-packet
1653show remote trace-status-packet
1654 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1655
1656set debug nios2
1657show debug nios2
1658 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1659
1660set range-stepping
1661show range-stepping
1662 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1663
1664set startup-with-shell
1665show startup-with-shell
1666 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1667 directly.
1668
1669set code-cache
1670show code-cache
1671 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1672 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1673
1674* You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1675 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1676 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1677 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1678 "set height 0".
1679
1680* The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1681 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1682 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1683
1684* New command-line options
1685--configuration
1686 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1687
1688* The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1689 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1690
1691* Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1692 GDB command gcore.
1693
1694* GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1695
1696* The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1697 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1698
1699* The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1700 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1701
1702* The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1703 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1704 due to an uncaught signal.
1705
1706* MI changes
1707
1708 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1709 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1710 command, which should contain "language-option".
1711
1712 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1713 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1714
1715 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1716 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1717 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1718 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1719 "undefined-command-error-code".
1720
1721 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1722 Trace Format now.
1723
1724 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1725
1726 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1727 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1728 are displayed.
1729
1730 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1731 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1732
1733 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1734 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1735 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1736
1737 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1738 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1739 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1740 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1741 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1742 "exec-run-start-option".
1743
1744 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1745 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1746
1747 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1748 the new "info exceptions" command.
1749
1750* New system-wide configuration scripts
1751 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1752 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1753 ** ElinOS
1754 ** Wind River Linux
1755
1756* GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1757 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1758 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1759 below.
1760
1761* GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1762 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1763
1764* On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1765 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1766 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1767
1768* New remote packets
1769
1770vCont;r
1771
1772 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1773 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1774 involvemement at each single-step.
1775
1776qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1777 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1778 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1779 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1780 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1781 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1782 speedup.
1783
1784* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1785
1786 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1787 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1788
1789 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1790 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1791 trace state variables.
1792
1793 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1794 target.
1795
1796* New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1797 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1798
1799* GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1800
1801* The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1802 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1803 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1804 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1805
1806*** Changes in GDB 7.6
1807
1808* Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1809 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1810 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1811 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1812
1813set|show record full insn-number-max
1814set|show record full stop-at-limit
1815set|show record full memory-query
1816
1817* A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1818 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1819 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1820 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1821 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1822
1823record btrace
1824
1825 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1826 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1827
1828* Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1829 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1830 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1831
1832record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1833 instruction granularity
1834
1835record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1836 function granularity
1837
1838* New native configurations
1839
1840ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1841FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1842x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1843Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1844
1845* New targets
1846
1847ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1848ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1849Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1850x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1851Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1852
1853* If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1854 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1855 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1856 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1857 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1858 --data-directory command-line option.
1859
1860* New command line options:
1861
1862-nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1863 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1864
1865* Removed command line options
1866
1867-epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1868 Emacs.
1869
1870* The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1871 type formatting.
1872
1873* 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1874
1875* Python scripting
1876
1877 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1878
1879 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1880
1881 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1882
1883 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1884
1885 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1886 of architecture in the Python API.
1887
1888 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1889 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1890
1891* New Python-based convenience functions:
1892
1893 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1894 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1895 ** $_strlen(str)
1896 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1897
1898* The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1899 given an argument.
1900
1901* The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1902 default for GCC since November 2000.
1903
1904* The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1905
1906* The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1907 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1908
1909* New configure options
1910
1911--enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1912 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1913 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1914 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1915 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1916 options allow the user to override that default.
1917--with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1918 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1919 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1920
1921* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1922
1923catch signal
1924 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1925 conditions to be attached.
1926
1927maint info bfds
1928 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1929
1930python-interactive [command]
1931pi [command]
1932 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1933 and print the result of expressions.
1934
1935py [command]
1936 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1937
1938enable type-printer [name]...
1939disable type-printer [name]...
1940 Enable or disable type printers.
1941
1942* Removed commands
1943
1944 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1945 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1946 instead.
1947
1948* New options
1949
1950set print type methods (on|off)
1951show print type methods
1952 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1953 The default is to show them.
1954
1955set print type typedefs (on|off)
1956show print type typedefs
1957 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1958 The default is to show them.
1959
1960set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1961show filename-display
1962 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1963 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1964
1965set trace-buffer-size
1966show trace-buffer-size
1967 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1968
1969set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1970show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1971 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1972
1973set debug aarch64
1974show debug aarch64
1975 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1976 The default is off.
1977
1978set debug coff-pe-read
1979show debug coff-pe-read
1980 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1981 exported symbols.
1982
1983set debug mach-o
1984show debug mach-o
1985 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1986 processing.
1987
1988set debug notification
1989show debug notification
1990 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1991
1992* MI changes
1993
1994 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1995 "=cmd-param-changed".
1996 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1997 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1998 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1999 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2000 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2001 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2002 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2003 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2004 "=memory-changed".
2005 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2006 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2007 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2008 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2009 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2010 library load/unload events.
2011 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2012 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2013 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2014 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2015 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2016 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2017 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2018 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2019
2020* GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2021 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2022 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2023 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2024
2025* New remote packets
2026
2027QTBuffer:size
2028 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2029 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2030
2031Qbtrace:bts
2032 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2033 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2034 qSupported query.
2035
2036Qbtrace:off
2037 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2038 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2039
2040qXfer:btrace:read
2041 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2042 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2043
2044*** Changes in GDB 7.5
2045
2046* GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2047 for more x32 ABI info.
2048
2049* GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2050
2051* GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2052
2053* The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2054 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2055 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2056 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2057 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2058 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2059 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2060 "info os msg" lists message queues
2061 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2062
2063* GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2064 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2065 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2066 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2067 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2068 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2069
2070* GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2071 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2072 record/replay support.
2073
2074* The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2075
2076* Python scripting
2077
2078 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2079 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
2080
2081 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2082
2083 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2084 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2085
2086 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2087
2088 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2089 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2090
2091 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2092 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2093 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2094 symbol's value.
2095
2096 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2097 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2098
2099 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2100 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2101 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2102
2103 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2104 object associated with a PC value.
2105
2106 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2107 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2108
2109* Go language support.
2110 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2111 language.
2112
2113* GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2114 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2115
2116* The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2117 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2118
2119* GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2120 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2121 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2122 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2123 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2124 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
2125
2126* The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2127 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2128 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2129 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2130
2131* The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2132 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2133
2134* The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2135 since December 2007.
2136
2137* The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2138 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2139 command does. For instance:
2140
2141 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2142
2143 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2144 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2145 created, using the "condition" command.
2146
2147* The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2148 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2149
2150* GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2151
2152* The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2153 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2154 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2155 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2156 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2157 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2158 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2159 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2160
2161 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2162 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2163 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2164 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2165 the .gdb_index section.
2166
2167* Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2168
2169* GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2170 target.
2171
2172* MI changes
2173
2174 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2175
2176 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2177
2178* New commands
2179
2180 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2181 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2182 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2183
2184 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2185 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2186
2187 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2188 several hits.
2189
2190 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2191 C++ and Java objects.
2192
2193 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2194 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2195 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2196 configured with '--with-python'.
2197
2198 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2199 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2200 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2201 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2202 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2203 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2204 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2205
2206 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2207 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2208 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2209 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2210
2211 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2212 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2213 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2214 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2215
2216 ** "set print symbol"
2217 "show print symbol"
2218 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2219 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2220 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2221
2222* Deprecated commands
2223
2224 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2225 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2226
2227* New targets
2228
2229Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2230HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2231
2232* GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2233 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2234 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2235 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2236 evaluates to true.
2237
2238* New options
2239
2240set mips compression
2241show mips compression
2242 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2243 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2244 mips16
2245 micromips
2246 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2247
2248set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2249show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2250 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2251 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2252 available mode.
2253 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2254 target.
2255
2256set auto-load off
2257 Disable auto-loading globally.
2258
2259show auto-load
2260 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2261
2262set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2263show auto-load gdb-scripts
2264 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2265
2266set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2267show auto-load python-scripts
2268 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2269
2270set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2271show auto-load local-gdbinit
2272 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2273
2274set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2275show auto-load libthread-db
2276 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2277
2278set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2279show auto-load scripts-directory
2280 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2281 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2282 of the directories listed by this option.
2283 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2284
2285set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2286show auto-load safe-path
2287 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2288 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2289
2290set debug auto-load on|off
2291show debug auto-load
2292 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2293
2294set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2295show dprintf-style
2296 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2297 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2298 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2299 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2300
2301set dprintf-function <expr>
2302show dprintf-function
2303set dprintf-channel <expr>
2304show dprintf-channel
2305 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2306 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2307
2308set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2309show disconnected-dprintf
2310 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2311 after GDB disconnects.
2312
2313* New configure options
2314
2315--with-auto-load-dir
2316 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2317 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2318 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2319 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2320 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2321
2322--with-auto-load-safe-path
2323 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2324 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2325
2326--without-auto-load-safe-path
2327 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2328 security feature.
2329
2330* New remote packets
2331
2332z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2333
2334 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2335 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2336 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2337 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2338
2339QProgramSignals:
2340
2341 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2342 program without GDB involvement.
2343
2344* New command line options
2345
2346--init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2347 before loading inferior.
2348--init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2349 execute it before loading inferior.
2350
2351*** Changes in GDB 7.4
2352
2353* GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2354 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2355 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2356 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2357 inferior changes.
2358
2359* GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2360 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2361
2362* GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2363 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2364 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2365 target hardware watchpoint.
2366
2367 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2368 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2369 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2370 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2371
2372* Python scripting
2373
2374 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2375 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2376 existing one.
2377
2378 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2379 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2380 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2381 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2382 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2383 the stack trace.
2384
2385 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2386 Python API.
2387
2388 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2389 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2390 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2391 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2392 corresponding value.
2393
2394 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2395 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2396 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2397 on GDB start-up.
2398
2399 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2400 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2401 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2402 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2403
2404 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2405
2406 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2407 "gdb.breakpoints".
2408
2409 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2410 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2411 available in the CLI.
2412
2413 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2414 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2415 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2416 "some_type.items()".
2417
2418 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2419 new object file.
2420
2421 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2422 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2423 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2424 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2425 any anonymous fields.
2426
2427* MI changes
2428
2429 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2430 "solib-event".
2431
2432 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2433 "=breakpoint-modified".
2434
2435 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2436
2437* libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2438 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2439 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2440 lives.
2441
2442 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2443 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2444 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2445 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2446 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2447
2448 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2449 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2450
2451* New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2452 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2453 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2454 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2455 use this option to specify where to find it.
2456
2457* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2458 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2459 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2460 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2461 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2462 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2463 section in the user manual for more details.
2464
2465* The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2466 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2467 become available after that.
2468
2469* New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2470
2471* New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2472 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2473 gcc version 4.7.
2474
2475* New commands
2476
2477!SHELL COMMAND
2478 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2479 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2480
2481* Changed commands
2482
2483watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2484 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2485 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2486
2487info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2488 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2489 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2490
2491info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2492 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2493 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2494 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2495 name starts with a hyphen.
2496
2497collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2498 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2499 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2500 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2501 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2502 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2503 number of bytes that will be collected.
2504
2505tstart [NOTES]
2506 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2507 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2508 setting the variable trace-notes.
2509
2510tstop [NOTES]
2511 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2512 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2513 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2514 trace-stop-notes.
2515
2516* Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2517 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2518 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2519 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2520 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2521 is running.
2522
2523* Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2524 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2525 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2526
2527* New options
2528
2529set debug dwarf2-read
2530show debug dwarf2-read
2531 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2532 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2533
2534set debug symtab-create
2535show debug symtab-create
2536 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2537 creation. The default is off.
2538
2539set extended-prompt
2540show extended-prompt
2541 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2542 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2543 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2544 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2545 prompt is displayed.
2546
2547set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2548show print entry-values
2549 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2550 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2551 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2552
2553set debug entry-values
2554show debug entry-values
2555 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2556 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2557
2558set basenames-may-differ
2559show basenames-may-differ
2560 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2561 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2562 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2563 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2564 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2565 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2566 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2567 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2568
2569set trace-user
2570show trace-user
2571set trace-notes
2572show trace-notes
2573 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2574 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2575 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2576 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2577
2578set trace-stop-notes
2579show trace-stop-notes
2580 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2581 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2582 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2583 started by someone else.
2584
2585* New remote packets
2586
2587QTEnable
2588
2589 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2590
2591QTDisable
2592
2593 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2594
2595QTNotes
2596
2597 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2598
2599qTP
2600
2601 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2602
2603qTMinFTPILen
2604
2605 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2606 be placed.
2607
2608* Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2609 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2610
2611* New targets
2612
2613Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2614
2615* New Simulators
2616
2617Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2618
2619*** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2620
2621* The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2622
2623*** Changes in GDB 7.3
2624
2625* GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2626 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2627 matches the given regular expression.
2628
2629* The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2630
2631* The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2632 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2633
2634* New command line options
2635
2636-data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2637 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2638
2639* The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2640 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2641
2642* GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2643 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2644 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2645
2646* GDB now understands thread names.
2647
2648 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2649 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2650
2651 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2652 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2653
2654* OpenCL C
2655 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2656 has been integrated into GDB.
2657
2658* Python scripting
2659
2660 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2661 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2662 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2663
2664 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2665 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2666 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2667 and allows for more dynamic content.
2668
2669 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2670 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2671 have an is_valid method.
2672
2673 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2674 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2675 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2676
2677 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2678
2679 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2680 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2681 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2682 that function like so:
2683
2684 result = some_value (10,20)
2685
2686 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2687 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2688 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2689
2690 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2691 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2692 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2693 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2694 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2695
2696 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2697 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2698
2699 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2700
2701 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2702 selected thread.
2703
2704 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2705 holds the thread's name.
2706
2707 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2708 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2709 occurring in the process being debugged.
2710 The following events are currently supported:
2711 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2712 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2713 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2714
2715* C++ Improvements:
2716
2717 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2718 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2719
2720 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2721
2722 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2723 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2724 was added to GCC 4.5.
2725
2726 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2727 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2728 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2729 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2730 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2731 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2732
2733* GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2734 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2735 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2736 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2737 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2738
2739* GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2740 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2741 execution to a label.
2742
2743* GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2744 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2745 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2746 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2747
2748* The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2749 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2750 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2751 of scope.
2752
2753* GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2754
2755 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2756 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2757 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2758 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2759 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2760 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2761
2762 (gdb) info threads
2763 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2764
2765 While now you see this:
2766
2767 (gdb) info threads
2768 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2769
2770 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2771 dumps.
2772
2773 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2774 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2775 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2776 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2777
2778* When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2779 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2780 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2781 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2782 section in the user manual for more details.
2783
2784* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2785
2786 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2787 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2788
2789 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2790
2791* New native configurations
2792
2793ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2794
2795* New targets:
2796
2797Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2798
2799* Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2800 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2801 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2802 in the GDB user manual.
2803
2804* Guile support was removed.
2805
2806* New features in the GNU simulator
2807
2808 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2809
2810 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2811
2812*** Changes in GDB 7.2
2813
2814* Shared library support for remote targets by default
2815
2816 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2817 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2818 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2819 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2820 was always disabled for such configurations.
2821
2822* C++ Improvements:
2823
2824 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2825
2826 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2827 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2828 For example:
2829 namespace A
2830 {
2831 class B { };
2832 void foo (B) { }
2833 }
2834 ...
2835 A::B b
2836 foo(b)
2837 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2838 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2839 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2840
2841 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2842
2843 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2844 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2845 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2846 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2847 entry.
2848 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2849 mentioned flavors of operators.
2850
2851 ** static const class members
2852
2853 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2854 class definition has been fixed.
2855
2856* Windows Thread Information Block access.
2857
2858 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2859 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2860 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2861 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2862 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2863 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2864
2865* Static tracepoints
2866
2867 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2868 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2869 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2870 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2871 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2872 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2873 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2874 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2875 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2876 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2877 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2878 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2879 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2880 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2881 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2882 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2883 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2884 the "New remote packets" section below.
2885
2886* Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2887
2888 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2889 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2890 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2891 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2892
2893* Observer mode
2894
2895 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2896 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2897 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2898 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2899 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2900 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2901 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2902
2903* The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2904 current thread.
2905
2906* New remote packets
2907
2908qGetTIBAddr
2909
2910 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2911
2912qRelocInsn
2913
2914 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2915 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2916 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2917 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2918 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2919 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2920
2921qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2922
2923 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2924
2925qTSTMat
2926
2927 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2928 program.
2929
2930qXfer:statictrace:read
2931
2932 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2933 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2934 to gdb's qSupported query.
2935
2936QAllow
2937
2938 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2939
2940QTDPsrc
2941
2942 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2943 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2944
2945* The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2946 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2947 a directory.
2948
2949* New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2950
2951 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2952 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2953 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2954 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2955
2956 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2957 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2958 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2959 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2960 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2961 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2962 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2963
2964 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2965 for static tracepoints support.
2966
2967 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2968
2969* GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2970 it understands register description.
2971
2972* The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2973
2974* X86 general purpose registers
2975
2976 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2977 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2978 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2979 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2980 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2981
2982* The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2983 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2984 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2985 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2986 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2987 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2988
2989* The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2990 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2991 in the specified file.
2992
2993* Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2994 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2995 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2996 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2997 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2998 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2999 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3000 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3001 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3002 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3003
3004* New commands
3005
3006eval template, expressions...
3007 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3008 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3009
3010set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3011show target-file-system-kind
3012 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3013 names.
3014
3015save breakpoints <filename>
3016 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3017 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3018 definitions, use the `source' command.
3019
3020`save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3021is now deprecated.
3022
3023info static-tracepoint-markers
3024 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3025
3026strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3027 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3028 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3029
3030set observer on|off
3031show observer
3032 Enable and disable observer mode.
3033
3034set may-write-registers on|off
3035set may-write-memory on|off
3036set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3037set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3038set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3039set may-interrupt on|off
3040 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3041 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3042 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3043 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3044 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3045 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3046 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3047
3048set record memory-query on|off
3049show record memory-query
3050 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3051 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3052
3053* Changed commands
3054
3055disassemble
3056 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3057
3058* Python scripting
3059
3060** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3061 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3062 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3063 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3064 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3065
3066** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3067 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3068 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3069 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3070
3071** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3072 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3073
3074** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3075
3076** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3077
3078** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3079
3080** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3081 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3082 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3083
3084* Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3085there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3086tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3087regular breakpoints.
3088
3089* New targets
3090
3091ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3092
3093* D language support.
3094 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3095 language.
3096
3097* GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3098 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3099 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3100 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3101 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3102
3103* GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3104 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3105 conditions of the form:
3106
3107 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3108
3109 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3110 interface mentioned above.
3111
3112*** Changes in GDB 7.1
3113
3114* C++ Improvements
3115
3116 ** Namespace Support
3117
3118 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3119 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3120 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3121 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3122 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3123
3124 ** Bug Fixes
3125
3126 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3127 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3128 qualified name.
3129
3130 ** Cast Operators
3131
3132 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3133 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3134
3135* New targets
3136
3137Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3138Renesas RX rx-*-elf
3139
3140* New Simulators
3141
3142Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3143Renesas RX rx
3144
3145* Multi-program debugging.
3146
3147 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3148 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3149 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3150 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3151 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3152 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3153 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3154 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3155
3156* New tracing features
3157
3158 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3159
3160 ** Trace state variables
3161
3162 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3163 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3164 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3165 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3166 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3167 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3168 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3169 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3170 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3171 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3172
3173 ** Fast tracepoints
3174
3175 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3176 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3177 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3178 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3179 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3180 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3181 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3182 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3183 the regular trace command.
3184
3185 ** Disconnected tracing
3186
3187 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3188 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3189 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3190 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3191 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3192
3193 ** Trace files
3194
3195 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3196 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3197 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3198 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3199 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3200 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3201 <name>".
3202
3203 ** Circular trace buffer
3204
3205 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3206 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3207 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3208 not be available for all target agents.
3209
3210* Changed commands
3211
3212disassemble
3213 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3214 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3215
3216info variables
3217 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3218 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3219
3220source
3221 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3222 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3223 support.
3224
3225 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3226 "set script-extension" (see below).
3227
3228* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3229
3230record save [<FILENAME>]
3231 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3232 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3233
3234record restore <FILENAME>
3235 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3236 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3237
3238add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3239 Add a new inferior.
3240
3241clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3242 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3243 inferior has loaded.
3244
3245remove-inferior ID
3246 Remove an inferior.
3247
3248maint info program-spaces
3249 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3250
3251set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3252show remote interrupt-sequence
3253 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3254 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3255 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3256 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3257 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3258
3259set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3260show remote interrupt-on-connect
3261 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3262 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3263 Linux kernel.
3264
3265set remotebreak [on | off]
3266show remotebreak
3267Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3268
3269tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3270 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3271
3272info tvariables
3273 List trace state variables and their values.
3274
3275delete tvariable $NAME ...
3276 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3277
3278teval EXPR, ...
3279 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3280 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3281
3282ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3283 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3284
3285* New expression syntax
3286
3287 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3288 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3289
3290* New options
3291
3292set follow-exec-mode new|same
3293show follow-exec-mode
3294 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3295 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3296 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3297
3298set default-collect EXPR, ...
3299show default-collect
3300 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3301 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3302 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3303
3304set disconnected-tracing
3305show disconnected-tracing
3306 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3307 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3308 upon disconnection.
3309
3310set circular-trace-buffer
3311show circular-trace-buffer
3312 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3313 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3314 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3315 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3316
3317set script-extension off|soft|strict
3318show script-extension
3319 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3320 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3321 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3322 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3323 evaluation failed.
3324 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3325
3326set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3327show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3328 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3329 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3330 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3331 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3332 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3333 is on.
3334
3335* Python API Improvements
3336
3337 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3338 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3339 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3340
3341 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3342 `is_base_class' attribute.
3343
3344 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3345
3346 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3347 evaluate an expression.
3348
3349* New remote packets
3350
3351QTDV
3352 Define a trace state variable.
3353
3354qTV
3355 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3356
3357QTDisconnected
3358 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3359
3360QTBuffer:circular
3361 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3362
3363qTfP, qTsP
3364 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3365
3366* Bug fixes
3367
3368Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3369
3370Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3371much more reliable. In particular:
3372 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3373 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3374 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3375 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3376 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3377 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3378 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3379 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3380 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3381 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3382 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3383 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3384 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3385 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3386 non-threaded programs.
3387
3388PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3389This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3390libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3391executable program.
3392
3393*** Changes in GDB 7.0
3394
3395* GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3396dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3397them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3398for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3399"JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3400
3401* Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3402breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3403or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3404the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3405for tracepoint actions.
3406
3407* The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3408raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3409modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3410
3411* Process record and replay
3412
3413 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3414 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3415 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3416 execute commands.
3417
3418* Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3419step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3420set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3421reverse execution.
3422
3423* GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3424feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
34252.6.28 or later.
3426
3427* GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3428target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3429char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3430literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3431U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3432`printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3433system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3434the installation instructions for more information.
3435
3436* GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3437remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3438with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3439the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3440
3441* "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3442and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3443
3444* Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3445now complete on file names.
3446
3447* When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3448completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3449For instance, consider:
3450
3451 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3452 # struct example variable;
3453 (gdb) p variable.
3454
3455If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3456completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3457
3458* Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3459the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3460
3461* GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3462operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3463macros.
3464
3465* GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3466the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3467implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3468
3469* GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3470registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3471can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3472and simulator targets may also provide them.
3473
3474* New remote packets
3475
3476qSearch:memory:
3477 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3478
3479QStartNoAckMode
3480 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3481 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3482 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3483
3484vKill
3485 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3486 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3487
3488qXfer:osdata:read
3489 Obtains additional operating system information
3490
3491qXfer:siginfo:read
3492qXfer:siginfo:write
3493 Read or write additional signal information.
3494
3495* Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3496
3497 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3498 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3499 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3500
3501* GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3502DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3503
3504* The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3505and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3506`set/show sh calling-convention'.
3507
3508* GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3509with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3510
3511* 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3512
3513* Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3514
3515* Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3516which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3517
3518* The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3519list of section offsets.
3520
3521* On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3522conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3523have also been fixed.
3524
3525* GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3526From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3527are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3528
3529* GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3530example, given:
3531
3532 template<typename T> class C { };
3533 C<char const *> c;
3534
3535GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3536
3537 ptype C<char const *>
3538 ptype C<char const*>
3539 ptype C<const char *>
3540 ptype C<const char*>
3541
3542* New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3543
3544 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3545 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3546
3547 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3548 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3549 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3550
3551 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3552 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3553
3554 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3555 gdbserver.
3556
3557 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3558 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3559
3560 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3561 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3562 as appropriate.
3563
3564* Python scripting
3565
3566 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3567 available is determined at configure time.
3568
3569 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3570
3571* Ada tasking support
3572
3573 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3574 been introduced:
3575
3576 info tasks
3577 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3578 info task N
3579 Print detailed information about task number N.
3580 task
3581 Print the task number of the current task.
3582 task N
3583 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3584
3585* Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3586add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3587
3588* Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3589
3590 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3591 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3592 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3593 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3594 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3595 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3596 below.
3597
3598* Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3599"Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3600information.
3601
3602* Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3603to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3604architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3605See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3606more information.
3607
3608* Multi-architecture debugging.
3609
3610 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3611 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3612 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3613 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3614 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3615
3616* GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3617use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3618Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3619powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3620--enable-targets configure option.
3621
3622* Non-stop mode debugging.
3623
3624 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3625 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3626 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3627 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3628 section in the user manual for more information.
3629
3630 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3631 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3632 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3633 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3634 extensions on linux targets.
3635
3636* New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3637
3638catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3639 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3640 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3641 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3642 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3643 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3644 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3645 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3646 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3647
3648find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3649 val1 [, val2, ...]
3650 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3651
3652maint set python print-stack
3653maint show python print-stack
3654 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3655
3656python [CODE]
3657 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3658
3659macro define
3660macro list
3661macro undef
3662 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3663 interactively.
3664
3665info os processes
3666 Show operating system information about processes.
3667
3668info inferiors
3669 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3670
3671inferior NUM
3672 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3673
3674detach inferior NUM
3675 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3676
3677kill inferior NUM
3678 Kill inferior number NUM.
3679
3680* New options
3681
3682set spu stop-on-load
3683show spu stop-on-load
3684 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3685
3686set spu auto-flush-cache
3687show spu auto-flush-cache
3688 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3689 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3690
3691set sh calling-convention
3692show sh calling-convention
3693 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3694
3695set debug timestamp
3696show debug timestamp
3697 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3698
3699set disassemble-next-line
3700show disassemble-next-line
3701 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3702 the debuggee stops.
3703
3704set remote noack-packet
3705show remote noack-packet
3706 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3707 under "New remote packets."
3708
3709set remote query-attached-packet
3710show remote query-attached-packet
3711 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3712
3713set remote read-siginfo-object
3714show remote read-siginfo-object
3715 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3716 packet.
3717
3718set remote write-siginfo-object
3719show remote write-siginfo-object
3720 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3721 packet.
3722
3723set remote reverse-continue
3724show remote reverse-continue
3725 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3726
3727set remote reverse-step
3728show remote reverse-step
3729 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3730
3731set displaced-stepping
3732show displaced-stepping
3733 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3734 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3735 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3736
3737set debug displaced
3738show debug displaced
3739 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3740
3741maint set internal-error
3742maint show internal-error
3743 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3744
3745maint set internal-warning
3746maint show internal-warning
3747 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3748
3749set exec-wrapper
3750show exec-wrapper
3751unset exec-wrapper
3752 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3753
3754set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3755show multiple-symbols
3756 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3757 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3758 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3759
3760set breakpoint always-inserted
3761show breakpoint always-inserted
3762 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3763 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3764 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3765
3766set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3767show arm fallback-mode
3768set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3769show arm force-mode
3770 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3771 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3772 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3773 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3774
3775set disable-randomization
3776show disable-randomization
3777 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3778 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3779 multiple debugging sessions.
3780
3781set non-stop
3782show non-stop
3783 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3784 a breakpoint.
3785
3786set target-async
3787show target-async
3788 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3789 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3790 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3791 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3792
3793set target-wide-charset
3794show target-wide-charset
3795 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3796 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3797
3798set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3799show tcp auto-retry
3800set tcp connect-timeout
3801show tcp connect-timeout
3802 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3803 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3804 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3805
3806set libthread-db-search-path
3807show libthread-db-search-path
3808 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3809 libthread_db.
3810
3811set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3812show schedule-multiple
3813 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3814 the current process.
3815
3816set stack-cache
3817show stack-cache
3818 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3819 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3820 affecting correctness.
3821
3822set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3823show interactive-mode
3824 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3825 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3826 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3827 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3828 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3829
3830* Removed commands
3831
3832info forks
3833 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3834 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3835 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3836 command.
3837
3838fork NUM
3839 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3840 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3841 alias for the `fork' command.
3842
3843process PID
3844 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3845 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3846 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3847
3848delete fork NUM
3849 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3850 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3851 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3852 fork' command.
3853
3854detach fork NUM
3855 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3856 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3857 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3858 fork' command.
3859
3860* New native configurations
3861
3862x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3863
3864x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3865
3866* New targets
3867
3868Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3869x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3870x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3871S+core 3 score-*-*
3872
3873* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3874 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3875
3876* Removed commands
3877
3878catch load
3879catch unload
3880 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3881
3882*** Changes in GDB 6.8
3883
3884* New native configurations
3885
3886NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3887Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3888
3889* New targets
3890
3891NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3892Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3893
3894* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3895
3896 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3897 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3898 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3899 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3900
3901* GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3902(mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3903
3904* Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3905is resolved.
3906
3907* GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3908including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3909and in inlined functions.
3910
3911* GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3912accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3913more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3914
3915* Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3916
3917* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3918registers on PowerPC targets.
3919
3920* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3921targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3922
3923* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3924commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3925
3926* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3927extended-remote mode.
3928
3929* hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3930The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3931error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3932The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3933
3934* GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3935building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3936target architectures.
3937
3938* GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3939Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3940now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3941stored in two consecutive float registers.
3942
3943* The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3944breakpoints now.
3945
3946* Improved support for debugging Ada
3947Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3948include:
3949 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3950 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3951 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3952 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3953 of an assignment
3954 - Improved command completion in Ada
3955 - Several bug fixes
3956
3957* GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3958process.
3959
3960* New commands
3961
3962set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3963show print frame-arguments
3964 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3965 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3966
3967remote put
3968remote get
3969remote delete
3970 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3971
3972* New MI commands
3973
3974-target-file-put
3975-target-file-get
3976-target-file-delete
3977 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3978
3979* New remote packets
3980
3981vFile:open:
3982vFile:close:
3983vFile:pread:
3984vFile:pwrite:
3985vFile:unlink:
3986 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3987
3988vAttach
3989 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3990 mode.
3991
3992vRun
3993 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3994
3995*** Changes in GDB 6.7
3996
3997* Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3998bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3999Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4000
4001* When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4002symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4003-Bsymbolic linker option.
4004
4005* When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4006recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4007is not supported.
4008
4009* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4010frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4011
4012* GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
401332-bit or 64-bit register values.
4014
4015* Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4016
4017* GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4018target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4019a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4020
4021* Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4022automatically displayed as character or string data.
4023
4024* The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4025arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4026as strings.
4027
4028* Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4029for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4030only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4031
4032* GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4033iWMMXt coprocessor.
4034
4035* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4036ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4037has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4038
4039* GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4040
4041* GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4042
4043* The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4044layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4045segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4046
4047* The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4048immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4049
4050* The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4051"library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4052packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4053where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4054Windows and SymbianOS).
4055
4056* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4057(DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4058
4059* GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4060according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4061
4062* New commands
4063
4064set remoteflow
4065show remoteflow
4066 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4067 when debugging using remote targets.
4068
4069set mem inaccessible-by-default
4070show mem inaccessible-by-default
4071 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4072 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4073 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4074 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4075 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4076
4077set breakpoint auto-hw
4078show breakpoint auto-hw
4079 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4080 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4081 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4082 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4083 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4084 including "next" and "finish".
4085
4086catch exception
4087catch exception unhandled
4088 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4089
4090catch assert
4091 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4092
4093set sysroot
4094show sysroot
4095 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4096 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4097 an alias to "set sysroot".
4098
4099info spu
4100 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4101 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4102 architecture.
4103
4104* New native configurations
4105
4106OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4107
4108set tdesc filename
4109unset tdesc filename
4110show tdesc filename
4111 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4112 not query the target for its built-in description.
4113
4114* New targets
4115
4116OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4117MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4118Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4119
4120* New remote packets
4121
4122QPassSignals:
4123 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4124 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4125
4126qXfer:features:read:
4127 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4128 features.
4129
4130qXfer:spu:read:
4131qXfer:spu:write:
4132 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4133 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4134
4135qXfer:libraries:read:
4136 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4137 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4138 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4139 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4140
4141* Removed targets
4142
4143Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4144
4145alpha*-*-osf1*
4146alpha*-*-osf2*
4147d10v-*-*
4148hppa*-*-hiux*
4149i[34567]86-ncr-*
4150i[34567]86-*-dgux*
4151i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4152i[34567]86-*-netware*
4153i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4154i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4155i[34567]86-*-sco*
4156i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4157i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
4158i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
4159i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4160i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4161i[34567]86-*-sysv*
4162i[34567]86-*-isc*
4163m68*-cisco*-*
4164m68*-tandem-*
4165mips*-*-pe
4166rs6000-*-lynxos*
4167sh*-*-pe
4168
4169* Other removed features
4170
4171target abug
4172target cpu32bug
4173target est
4174target rom68k
4175
4176 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4177
4178target hms
4179target e7000
4180target sh3
4181target sh3e
4182
4183 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4184 H8/300.
4185
4186target ocd
4187
4188 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4189 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4190 interfaces.
4191
4192DWARF 1 support
4193
4194 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4195 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4196
4197Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4198
4199 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4200 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4201 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4202 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4203
4204MIPS ".pdr" sections
4205
4206 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4207 in debugging information.
4208
4209Scheme support
4210
4211 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4212 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4213
4214set mips stack-arg-size
4215set mips saved-gpreg-size
4216
4217 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4218
4219*** Changes in GDB 6.6
4220
4221* New targets
4222
4223Xtensa xtensa-elf
4224Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4225
4226* GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4227(mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4228running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4229
4230* The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4231Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4232supported.
4233
4234* The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4235broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4236
4237* The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4238stub provides the required support.
4239
4240* Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4241longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4242
4243* New commands
4244
4245set substitute-path
4246unset substitute-path
4247show substitute-path
4248 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4249 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4250 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4251 between compilation and debugging.
4252
4253set trace-commands
4254show trace-commands
4255 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4256 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4257 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4258
4259* REMOVED features
4260
4261The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4262
4263Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4264an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4265
4266The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4267
4268* New remote packets
4269
4270qSupported:
4271 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4272 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4273 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4274 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4275 target.
4276
4277qXfer:auxv:read:
4278 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4279 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4280
4281qXfer:memory-map:read:
4282 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4283 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4284
4285vFlashErase:
4286vFlashWrite:
4287vFlashDone:
4288 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4289
4290* Removed remote packets
4291
4292qPart:auxv:read:
4293 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4294 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4295
4296*** Changes in GDB 6.5
4297
4298* New targets
4299
4300Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4301
4302Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4303
4304* New commands
4305
4306init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4307 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4308
4309The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4310
4311checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4312
4313restart <n> Return the program state to a
4314 previously saved state.
4315
4316info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4317
4318delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4319
4320set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4321 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4322
4323info forks List forks of the user program that
4324 are available to be debugged.
4325
4326fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4327 forks of the user program that are
4328 available to be debugged.
4329
4330delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4331 that are available to be debugged (and
4332 kill the forked process).
4333
4334detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4335 that are available to be debugged (and
4336 allow the process to continue).
4337
4338* New architecture
4339
4340Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4341
4342* Improved Windows host support
4343
4344GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4345native console support, and remote communications using either
4346network sockets or serial ports.
4347
4348* Improved Modula-2 language support
4349
4350GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4351basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4352pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4353printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4354written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4355GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4356
4357* REMOVED features
4358
4359The ARM rdi-share module.
4360
4361The Netware NLM debug server.
4362
4363*** Changes in GDB 6.4
4364
4365* New native configurations
4366
4367OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4368OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4369
4370* New targets
4371
4372Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4373
4374* New command line options
4375
4376--batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4377--return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4378 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4379--eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4380 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4381 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4382 with the --command (-x) option.
4383
4384* Deprecated commands removed
4385
4386The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4387removed:
4388
4389 Command Replacement
4390 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4391 othernames set arm disassembler
4392 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4393 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4394 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4395 regs info registers
4396
4397* New BSD user-level threads support
4398
4399It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4400library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4401configurations are:
4402
4403FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4404FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4405OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4406
4407Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4408are not yet supported.
4409
4410* New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4411(Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4412
4413* REMOVED configurations and files
4414
4415VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4416Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4417National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4418
4419* New "set print array-indexes" command
4420
4421After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4422when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4423behavior.
4424
4425* VAX floating point support
4426
4427GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4428
4429* User-defined command support
4430
4431In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4432to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4433section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4434
4435*** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4436
4437* New command line option
4438
4439GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4440debugging.
4441
4442* GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4443
4444GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4445information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4446by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4447proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4448to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4449
4450* Internationalization
4451
4452When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4453internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4454continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4455
4456* Ada
4457
4458Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4459implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4460into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4461
4462* New native configurations
4463
4464GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4465
4466* Remote 'p' packet
4467
4468GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4469packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4470
4471* END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4472
4473GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4474The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4475features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4476i386 application).
4477
4478GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4479compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4480continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4481configurations:
4482
4483hppa-*-hpux
4484ia64-*-aix
4485mips-*-irix*
4486*-*-lynx
4487mips-*-linux-gnu
4488sds protocol
4489xdr protocol
4490powerpc bdm protocol
4491
4492Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4493made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4494
4495* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4496
4497Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4498been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4499configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4500permanently REMOVED.
4501
4502h8300-*-*
4503mcore-*-*
4504mn10300-*-*
4505ns32k-*-*
4506sh64-*-*
4507v850-*-*
4508
4509*** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4510
4511* MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4512
4513When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4514heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4515been fixed.
4516
4517* MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4518
4519When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4520fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4521IRIX long double values).
4522
4523* VAX and "next"
4524
4525A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4526command. This problem has been fixed.
4527
4528*** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4529
4530* Fix for ``many threads''
4531
4532On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4533rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4534error message:
4535
4536 ptrace: No such process.
4537 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4538
4539This problem has been fixed.
4540
4541* "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4542
4543Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4544GDB to dump core).
4545
4546* New ``start'' command.
4547
4548This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4549
4550* New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4551
4552Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4553live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4554platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4555
4556FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4557FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4558NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4559NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4560NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4561OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4562OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4563OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4564OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4565
4566* Signal trampoline code overhauled
4567
4568Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4569These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4570of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4571call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4572signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4573
4574Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4575features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4576include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4577
4578* Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4579
4580* New native configurations
4581
4582GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4583OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4584OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4585OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4586OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4587NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4588OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4589
4590* END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4591
4592GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4593The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4594including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4595migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4596compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4597work, was also included.
4598
4599GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4600module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4601
4602h8300-*-*
4603mcore-*-*
4604mn10300-*-*
4605ns32k-*-*
4606sh64-*-*
4607v850-*-*
4608xstormy16-*-*
4609
4610Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4611made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4612
4613* REMOVED configurations and files
4614
4615Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4616Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4617Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4618Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4619Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4620AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4621Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4622decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4623riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4624sonymips mips-sony-*
4625sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4626
4627*** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4628
4629* TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4630
4631The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4632GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4633command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4634program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4635with GDB".
4636
4637* Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4638
4639Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4640libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4641cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4642GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4643shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4644the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4645are created.
4646
4647Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4648
4649* Fixed ISO-C build problems
4650
4651The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4652non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4653compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4654
4655* Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4656
4657Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4658wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4659
4660* Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4661
4662The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4663permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4664systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4665
4666* Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4667
4668Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4669has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4670
4671* Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4672
4673GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4674its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4675panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4676
4677* Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4678
4679When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4680by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4681not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4682
4683*** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4684
4685* Removed --with-mmalloc
4686
4687Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4688conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4689
4690* Changes in AMD64 configurations
4691
4692The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4693the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4694and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4695you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4696
4697* Revised SPARC target
4698
4699The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4700FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4701support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4702from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4703(Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4704
4705* New C++ demangler
4706
4707GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4708names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4709with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4710programs.
4711
4712* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4713
4714GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4715arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4716encountered these.
4717
4718* C++ nested types and namespaces
4719
4720GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4721improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4722is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4723Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4724namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4725"Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4726frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4727if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4728GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4729
4730* New native configurations
4731
4732NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4733OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4734OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4735OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4736OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4737
4738* New debugging protocols
4739
4740M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4741
4742* "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4743
4744The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4745and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4746tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4747
4748* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4749
4750Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4751been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4752configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4753permanently REMOVED.
4754
4755Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4756Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4757Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4758Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4759Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4760AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4761Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4762decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4763riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4764sonymips mips-sony-*
4765sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4766
4767* REMOVED configurations and files
4768
4769SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4770SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4771Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4772Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4773H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4774HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4775HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4776HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4777PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4778386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4779Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4780 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4781 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4782SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4783SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4784Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4785Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4786
4787*** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4788
4789* Objective-C
4790
4791Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4792integrated into GDB.
4793
4794* New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4795
4796DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4797information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4798By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4799backtraces.
4800
4801The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4802have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4803DWARF 2 CFI support.
4804
4805* Hosted file I/O.
4806
4807GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4808file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4809remote protocol documentation for details.
4810
4811* All targets using the new architecture framework.
4812
4813All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4814architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4815to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4816ppc32 on ppc64).
4817
4818* GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4819
4820GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4821per-thread variables.
4822
4823* GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4824
4825GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4826GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4827
4828* Separate debug info.
4829
4830GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4831automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4832of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4833system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4834and optional debug files.
4835
4836* DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4837
4838DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4839describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4840debugger.
4841
4842GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4843for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4844
4845* Java
4846
4847A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4848Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4849considered "useable".
4850
4851* GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4852
4853The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4854commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4855kernel.
4856
4857* GDB supports logging output to a file
4858
4859There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4860used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4861
4862* The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4863
4864The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4865disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4866command.
4867
4868* d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4869
4870The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4871registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4872
4873* Profiling support
4874
4875A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4876be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4877session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4878"--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4879data, for more informative profiling results.
4880
4881* Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4882
4883The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4884option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4885"mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4886
4887Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4888removed.
4889
4890Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4891Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4892Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4893 in a subsequent -var-update.
4894
4895* New native configurations.
4896
4897FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4898
4899* Multi-arched targets.
4900
4901HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4902Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4903
4904* OBSOLETE configurations and files
4905
4906Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4907been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4908configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4909permanently REMOVED.
4910
4911Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4912Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4913H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4914HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4915HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4916HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4917PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4918Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4919 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4920 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4921Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4922Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4923
4924* REMOVED configurations and files
4925
4926V850EA ISA
4927Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4928IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4929i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4930i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4931i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4932HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4933 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4934 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4935Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4936Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4937Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4938OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4939I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4940
4941* MIPS $fp behavior changed
4942
4943The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4944the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4945context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4946address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4947The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4948
4949*** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4950
4951* GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4952
4953When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4954`/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4955in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4956library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4957shared libs like mad''.
4958
4959* ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4960
4961Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4962the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4963arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4964powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4965
4966* GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4967
4968GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4969and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4970they expand.
4971
4972The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4973invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4974
4975The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4976macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4977
4978Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4979information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4980your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4981information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4982
4983* Multi-arched targets.
4984
4985DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4986DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4987NEC V850 v850-*-*
4988National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4989Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4990Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4991
4992* New targets.
4993
4994Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4995
4996
4997* New native configurations
4998
4999Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5000SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5001MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5002UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5003
5004* OBSOLETE configurations and files
5005
5006Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5007been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5008configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5009permanently REMOVED.
5010
5011Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5012OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5013IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5014Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5015Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5016Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5017i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5018i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5019i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5020HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5021 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
5022 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5023I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5024
5025* OBSOLETE languages
5026
5027CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5028
5029* REMOVED configurations and files
5030
5031AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5032A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5033AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5034AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5035AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5036
5037testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5038
5039* New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5040
5041This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5042commands. The default is 1024.
5043
5044* Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5045
5046Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5047
5048* New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5049
5050These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5051to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5052from a file into memory (restore).
5053
5054* Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5055
5056The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5057including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5058of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5059
5060*** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5061
5062* New targets.
5063
5064Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
5065
5066* Bug fixes
5067
5068gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5069mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5070Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5071
5072gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5073dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5074Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5075
5076Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5077Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5078By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5079
5080i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5081avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5082By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5083
5084*** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5085
5086* New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5087
5088This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5089really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5090In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5091target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5092This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5093(notably embedded) targets.
5094
5095* New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5096
5097This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5098process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5099GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5100hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5101
5102* New command line option
5103
5104GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5105
5106* Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5107
5108There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5109command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5110a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5111be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5112open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5113issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5114a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5115it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5116GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5117is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5118
5119* Changes in ARM configurations.
5120
5121Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5122configuration is fully multi-arch.
5123
5124* New native configurations
5125
5126ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5127x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5128AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5129Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5130
5131* New targets
5132
5133Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5134
5135* OBSOLETE configurations and files
5136
5137Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5138been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5139configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5140permanently REMOVED.
5141
5142AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5143A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5144AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5145AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5146AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5147
5148testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5149
5150* REMOVED configurations and files
5151
5152TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5153WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5154PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5155PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5156PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5157Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5158Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5159 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5160SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5161Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5162Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5163ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5164Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5165
5166* Changes to command line processing
5167
5168The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5169for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5170
5171* Changes to key bindings
5172
5173There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5174
5175*** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5176
5177Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5178
5179Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5180corrupted.
5181
5182Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5183
5184Numerous documentation fixes.
5185
5186Numerous testsuite fixes.
5187
5188*** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5189
5190* New native configurations
5191
5192Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5193x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5194MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5195MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5196ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5197s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5198
5199* New targets
5200
5201Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5202CRIS cris-axis
5203UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5204
5205* OBSOLETE configurations and files
5206
5207x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5208Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5209Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5210 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5211TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5212WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5213Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5214PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5215PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5216PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5217SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5218Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5219ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5220Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5221
5222stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5223kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5224
5225Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5226been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5227configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5228permanently REMOVED.
5229
5230* REMOVED configurations and files
5231
5232Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5233Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5234Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5235ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5236Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5237ser-ocd.c *-*-*
5238
5239* GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5240
5241GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5242sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5243present.
5244
5245* Other news:
5246
5247* "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5248
5249* The MI enabled by default.
5250
5251The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5252revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5253engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5254using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5255which is now deprecated.
5256
5257* Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5258
5259GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5260main features are supported:
5261
5262 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5263
5264 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5265 extension;
5266
5267 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5268
5269 - a Pascal expression parser.
5270
5271However, some important features are not yet supported.
5272
5273 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5274
5275 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5276
5277 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5278 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5279
5280 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5281
5282 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5283
5284* Changes in completion.
5285
5286Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5287to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5288users expect at the shell prompt.
5289
5290Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5291`breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5292program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5293files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5294be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5295considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5296name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5297
5298`set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5299
5300* New platform-independent commands:
5301
5302It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5303hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5304documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5305
5306* Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5307
5308Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5309revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5310many threads as your system allows you to have.
5311
5312Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5313
5314Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5315multi-threaded programs though.
5316
5317* Changes in MIPS configurations.
5318
5319Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5320
5321GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5322debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5323supported.)
5324
5325* Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5326
5327Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5328breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5329implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5330put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5331and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5332registers.
5333
5334The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5335debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5336watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5337
5338* Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5339
5340New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5341the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5342
5343New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5344display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5345IDT.
5346
5347New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5348from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5349New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5350a given linear address.
5351
5352GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5353program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5354which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5355
5356DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5357
5358It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5359
5360* Changes in documentation.
5361
5362All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5363Documentation License.
5364
5365Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5366manual.
5367
5368TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5369
5370Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5371manual.
5372
5373The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5374documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5375hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5376
5377* GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5378
5379The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5380``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5381contents of this file.
5382
5383* gdba.el deleted
5384
5385GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5386
5387*** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5388
5389* Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5390
5391Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5392programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5393displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5394greater level of detail.
5395
5396* Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5397
5398It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5399bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5400on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5401written.
5402
5403* Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5404
5405The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5406necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5407machines ``out of the box''.
5408
5409The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5410possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5411signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5412would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5413interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5414
5415It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5416standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5417even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5418and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5419terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5420
5421The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5422enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5423also works.
5424
5425DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5426GDB.
5427
5428It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5429directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5430times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5431breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5432
5433* New native configurations
5434
5435ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5436PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5437
5438* New targets
5439
5440Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5441x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5442PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5443TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5444
5445* OBSOLETE configurations
5446
5447Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5448Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5449Pyramid pyramid-*-*
5450ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5451Tahoe tahoe-*-*
5452
5453Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5454but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5455these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5456be permanently REMOVED.
5457
5458* Gould support removed
5459
5460Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5461
5462* New features for SVR4
5463
5464On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5465without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5466load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5467
5468* Many C++ enhancements
5469
5470C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5471in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5472
5473* Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5474
5475A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5476sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5477with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5478``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5479
5480 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5481 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5482
5483* MIPS 64 remote protocol
5484
5485A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5486expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5487instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5488
5489The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5490added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5491
5492* ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5493
5494The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5495``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5496include ``set remote P-packet''.
5497
5498* Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5499
5500The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5501accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5502``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5503
5504* ``apropos'' command added.
5505
5506The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5507documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5508try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5509
5510* New MI interface
5511
5512A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5513interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5514process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5515"GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5516enabled by configuring with:
5517
5518 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5519
5520*** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5521
5522* New native configurations
5523
5524HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5525HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5526M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5527
5528* New targets
5529
5530Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5531Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5532Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5533
5534* OBSOLETE configurations
5535
5536Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5537
5538Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5539but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5540these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5541be permanently REMOVED.
5542
5543* ANSI/ISO C
5544
5545As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5546buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5547containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5548use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5549available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5550configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5551information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5552already.
5553
5554* Readline 2.2
5555
5556GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5557
5558* set extension-language
5559
5560You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5561languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5562you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5563 set extension-language .c c++
5564The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5565and their associated languages.
5566
5567* Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5568
5569When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5570you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5571PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5572
5573 set processor NAME
5574
5575sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5576following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5577
5578 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5579 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5580 403 IBM PowerPC 403
5581 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5582 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5583 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5584 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5585 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5586 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5587 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5588 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5589
5590At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5591special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5592registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5593only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5594
5595* HP-UX support
5596
5597Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5598more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5599library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5600support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5601for xdb and dbx commands.
5602
5603* Catchpoints
5604
5605HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5606generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5607to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5608
5609This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5610argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5611output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5612
5613* Debugging across forks
5614
5615On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5616in the inferior.
5617
5618* TUI
5619
5620HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5621it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5622configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5623
5624* GDB remote protocol additions
5625
5626A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5627Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5628fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5629allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5630
5631For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5632full 64-bit address. The command
5633
5634 set remoteaddresssize 32
5635
5636can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5637the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5638will be discarded.
5639
5640In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5641command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5642
5643 maint packet heythere
5644
5645sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5646disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5647time.
5648
5649The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5650target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5651downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5652
5653* Tracing can collect general expressions
5654
5655You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5656further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5657doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5658
5659* mask-address variable for Mips
5660
5661For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5662a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5663of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5664
5665* Higher serial baud rates
5666
5667GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5668230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5669to achieve all of these rates.)
5670
5671* i960 simulator
5672
5673The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5674builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5675
5676
5677*** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5678
5679* New native configurations
5680
5681Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5682Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5683Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5684PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5685PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5686Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5687Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5688
5689* New targets
5690
5691Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5692Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5693Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5694Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5695MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5696MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5697MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5698Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5699Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5700Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5701NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5702
5703* New debugging protocols
5704
5705ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5706M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5707DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5708PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5709PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5710Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5711
5712* DWARF 2
5713
5714All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5715format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5716information.
5717
5718* Java frontend
5719
5720GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5721only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5722
5723* solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5724
5725For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5726loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5727locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5728
5729* Live range splitting
5730
5731GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5732range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5733more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5734
5735* Hurd support
5736
5737GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5738updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5739
5740* ARM Thumb support
5741
5742GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5743instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5744instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5745accordingly.
5746
5747* MIPS16 support
5748
5749GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5750instruction set.
5751
5752* Overlay support
5753
5754GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5755linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5756will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5757control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5758additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5759in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5760
5761* info symbol
5762
5763The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5764the symbol at the specified address.
5765
5766* Trace support
5767
5768The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5769asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5770extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5771includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5772file tracepoint.c for more details.
5773
5774* MIPS simulator
5775
5776Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5777by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5778of most MIPS variants.
5779
5780* Sparc simulator
5781
5782Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5783by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5784Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5785
5786* set architecture
5787
5788For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5789basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5790architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5791the possible architectures.
5792
5793*** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5794
5795* New native configurations
5796
5797Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5798M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5799PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5800PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5801PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5802RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5803
5804* New targets
5805
5806ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5807I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5808MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5809MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5810PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5811Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5812Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5813
5814* PowerPC simulator
5815
5816The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5817contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5818PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5819basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5820performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5821
5822* Solaris 2.5
5823
5824GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5825
5826* Windows 95/NT native
5827
5828GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5829To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5830which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5831Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5832ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5833
5834* dont-repeat command
5835
5836If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5837command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5838useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5839extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5840
5841* Send break instead of ^C
5842
5843The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5844rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5845GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5846
5847* Remote protocol timeout
5848
5849The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5850that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5851to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5852
5853* Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5854
5855By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5856loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5857stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5858when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5859in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5860
5861Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5862/usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5863automatically on hpux10.
5864
5865* Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5866
5867Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5868
5869* Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5870
5871When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5872may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5873the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5874every character. The default value is 1050.
5875
5876* Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5877
5878If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5879a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5880replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5881details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5882remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5883to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5884
5885* Speedups for remote debugging
5886
5887GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5888the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5889and more efficient S-record downloading.
5890
5891* Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5892
5893GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5894Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5895
5896*** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5897
5898* Psymtabs for XCOFF
5899
5900The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5901can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5902
5903* Remote targets use caching
5904
5905Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5906remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5907it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5908debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5909off' turns the the data cache off.
5910
5911* Remote targets may have threads
5912
5913The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5914in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5915gdb/remote.c for details.
5916
5917* NetROM support
5918
5919If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5920support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5921acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5922write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5923support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5924another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5925sequence is something like
5926
5927 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5928 load <prog>
5929 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5930
5931* Macintosh host
5932
5933GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5934may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5935it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5936available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5937device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5938directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5939scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5940mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5941
5942* Autoconf
5943
5944GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5945but does simplify configuration and building.
5946
5947* hpux10
5948
5949GDB now supports hpux10.
5950
5951*** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5952
5953* New native configurations
5954
5955x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5956x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5957NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5958Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5959
5960* New targets
5961
5962A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5963HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5964CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5965PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5966WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5967
5968* Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5969
5970GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5971possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5972filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5973the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5974if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5975
5976* Arguments to user-defined commands
5977
5978User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5979Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5980trivial example:
5981define adder
5982 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5983
5984To execute the command use:
5985adder 1 2 3
5986
5987Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5988Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5989use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5990
5991* New `if' and `while' commands
5992
5993This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5994commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5995expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5996execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5997terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5998`else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5999if the expression is zero.
6000
6001* Fortran source language mode
6002
6003GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6004Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6005variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6006with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6007Fortran compilers.
6008
6009* Better HPUX support
6010
6011Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6012running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6013processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6014for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6015that behavior do the following before running the program:
6016
6017 adb -w a.out
6018 __dld_flags?W 0x5
6019 control-d
6020
6021This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6022To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6023
6024 adb -w a.out
6025 __dld_flags?W 0x4
6026 control-d
6027
6028You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6029the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6030external linkage.
6031
6032GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6033HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6034
6035* Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6036
6037You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6038commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6039current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6040"set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6041associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6042configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6043
6044* New DOS host serial code
6045
6046This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6047no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6048a PC's serial port.
6049
6050*** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6051
6052* New "complete" command
6053
6054This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6055were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6056
6057* Trailing space optional in prompt
6058
6059"set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6060allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6061
6062* Breakpoint hit counts
6063
6064"info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6065has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6066can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6067to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6068less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6069that breakpoint.
6070
6071* Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6072
6073"set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6074an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6075arrays actually contain only short strings.
6076
6077* Shared library breakpoints
6078
6079In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6080breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6081
6082* Hardware watchpoints
6083
6084There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6085targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6086
6087Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6088
6089* Annotations
6090
6091Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6092and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6093
6094* Improved Irix 5 support
6095
6096GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6097
6098* Improved HPPA support
6099
6100GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6101
6102* New native configurations
6103
6104Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6105HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6106Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6107RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6108
6109* New targets
6110
6111OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6112MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6113Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
6114
6115* Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6116
6117There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6118This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6119
6120* Fixes
6121
6122As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6123and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6124
6125*** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6126
6127* Irix 5 is now supported
6128
6129* HPPA support
6130
6131GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6132to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6133GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6134of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6135can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6136
6137
6138*** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6139
6140* User visible changes:
6141
6142* Remote Debugging
6143
6144The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6145target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6146debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6147integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6148debugging info for the mips target).
6149
6150* DEC Alpha native support
6151
6152GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6153debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6154work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6155Alpha-specific notes.
6156
6157* Preliminary thread implementation
6158
6159GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6160
6161* LynxOS native and target support for 386
6162
6163This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6164to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6165for details).
6166
6167* Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6168
6169This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6170mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6171call methods, ...etc.
6172
6173*** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6174
6175 * User visible changes:
6176
6177Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6178supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6179other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6180somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6181
6182Filename completion now works.
6183
6184When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6185arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6186addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6187
6188All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6189vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6190should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6191your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6192to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6193
6194 * DEC alpha support
6195
6196This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6197cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6198
6199
6200*** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6201
6202 * Testsuite
6203
6204This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6205The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6206via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6207
6208 * C++ demangling
6209
6210'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6211emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6212Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6213disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6214use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6215
6216 * Simulators
6217
6218GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6219So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6220Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6221
6222 * New targets supported
6223
6224H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6225H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6226SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6227Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6228IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6229
6230Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6231version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6232GO32 memory extender.
6233
6234 * New remote protocols
6235
6236MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6237
6238 * New source languages supported
6239
6240This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6241used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6242into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6243
6244
6245*** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6246
6247 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6248
6249GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6250version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6251University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6252compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6253format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6254(as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6255
6256Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6257
6258 * Faster and better demangling
6259
6260We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6261demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6262character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6263only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6264This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6265increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6266symbol lookups.
6267
6268`Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6269from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6270compiler does not actually implement.
6271
6272 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6273
6274In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6275inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6276recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6277very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6278The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6279circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6280fix.
6281
6282The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6283release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6284
6285 * Improved configure script
6286
6287The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6288you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6289host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6290done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6291
6292We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6293version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6294`--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6295The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6296only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6297We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6298
6299 * Documentation improvements
6300
6301There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6302produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6303before submitting changes.
6304
6305The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6306M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6307`info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6308you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6309a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6310
6311*NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6312We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6313been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6314or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6315`texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6316around this problem.
6317
6318 * New features
6319
6320GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6321the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6322`print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6323the target program.
6324
6325The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6326how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6327
6328 * New native hosts supported
6329
6330HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6331386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6332
6333 * New targets supported
6334
6335AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6336
6337 * New file formats supported
6338
6339BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6340HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6341
6342 * Major bug fixes
6343
6344Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6345
6346We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6347printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6348
6349We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6350for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6351release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6352
6353You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6354will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6355
6356We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6357for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6358especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6359libraries.
6360
6361The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6362information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6363command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6364any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6365when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6366
6367 * Internal improvements
6368
6369GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6370debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6371
6372GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6373Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6374symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6375contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6376shared code that handles any of them.
6377
6378 * New command line options
6379
6380We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6381
6382 * Mmalloc licensing
6383
6384The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6385General Public License.
6386
6387*** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6388
6389 * Host/native/target split
6390
6391GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6392hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6393target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6394local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6395ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6396
6397The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6398GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6399is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6400code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6401any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6402built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6403handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6404
6405GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6406It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6407plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6408
6409 * New hosts supported
6410
6411HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6412386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6413386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6414
6415 * New targets supported
6416
6417Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
641868030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6419
6420 * New native hosts supported
6421
6422386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6423 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6424386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6425
6426 * New file formats supported
6427
6428BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6429supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6430format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6431
6432 * New commands
6433
6434`show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6435`show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6436These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6437
6438`info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6439
6440You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6441scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6442prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6443executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6444
6445 * C++ improvements
6446
6447We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6448info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6449symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6450
6451Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6452
6453 * Major bug fixes
6454
6455The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6456fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6457by the compiler.
6458
6459We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6460support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6461
6462John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6463slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6464that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6465purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6466the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6467mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6468
6469Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6470about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6471completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6472we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6473
6474 * AMD 29k support
6475
6476A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6477specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6478calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6479usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6480in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6481
6482We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6483Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6484of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6485resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6486
6487 * Remote interfaces
6488
6489We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6490with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6491message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6492This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6493needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6494breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6495each instruction being stepped through.
6496
6497The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6498registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6499
6500There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6501find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6502Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6503processor with a serial port.
6504
6505 * Configuration
6506
6507Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6508`table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6509supported, and what files each one uses.
6510
6511 * Library changes
6512
6513There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6514disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6515Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6516disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6517
6518The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6519Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6520can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6521grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6522
6523 * Documentation
6524
6525The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6526reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6527as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6528encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6529system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6530bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6531
6532And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6533
6534
6535*** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6536
6537 * Better support for C++ function names
6538
6539GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6540names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6541(using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6542single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6543Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6544
6545GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6546the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6547You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6548lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6549for the list of formats.
6550
6551 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6552
6553Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6554C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6555directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6556can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6557usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6558about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6559this problem.)
6560
6561 * New 'maintenance' command
6562
6563All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6564the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6565can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6566
6567 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6568 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6569 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6570 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6571 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6572 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6573
6574The following commands are new:
6575
6576 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6577 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6578 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6579
6580 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6581
6582We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6583(e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6584be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6585read after argv processing.
6586
6587 * New hosts supported
6588
6589Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6590
6591GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6592
6593We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6594is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6595for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6596masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6597fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6598It costs extra.
6599
6600 * New targets supported
6601
6602Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6603
6604 * More smarts about finding #include files
6605
6606GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6607all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6608greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6609especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6610the one that contains your sources.
6611
6612We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6613breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6614try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6615
6616 * Interesting infernals change
6617
6618GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6619section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6620target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6621stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6622
6623 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6624
6625There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6626 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6627 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6628
6629See the ChangeLog for details.
6630
6631*** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6632
6633 * New machines supported (host and target)
6634
6635IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6636
6637SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6638
6639 * New malloc package
6640
6641GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6642Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6643capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6644This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6645pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6646more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6647
6648 * info proc
6649
6650The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6651'help info proc' for details.
6652
6653 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6654
6655The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6656Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6657possible.
6658
6659 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6660
6661Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6662support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6663conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6664environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6665that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6666in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6667
6668 * Cross byte order fixes
6669
6670Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6671targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6672
6673 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6674
6675If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6676system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6677`symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6678program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6679called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6680Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6681and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6682the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6683option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6684starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6685
6686You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6687the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6688information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6689slower, but makes future operations faster.
6690
6691The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6692build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6693A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6694use is:
6695
6696 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6697
6698The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6699It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6700shared across multiple host platforms.
6701
6702 * longjmp() handling
6703
6704GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6705siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6706all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6707platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6708
6709 * Solaris 2.0
6710
6711Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6712this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6713reading symbols.
6714
6715 * Bug fixes
6716
6717As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6718People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6719crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6720
6721*** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6722
6723 * New machines supported (host and target)
6724
6725SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6726 (except core files)
6727BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6728Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6729
6730 * New machines supported (target)
6731
6732AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6733
6734 * C++ support
6735
6736GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6737The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6738per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6739
6740GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6741`ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6742extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6743good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6744will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6745released.
6746
6747 * New features for SVR4
6748
6749GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6750shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6751only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6752
6753The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6754on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6755it prints the address mappings of the process.
6756
6757If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6758bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6759
6760 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6761
6762Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6763now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6764skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6765make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6766same code linked statically.
6767
6768 * New Getopt
6769
6770GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6771version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6772continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6773Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6774added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6775future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6776
6777 * Bugs fixed
6778
6779The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6780Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6781See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6782
6783
6784*** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6785
6786 * New machines supported (host and target)
6787
6788Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6789NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6790Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6791
6792 * Almost SCO Unix support
6793
6794We had hoped to support:
6795SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6796(except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6797that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6798about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6799
6800 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6801
6802GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6803debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6804is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6805send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6806reqired (if any).
6807
6808 * New Readline
6809
6810GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6811is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6812required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6813
6814 * Bugs fixed
6815
6816The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6817Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6818See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6819
6820 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6821
6822GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6823supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6824symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6825
6826Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6827mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6828debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6829mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6830version 2.
6831
6832Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6833really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6834line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6835variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6836situation somewhat.
6837
6838When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6839However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6840methods.
6841
6842We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6843DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6844encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6845
6846
6847*** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6848
6849 * Improved configuration
6850
6851Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6852Porting BFD is simpler.
6853
6854 * Stepping improved
6855
6856The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6857of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6858in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6859function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6860
6861 * Bug fixing
6862
6863Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6864
6865 * New host supported (not target)
6866
6867Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6868
6869
6870*** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6871
6872 * Multiple source language support
6873
6874GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6875It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6876and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6877language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6878You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6879`set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6880
6881 * GDB and Modula-2
6882
6883GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6884currently under development at the State University of New York at
6885Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6886continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6887
6888Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6889debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6890symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6891
6892There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6893in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6894
6895 * set write on/off
6896
6897GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6898a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6899the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6900by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6901effect immediately.
6902
6903 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6904
6905When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6906shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6907The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6908examining core files.
6909
6910 * set listsize
6911
6912You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6913The default is 10.
6914
6915 * New machines supported (host and target)
6916
6917SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6918Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6919Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6920
6921 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6922
6923IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6924
6925 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6926
6927AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6928AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6929Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6930
6931 * New remote interfaces
6932
6933AMD 29000 Adapt
6934AMD 29000 Minimon
6935
6936
6937*** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6938
6939 * New Facilities
6940
6941Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6942
6943Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6944target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6945is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6946remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6947remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6948also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6949using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6950stub on the target system.
6951
6952New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6953
6954GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6955library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6956object file types such as a.out and coff.
6957
6958There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6959refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6960
6961
6962 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6963
6964All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6965by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6966
6967For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6968``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6969Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6970
6971What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6972print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6973will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6974all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6975
6976confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6977 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6978 it is already running. Default is ON.
6979
6980editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6981 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6982 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6983 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6984 Default is ON.
6985
6986history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6987 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6988 or the value of the environment variable
6989 GDBHISTFILE.
6990
6991history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6992 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6993 HISTSIZE.
6994
6995history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6996 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6997 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6998
6999history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7000 history expansion will be performed on
7001 command line input. The default is OFF.
7002
7003radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7004 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7005 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7006
7007height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7008 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7009 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7010 variable TERM.
7011
7012width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7013 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7014 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7015 variable TERM.
7016
7017Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7018``set width'' instead.
7019
7020print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7021 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7022 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7023 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7024
7025print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7026 is OFF.
7027
7028print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7029 "raw" form if off.
7030
7031print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7032 like instructions.
7033
7034print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7035
7036
7037 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7038
7039The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7040new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7041are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7042window.
7043
7044
7045 * Support for Shared Libraries
7046
7047GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7048Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7049before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7050happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7051At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7052from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7053shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7054It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7055
7056sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7057 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7058 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7059
7060info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7061
7062
7063 * Watchpoints
7064
7065A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7066expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7067tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7068quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7069problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7070more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7071
7072watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7073
7074info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7075
7076delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7077disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7078enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7079
7080
7081 * C++ multiple inheritance
7082
7083When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7084for C++ programs.
7085
7086 * C++ exception handling
7087
7088Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7089ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7090the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7091handler's context).
7092
7093catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7094 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7095 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7096
7097info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7098 current stack frame.
7099
7100
7101 * Minor command changes
7102
7103The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7104command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7105is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7106
7107The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7108at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7109frames without printing.
7110
7111 * New directory command
7112
7113'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7114The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7115about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7116with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7117find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7118
7119 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7120
7121For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7122for more details.
7123
7124GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7125two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7126Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7127where the program that you are debugging will run.
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