Document the -catch-assert and -catch-exception new GDB/MI commands.
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.6
5
6 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
7 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
8
9 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
10 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
11 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
12 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
13 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
14 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
15 "void".
16
17 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
18
19 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
20
21 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
22 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
23 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
24 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
25
26 (gdb) p $rax
27 $1 = <not saved>
28
29 (gdb) info registers rax
30 rax <not saved>
31
32 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
33 "*value not available*".
34
35 * Python scripting
36
37 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
38
39 * New targets
40
41 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
42 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
43 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
44
45 * Removed native configurations
46
47 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
48 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
49
50 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
51 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
52 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
53 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
54 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
55 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
56 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
57
58 * New commands:
59 catch rethrow
60 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
61 maint check-psymtabs
62 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
63 maint check-symtabs
64 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
65 maint expand-symtabs
66 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
67
68 show configuration
69 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
70
71 maint set|show per-command
72 maint set|show per-command space
73 maint set|show per-command time
74 maint set|show per-command symtab
75 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
76
77 * New options
78
79 set debug symfile off|on
80 show debug symfile
81 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
82 symbol tables within those files
83
84 set print raw frame-arguments
85 show print raw frame-arguments
86 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
87 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
88
89 set remote trace-status-packet
90 show remote trace-status-packet
91 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
92
93 set debug nios2
94 show debug nios2
95 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
96
97 set range-stepping
98 show range-stepping
99 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
100
101 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
102 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
103 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
104 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
105 "set height 0".
106
107 * New command-line options
108 --configuration
109 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
110
111 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
112 buffer in Common Trace Format.
113
114 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
115 GDB command gcore.
116
117 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
118
119 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
120 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
121
122 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
123 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
124
125 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
126 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
127 due to an uncaught signal.
128
129 * MI changes
130
131 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
132 Trace Format now.
133
134 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
135
136 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
137 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
138 are displayed.
139
140 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
141 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
142
143 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
144 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
145 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
146
147 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
148 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
149 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
150 main subprogram.
151
152 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
153 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
154
155 * New system-wide configuration scripts
156 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
157 configuration scripts for the following systems:
158 ** ElinOS
159 ** Wind River Linux
160
161 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
162 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
163 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
164 below.
165
166 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
167 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
168
169 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
170 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
171 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
172
173 * New remote packets
174
175 vCont;r
176
177 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
178 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
179 involvemement at each single-step.
180
181 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
182 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
183 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
184 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
185 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
186 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
187 speedup.
188
189 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
190
191 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
192 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
193
194 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
195 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
196 trace state variables.
197
198 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
199 target.
200
201 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
202 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
203
204 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
205
206 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
207 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
208 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
209 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
210
211 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
212
213 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
214 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
215 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
216 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
217
218 set|show record full insn-number-max
219 set|show record full stop-at-limit
220 set|show record full memory-query
221
222 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
223 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
224 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
225 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
226 This new recording method can be enabled using:
227
228 record btrace
229
230 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
231 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
232
233 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
234 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
235 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
236
237 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
238 instruction granularity
239
240 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
241 function granularity
242
243 * New native configurations
244
245 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
246 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
247 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
248 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
249
250 * New targets
251
252 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
253 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
254 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
255 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
256 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
257
258 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
259 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
260 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
261 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
262 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
263 --data-directory command-line option.
264
265 * New command line options:
266
267 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
268 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
269
270 * Removed command line options
271
272 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
273 Emacs.
274
275 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
276 type formatting.
277
278 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
279
280 * Python scripting
281
282 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
283
284 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
285
286 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
287
288 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
289
290 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
291 of architecture in the Python API.
292
293 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
294 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
295
296 * New Python-based convenience functions:
297
298 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
299 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
300 ** $_strlen(str)
301 ** $_regex(str, regex)
302
303 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
304 given an argument.
305
306 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
307 default for GCC since November 2000.
308
309 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
310
311 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
312 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
313
314 * New configure options
315
316 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
317 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
318 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
319 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
320 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
321 options allow the user to override that default.
322 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
323 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
324 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
325
326 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
327
328 catch signal
329 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
330 conditions to be attached.
331
332 maint info bfds
333 List the BFDs known to GDB.
334
335 python-interactive [command]
336 pi [command]
337 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
338 and print the result of expressions.
339
340 py [command]
341 "py" is a new alias for "python".
342
343 enable type-printer [name]...
344 disable type-printer [name]...
345 Enable or disable type printers.
346
347 * Removed commands
348
349 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
350 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
351 instead.
352
353 * New options
354
355 set print type methods (on|off)
356 show print type methods
357 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
358 The default is to show them.
359
360 set print type typedefs (on|off)
361 show print type typedefs
362 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
363 The default is to show them.
364
365 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
366 show filename-display
367 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
368 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
369
370 set trace-buffer-size
371 show trace-buffer-size
372 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
373
374 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
375 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
376 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
377
378 set debug aarch64
379 show debug aarch64
380 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
381 The default is off.
382
383 set debug coff-pe-read
384 show debug coff-pe-read
385 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
386 exported symbols.
387
388 set debug mach-o
389 show debug mach-o
390 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
391 processing.
392
393 set debug notification
394 show debug notification
395 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
396
397 * MI changes
398
399 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
400 "=cmd-param-changed".
401 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
402 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
403 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
404 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
405 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
406 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
407 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
408 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
409 "=memory-changed".
410 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
411 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
412 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
413 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
414 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
415 library load/unload events.
416 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
417 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
418 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
419 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
420 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
421 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
422 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
423 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
424
425 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
426 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
427 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
428 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
429
430 * New remote packets
431
432 QTBuffer:size
433 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
434 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
435
436 Qbtrace:bts
437 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
438 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
439 qSupported query.
440
441 Qbtrace:off
442 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
443 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
444
445 qXfer:btrace:read
446 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
447 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
448
449 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
450
451 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
452 for more x32 ABI info.
453
454 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
455
456 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
457
458 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
459 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
460 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
461 "info os files" lists file descriptors
462 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
463 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
464 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
465 "info os msg" lists message queues
466 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
467
468 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
469 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
470 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
471 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
472 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
473 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
474
475 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
476 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
477 record/replay support.
478
479 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
480
481 * Python scripting
482
483 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
484 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
485
486 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
487
488 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
489 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
490
491 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
492
493 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
494 the source at which the symbol was defined.
495
496 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
497 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
498 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
499 symbol's value.
500
501 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
502 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
503
504 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
505 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
506 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
507
508 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
509 object associated with a PC value.
510
511 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
512 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
513
514 * Go language support.
515 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
516 language.
517
518 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
519 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
520
521 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
522 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
523
524 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
525 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
526 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
527 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
528 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
529 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
530
531 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
532 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
533 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
534 build/libcpp/expr.c.
535
536 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
537 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
538
539 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
540 since December 2007.
541
542 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
543 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
544 command does. For instance:
545
546 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
547
548 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
549 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
550 created, using the "condition" command.
551
552 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
553 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
554
555 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
556
557 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
558 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
559 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
560 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
561 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
562 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
563 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
564 files with older .gdb_index sections.
565
566 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
567 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
568 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
569 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
570 the .gdb_index section.
571
572 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
573
574 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
575 target.
576
577 * MI changes
578
579 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
580
581 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
582
583 * New commands
584
585 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
586 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
587 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
588
589 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
590 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
591
592 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
593 several hits.
594
595 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
596 C++ and Java objects.
597
598 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
599 can be used to reccursively explore values and types of
600 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
601 configured with '--with-python'.
602
603 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
604 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
605 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
606 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
607 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
608 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
609 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
610
611 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
612 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
613 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
614 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
615
616 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
617 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
618 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
619 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
620
621 ** "set print symbol"
622 "show print symbol"
623 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
624 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
625 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
626
627 * Deprecated commands
628
629 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
630 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
631
632 * New targets
633
634 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
635 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
636
637 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
638 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
639 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
640 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
641 evaluates to true.
642
643 * New options
644
645 set mips compression
646 show mips compression
647 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
648 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
649 mips16
650 micromips
651 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
652
653 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
654 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
655 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
656 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
657 available mode.
658 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
659 target.
660
661 set auto-load off
662 Disable auto-loading globally.
663
664 show auto-load
665 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
666
667 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
668 show auto-load gdb-scripts
669 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
670
671 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
672 show auto-load python-scripts
673 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
674
675 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
676 show auto-load local-gdbinit
677 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
678
679 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
680 show auto-load libthread-db
681 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
682
683 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
684 show auto-load scripts-directory
685 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
686 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
687 of the directories listed by this option.
688 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
689
690 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
691 show auto-load safe-path
692 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
693 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
694
695 set debug auto-load on|off
696 show debug auto-load
697 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
698
699 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
700 show dprintf-style
701 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
702 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
703 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
704 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
705
706 set dprintf-function <expr>
707 show dprintf-function
708 set dprintf-channel <expr>
709 show dprintf-channel
710 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
711 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
712
713 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
714 show disconnected-dprintf
715 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
716 after GDB disconnects.
717
718 * New configure options
719
720 --with-auto-load-dir
721 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
722 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
723 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
724 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
725 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
726
727 --with-auto-load-safe-path
728 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
729 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
730
731 --without-auto-load-safe-path
732 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
733 security feature.
734
735 * New remote packets
736
737 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
738
739 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
740 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
741 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
742 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
743
744 QProgramSignals:
745
746 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
747 program without GDB involvement.
748
749 * New command line options
750
751 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
752 before loading inferior.
753 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
754 execute it before loading inferior.
755
756 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
757
758 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
759 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
760 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
761 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
762 inferior changes.
763
764 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
765 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
766
767 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
768 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
769 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
770 target hardware watchpoint.
771
772 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
773 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
774 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
775 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
776
777 * Python scripting
778
779 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
780 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
781 existing one.
782
783 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
784 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
785 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
786 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
787 now "message", which just prints the error message without
788 the stack trace.
789
790 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
791 Python API.
792
793 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
794 modules library. This module provides functionality for
795 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
796 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
797 corresponding value.
798
799 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
800 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
801 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
802 on GDB start-up.
803
804 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
805 static_block will return the global and static blocks
806 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
807 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
808
809 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
810
811 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
812 "gdb.breakpoints".
813
814 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
815 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
816 available in the CLI.
817
818 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
819 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
820 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
821 "some_type.items()".
822
823 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
824 new object file.
825
826 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
827 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
828 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
829 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
830 any anonymous fields.
831
832 * MI changes
833
834 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
835 "solib-event".
836
837 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
838 "=breakpoint-modified".
839
840 ** New command -ada-task-info.
841
842 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
843 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
844 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
845 lives.
846
847 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
848 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
849 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
850 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
851 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
852
853 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
854 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
855
856 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
857 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
858 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
859 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
860 use this option to specify where to find it.
861
862 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
863 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
864 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
865 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
866 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
867 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
868 section in the user manual for more details.
869
870 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
871 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
872 become available after that.
873
874 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
875
876 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
877 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
878 gcc version 4.7.
879
880 * New commands
881
882 !SHELL COMMAND
883 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
884 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
885
886 * Changed commands
887
888 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
889 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
890 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
891
892 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
893 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
894 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
895
896 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
897 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
898 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
899 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
900 name starts with a hyphen.
901
902 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
903 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
904 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
905 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
906 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
907 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
908 number of bytes that will be collected.
909
910 tstart [NOTES]
911 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
912 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
913 setting the variable trace-notes.
914
915 tstop [NOTES]
916 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
917 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
918 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
919 trace-stop-notes.
920
921 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
922 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
923 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
924 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
925 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
926 is running.
927
928 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
929 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
930 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
931
932 * New options
933
934 set debug dwarf2-read
935 show debug dwarf2-read
936 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
937 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
938
939 set debug symtab-create
940 show debug symtab-create
941 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
942 creation. The default is off.
943
944 set extended-prompt
945 show extended-prompt
946 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
947 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
948 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
949 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
950 prompt is displayed.
951
952 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
953 show print entry-values
954 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
955 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
956 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
957
958 set debug entry-values
959 show debug entry-values
960 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
961 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
962
963 set basenames-may-differ
964 show basenames-may-differ
965 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
966 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
967 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
968 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
969 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
970 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
971 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
972 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
973
974 set trace-user
975 show trace-user
976 set trace-notes
977 show trace-notes
978 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
979 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
980 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
981 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
982
983 set trace-stop-notes
984 show trace-stop-notes
985 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
986 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
987 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
988 started by someone else.
989
990 * New remote packets
991
992 QTEnable
993
994 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
995
996 QTDisable
997
998 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
999
1000 QTNotes
1001
1002 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1003
1004 qTP
1005
1006 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1007
1008 qTMinFTPILen
1009
1010 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1011 be placed.
1012
1013 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1014 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1015
1016 * New targets
1017
1018 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1019
1020 * New Simulators
1021
1022 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1023
1024 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1025
1026 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1027
1028 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1029
1030 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1031 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1032 matches the given regular expression.
1033
1034 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1035
1036 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1037 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1038
1039 * New command line options
1040
1041 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1042 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1043
1044 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1045 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1046
1047 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1048 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1049 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1050
1051 * GDB now understands thread names.
1052
1053 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1054 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1055
1056 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1057 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1058
1059 * OpenCL C
1060 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1061 has been integrated into GDB.
1062
1063 * Python scripting
1064
1065 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1066 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1067 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1068
1069 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1070 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1071 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1072 and allows for more dynamic content.
1073
1074 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1075 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1076 have an is_valid method.
1077
1078 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1079 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1080 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1081
1082 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1083
1084 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1085 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1086 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1087 that function like so:
1088
1089 result = some_value (10,20)
1090
1091 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1092 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1093 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1094
1095 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1096 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1097 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1098 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1099 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1100
1101 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1102 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1103
1104 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1105
1106 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1107 selected thread.
1108
1109 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1110 holds the thread's name.
1111
1112 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1113 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1114 occurring in the process being debugged.
1115 The following events are currently supported:
1116 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1117 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1118 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1119
1120 * C++ Improvements:
1121
1122 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1123 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1124
1125 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1126
1127 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1128 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1129 was added to GCC 4.5.
1130
1131 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1132 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1133 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1134 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1135 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1136 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1137
1138 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1139 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1140 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1141 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1142 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1143
1144 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1145 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1146 execution to a label.
1147
1148 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1149 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1150 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1151 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1152
1153 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1154 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1155 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1156 of scope.
1157
1158 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1159
1160 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1161 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1162 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1163 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1164 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1165 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1166
1167 (gdb) info threads
1168 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1169
1170 While now you see this:
1171
1172 (gdb) info threads
1173 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1174
1175 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1176 dumps.
1177
1178 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1179 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1180 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1181 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1182
1183 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1184 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1185 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1186 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1187 section in the user manual for more details.
1188
1189 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1190
1191 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1192 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1193
1194 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1195
1196 * New native configurations
1197
1198 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1199
1200 * New targets:
1201
1202 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1203
1204 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1205 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1206 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1207 in the GDB user manual.
1208
1209 * Guile support was removed.
1210
1211 * New features in the GNU simulator
1212
1213 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1214
1215 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1216
1217 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1218
1219 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1220
1221 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1222 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1223 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1224 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1225 was always disabled for such configurations.
1226
1227 * C++ Improvements:
1228
1229 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1230
1231 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1232 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1233 For example:
1234 namespace A
1235 {
1236 class B { };
1237 void foo (B) { }
1238 }
1239 ...
1240 A::B b
1241 foo(b)
1242 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1243 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1244 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1245
1246 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1247
1248 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1249 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1250 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1251 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1252 entry.
1253 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1254 mentioned flavors of operators.
1255
1256 ** static const class members
1257
1258 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1259 class definition has been fixed.
1260
1261 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1262
1263 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1264 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1265 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1266 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1267 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1268 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1269
1270 * Static tracepoints
1271
1272 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1273 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1274 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1275 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1276 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1277 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1278 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1279 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1280 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1281 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1282 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1283 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1284 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1285 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1286 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1287 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1288 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1289 the "New remote packets" section below.
1290
1291 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1292
1293 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1294 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1295 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1296 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1297
1298 * Observer mode
1299
1300 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1301 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1302 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1303 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1304 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1305 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1306 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1307
1308 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1309 current thread.
1310
1311 * New remote packets
1312
1313 qGetTIBAddr
1314
1315 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1316
1317 qRelocInsn
1318
1319 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1320 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1321 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1322 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1323 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1324 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1325
1326 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1327
1328 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1329
1330 qTSTMat
1331
1332 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1333 program.
1334
1335 qXfer:statictrace:read
1336
1337 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1338 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1339 to gdb's qSupported query.
1340
1341 QAllow
1342
1343 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1344
1345 QTDPsrc
1346
1347 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1348 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1349
1350 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1351 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1352 a directory.
1353
1354 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1355
1356 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1357 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1358 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1359 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1360
1361 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1362 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1363 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1364 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1365 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1366 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1367 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1368
1369 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1370 for static tracepoints support.
1371
1372 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1373
1374 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1375 it understands register description.
1376
1377 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1378
1379 * X86 general purpose registers
1380
1381 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1382 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1383 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1384 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1385 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1386
1387 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1388 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1389 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1390 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1391 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1392 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1393
1394 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1395 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1396 in the specified file.
1397
1398 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1399 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1400 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1401 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1402 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1403 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1404 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1405 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1406 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1407 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1408
1409 * New commands
1410
1411 eval template, expressions...
1412 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1413 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1414
1415 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1416 show target-file-system-kind
1417 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1418 names.
1419
1420 save breakpoints <filename>
1421 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
1422 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
1423 definitions, use the `source' command.
1424
1425 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
1426 is now deprecated.
1427
1428 info static-tracepoint-markers
1429 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
1430
1431 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
1432 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
1433 function, line, address, or marker ID.
1434
1435 set observer on|off
1436 show observer
1437 Enable and disable observer mode.
1438
1439 set may-write-registers on|off
1440 set may-write-memory on|off
1441 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
1442 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
1443 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
1444 set may-interrupt on|off
1445 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
1446 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
1447 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
1448 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
1449 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
1450 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
1451 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
1452
1453 set record memory-query on|off
1454 show record memory-query
1455 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
1456 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
1457
1458 * Changed commands
1459
1460 disassemble
1461 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
1462
1463 * Python scripting
1464
1465 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
1466 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
1467 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
1468 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
1469 GDB using Python' in the manual.
1470
1471 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
1472 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
1473 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
1474 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
1475
1476 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
1477 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
1478
1479 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
1480
1481 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
1482
1483 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
1484
1485 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
1486 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
1487 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
1488
1489 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
1490 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
1491 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
1492 regular breakpoints.
1493
1494 * New targets
1495
1496 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
1497
1498 * D language support.
1499 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
1500 language.
1501
1502 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
1503 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
1504 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
1505 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
1506 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
1507
1508 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
1509 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
1510 conditions of the form:
1511
1512 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
1513
1514 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
1515 interface mentioned above.
1516
1517 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
1518
1519 * C++ Improvements
1520
1521 ** Namespace Support
1522
1523 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
1524 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
1525 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
1526 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
1527 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
1528
1529 ** Bug Fixes
1530
1531 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
1532 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
1533 qualified name.
1534
1535 ** Cast Operators
1536
1537 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
1538 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
1539
1540 * New targets
1541
1542 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
1543 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
1544
1545 * New Simulators
1546
1547 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
1548 Renesas RX rx
1549
1550 * Multi-program debugging.
1551
1552 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
1553 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
1554 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
1555 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
1556 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
1557 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
1558 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
1559 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
1560
1561 * New tracing features
1562
1563 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
1564
1565 ** Trace state variables
1566
1567 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
1568 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
1569 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
1570 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
1571 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
1572 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
1573 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
1574 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
1575 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
1576 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
1577
1578 ** Fast tracepoints
1579
1580 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
1581 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
1582 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
1583 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
1584 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
1585 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
1586 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
1587 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
1588 the regular trace command.
1589
1590 ** Disconnected tracing
1591
1592 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
1593 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
1594 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
1595 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
1596 connection is lost unexpectedly.
1597
1598 ** Trace files
1599
1600 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
1601 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
1602 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
1603 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
1604 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
1605 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
1606 <name>".
1607
1608 ** Circular trace buffer
1609
1610 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
1611 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
1612 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
1613 not be available for all target agents.
1614
1615 * Changed commands
1616
1617 disassemble
1618 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
1619 the arguments to be comma-separated.
1620
1621 info variables
1622 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
1623 which only declare a variable are not shown.
1624
1625 source
1626 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
1627 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
1628 support.
1629
1630 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
1631 "set script-extension" (see below).
1632
1633 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1634
1635 record save [<FILENAME>]
1636 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
1637 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
1638
1639 record restore <FILENAME>
1640 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
1641 earlier time, for replay debugging.
1642
1643 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
1644 Add a new inferior.
1645
1646 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
1647 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
1648 inferior has loaded.
1649
1650 remove-inferior ID
1651 Remove an inferior.
1652
1653 maint info program-spaces
1654 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
1655
1656 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
1657 show remote interrupt-sequence
1658 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
1659 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
1660 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
1661 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
1662 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
1663
1664 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
1665 show remote interrupt-on-connect
1666 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
1667 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
1668 Linux kernel.
1669
1670 set remotebreak [on | off]
1671 show remotebreak
1672 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
1673
1674 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
1675 Create or modify a trace state variable.
1676
1677 info tvariables
1678 List trace state variables and their values.
1679
1680 delete tvariable $NAME ...
1681 Delete one or more trace state variables.
1682
1683 teval EXPR, ...
1684 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
1685 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
1686
1687 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
1688 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
1689
1690 * New expression syntax
1691
1692 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
1693 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
1694
1695 * New options
1696
1697 set follow-exec-mode new|same
1698 show follow-exec-mode
1699 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
1700 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
1701 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
1702
1703 set default-collect EXPR, ...
1704 show default-collect
1705 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
1706 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
1707 such as registers or a critical global variable.
1708
1709 set disconnected-tracing
1710 show disconnected-tracing
1711 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
1712 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
1713 upon disconnection.
1714
1715 set circular-trace-buffer
1716 show circular-trace-buffer
1717 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
1718 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
1719 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
1720 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
1721
1722 set script-extension off|soft|strict
1723 show script-extension
1724 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
1725 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
1726 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
1727 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
1728 evaluation failed.
1729 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
1730
1731 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
1732 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
1733 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
1734 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
1735 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
1736 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
1737 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
1738 is on.
1739
1740 * Python API Improvements
1741
1742 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
1743 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
1744 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
1745
1746 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
1747 `is_base_class' attribute.
1748
1749 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
1750
1751 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
1752 evaluate an expression.
1753
1754 * New remote packets
1755
1756 QTDV
1757 Define a trace state variable.
1758
1759 qTV
1760 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
1761
1762 QTDisconnected
1763 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
1764
1765 QTBuffer:circular
1766 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
1767
1768 qTfP, qTsP
1769 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
1770
1771 * Bug fixes
1772
1773 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
1774
1775 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
1776 much more reliable. In particular:
1777 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
1778 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
1779 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
1780 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
1781 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
1782 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
1783 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
1784 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
1785 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
1786 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
1787 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
1788 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
1789 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
1790 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
1791 non-threaded programs.
1792
1793 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
1794 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
1795 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
1796 executable program.
1797
1798 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
1799
1800 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
1801 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
1802 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
1803 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
1804 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
1805
1806 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
1807 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
1808 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
1809 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
1810 for tracepoint actions.
1811
1812 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
1813 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
1814 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
1815
1816 * Process record and replay
1817
1818 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
1819 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
1820 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
1821 execute commands.
1822
1823 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
1824 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
1825 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
1826 reverse execution.
1827
1828 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
1829 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
1830 2.6.28 or later.
1831
1832 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
1833 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
1834 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
1835 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
1836 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
1837 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
1838 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
1839 the installation instructions for more information.
1840
1841 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
1842 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
1843 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
1844 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
1845
1846 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
1847 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
1848
1849 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
1850 now complete on file names.
1851
1852 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
1853 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
1854 For instance, consider:
1855
1856 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
1857 # struct example variable;
1858 (gdb) p variable.
1859
1860 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
1861 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
1862
1863 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
1864 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
1865
1866 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
1867 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
1868 macros.
1869
1870 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
1871 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
1872 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
1873
1874 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
1875 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
1876 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
1877 and simulator targets may also provide them.
1878
1879 * New remote packets
1880
1881 qSearch:memory:
1882 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
1883
1884 QStartNoAckMode
1885 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
1886 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
1887 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
1888
1889 vKill
1890 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
1891 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
1892
1893 qXfer:osdata:read
1894 Obtains additional operating system information
1895
1896 qXfer:siginfo:read
1897 qXfer:siginfo:write
1898 Read or write additional signal information.
1899
1900 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
1901
1902 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
1903 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
1904 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
1905
1906 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
1907 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
1908
1909 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
1910 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
1911 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
1912
1913 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
1914 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
1915
1916 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
1917
1918 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
1919
1920 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
1921 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
1922
1923 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
1924 list of section offsets.
1925
1926 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
1927 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
1928 have also been fixed.
1929
1930 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
1931 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
1932 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
1933
1934 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
1935 example, given:
1936
1937 template<typename T> class C { };
1938 C<char const *> c;
1939
1940 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
1941
1942 ptype C<char const *>
1943 ptype C<char const*>
1944 ptype C<const char *>
1945 ptype C<const char*>
1946
1947 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
1948
1949 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
1950 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
1951
1952 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
1953 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1954 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
1955
1956 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
1957 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
1958
1959 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
1960 gdbserver.
1961
1962 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
1963 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
1964
1965 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
1966 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
1967 as appropriate.
1968
1969 * Python scripting
1970
1971 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
1972 available is determined at configure time.
1973
1974 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
1975
1976 * Ada tasking support
1977
1978 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
1979 been introduced:
1980
1981 info tasks
1982 Print the list of Ada tasks.
1983 info task N
1984 Print detailed information about task number N.
1985 task
1986 Print the task number of the current task.
1987 task N
1988 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
1989
1990 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
1991 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
1992
1993 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
1994
1995 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
1996 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
1997 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
1998 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
1999 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2000 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2001 below.
2002
2003 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2004 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2005 information.
2006
2007 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2008 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2009 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2010 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2011 more information.
2012
2013 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2014
2015 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2016 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2017 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2018 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2019 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2020
2021 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2022 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2023 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2024 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2025 --enable-targets configure option.
2026
2027 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2028
2029 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2030 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2031 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2032 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2033 section in the user manual for more information.
2034
2035 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2036 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2037 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2038 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2039 extensions on linux targets.
2040
2041 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2042
2043 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2044 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2045 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2046 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2047 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2048 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2049 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2050 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2051 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2052
2053 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2054 val1 [, val2, ...]
2055 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2056
2057 maint set python print-stack
2058 maint show python print-stack
2059 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2060
2061 python [CODE]
2062 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2063
2064 macro define
2065 macro list
2066 macro undef
2067 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2068 interactively.
2069
2070 info os processes
2071 Show operating system information about processes.
2072
2073 info inferiors
2074 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2075
2076 inferior NUM
2077 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2078
2079 detach inferior NUM
2080 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2081
2082 kill inferior NUM
2083 Kill inferior number NUM.
2084
2085 * New options
2086
2087 set spu stop-on-load
2088 show spu stop-on-load
2089 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2090
2091 set spu auto-flush-cache
2092 show spu auto-flush-cache
2093 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2094 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2095
2096 set sh calling-convention
2097 show sh calling-convention
2098 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2099
2100 set debug timestamp
2101 show debug timestamp
2102 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2103
2104 set disassemble-next-line
2105 show disassemble-next-line
2106 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2107 the debuggee stops.
2108
2109 set remote noack-packet
2110 show remote noack-packet
2111 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2112 under "New remote packets."
2113
2114 set remote query-attached-packet
2115 show remote query-attached-packet
2116 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2117
2118 set remote read-siginfo-object
2119 show remote read-siginfo-object
2120 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2121 packet.
2122
2123 set remote write-siginfo-object
2124 show remote write-siginfo-object
2125 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2126 packet.
2127
2128 set remote reverse-continue
2129 show remote reverse-continue
2130 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2131
2132 set remote reverse-step
2133 show remote reverse-step
2134 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2135
2136 set displaced-stepping
2137 show displaced-stepping
2138 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2139 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2140 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2141
2142 set debug displaced
2143 show debug displaced
2144 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2145
2146 maint set internal-error
2147 maint show internal-error
2148 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2149
2150 maint set internal-warning
2151 maint show internal-warning
2152 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2153
2154 set exec-wrapper
2155 show exec-wrapper
2156 unset exec-wrapper
2157 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2158
2159 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2160 show multiple-symbols
2161 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2162 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2163 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2164
2165 set breakpoint always-inserted
2166 show breakpoint always-inserted
2167 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2168 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2169 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2170
2171 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2172 show arm fallback-mode
2173 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2174 show arm force-mode
2175 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2176 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2177 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2178 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2179
2180 set disable-randomization
2181 show disable-randomization
2182 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2183 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2184 multiple debugging sessions.
2185
2186 set non-stop
2187 show non-stop
2188 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2189 a breakpoint.
2190
2191 set target-async
2192 show target-async
2193 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2194 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2195 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2196 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2197
2198 set target-wide-charset
2199 show target-wide-charset
2200 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2201 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2202
2203 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2204 show tcp auto-retry
2205 set tcp connect-timeout
2206 show tcp connect-timeout
2207 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2208 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2209 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2210
2211 set libthread-db-search-path
2212 show libthread-db-search-path
2213 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2214 libthread_db.
2215
2216 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2217 show schedule-multiple
2218 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2219 the current process.
2220
2221 set stack-cache
2222 show stack-cache
2223 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2224 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2225 affecting correctness.
2226
2227 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2228 show interactive-mode
2229 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2230 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2231 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2232 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2233 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2234
2235 * Removed commands
2236
2237 info forks
2238 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2239 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2240 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2241 command.
2242
2243 fork NUM
2244 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2245 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2246 alias for the `fork' command.
2247
2248 process PID
2249 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2250 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2251 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2252
2253 delete fork NUM
2254 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2255 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2256 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2257 fork' command.
2258
2259 detach fork NUM
2260 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2261 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2262 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2263 fork' command.
2264
2265 * New native configurations
2266
2267 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2268
2269 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2270
2271 * New targets
2272
2273 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2274 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2275 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2276 S+core 3 score-*-*
2277
2278 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2279 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2280
2281 * Removed commands
2282
2283 catch load
2284 catch unload
2285 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2286
2287 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2288
2289 * New native configurations
2290
2291 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2292 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2293
2294 * New targets
2295
2296 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2297 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2298
2299 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2300
2301 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2302 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2303 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2304 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2305
2306 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2307 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2308
2309 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2310 is resolved.
2311
2312 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2313 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2314 and in inlined functions.
2315
2316 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2317 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2318 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2319
2320 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2321
2322 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2323 registers on PowerPC targets.
2324
2325 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2326 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2327
2328 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2329 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2330
2331 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2332 extended-remote mode.
2333
2334 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2335 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2336 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2337 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2338
2339 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2340 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2341 target architectures.
2342
2343 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2344 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2345 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2346 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2347
2348 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2349 breakpoints now.
2350
2351 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2352 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2353 include:
2354 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2355 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2356 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2357 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2358 of an assignment
2359 - Improved command completion in Ada
2360 - Several bug fixes
2361
2362 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2363 process.
2364
2365 * New commands
2366
2367 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2368 show print frame-arguments
2369 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2370 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2371
2372 remote put
2373 remote get
2374 remote delete
2375 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2376
2377 * New MI commands
2378
2379 -target-file-put
2380 -target-file-get
2381 -target-file-delete
2382 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2383
2384 * New remote packets
2385
2386 vFile:open:
2387 vFile:close:
2388 vFile:pread:
2389 vFile:pwrite:
2390 vFile:unlink:
2391 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2392
2393 vAttach
2394 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2395 mode.
2396
2397 vRun
2398 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2399
2400 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2401
2402 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2403 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2404 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2405
2406 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2407 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2408 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2409
2410 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2411 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2412 is not supported.
2413
2414 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2415 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2416
2417 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2418 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
2419
2420 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
2421
2422 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
2423 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
2424 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
2425
2426 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
2427 automatically displayed as character or string data.
2428
2429 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
2430 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
2431 as strings.
2432
2433 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
2434 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
2435 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
2436
2437 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
2438 iWMMXt coprocessor.
2439
2440 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
2441 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
2442 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
2443
2444 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
2445
2446 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
2447
2448 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
2449 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
2450 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
2451
2452 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
2453 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
2454
2455 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
2456 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
2457 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
2458 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
2459 Windows and SymbianOS).
2460
2461 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
2462 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
2463
2464 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
2465 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
2466
2467 * New commands
2468
2469 set remoteflow
2470 show remoteflow
2471 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
2472 when debugging using remote targets.
2473
2474 set mem inaccessible-by-default
2475 show mem inaccessible-by-default
2476 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2477 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2478 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
2479 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
2480 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
2481
2482 set breakpoint auto-hw
2483 show breakpoint auto-hw
2484 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
2485 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
2486 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
2487 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
2488 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
2489 including "next" and "finish".
2490
2491 catch exception
2492 catch exception unhandled
2493 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
2494
2495 catch assert
2496 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
2497
2498 set sysroot
2499 show sysroot
2500 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
2501 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
2502 an alias to "set sysroot".
2503
2504 info spu
2505 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
2506 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
2507 architecture.
2508
2509 * New native configurations
2510
2511 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
2512
2513 set tdesc filename
2514 unset tdesc filename
2515 show tdesc filename
2516 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
2517 not query the target for its built-in description.
2518
2519 * New targets
2520
2521 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
2522 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
2523 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
2524
2525 * New remote packets
2526
2527 QPassSignals:
2528 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
2529 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
2530
2531 qXfer:features:read:
2532 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
2533 features.
2534
2535 qXfer:spu:read:
2536 qXfer:spu:write:
2537 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
2538 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
2539
2540 qXfer:libraries:read:
2541 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
2542 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
2543 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
2544 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
2545
2546 * Removed targets
2547
2548 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
2549
2550 alpha*-*-osf1*
2551 alpha*-*-osf2*
2552 d10v-*-*
2553 hppa*-*-hiux*
2554 i[34567]86-ncr-*
2555 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
2556 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
2557 i[34567]86-*-netware*
2558 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
2559 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
2560 i[34567]86-*-sco*
2561 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
2562 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
2563 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
2564 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
2565 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
2566 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
2567 i[34567]86-*-isc*
2568 m68*-cisco*-*
2569 m68*-tandem-*
2570 mips*-*-pe
2571 rs6000-*-lynxos*
2572 sh*-*-pe
2573
2574 * Other removed features
2575
2576 target abug
2577 target cpu32bug
2578 target est
2579 target rom68k
2580
2581 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
2582
2583 target hms
2584 target e7000
2585 target sh3
2586 target sh3e
2587
2588 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
2589 H8/300.
2590
2591 target ocd
2592
2593 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
2594 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
2595 interfaces.
2596
2597 DWARF 1 support
2598
2599 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
2600 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
2601
2602 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
2603
2604 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
2605 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
2606 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
2607 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
2608
2609 MIPS ".pdr" sections
2610
2611 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
2612 in debugging information.
2613
2614 Scheme support
2615
2616 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
2617 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
2618
2619 set mips stack-arg-size
2620 set mips saved-gpreg-size
2621
2622 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
2623
2624 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
2625
2626 * New targets
2627
2628 Xtensa xtensa-elf
2629 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
2630
2631 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
2632 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
2633 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
2634
2635 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
2636 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
2637 supported.
2638
2639 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
2640 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
2641
2642 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
2643 stub provides the required support.
2644
2645 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
2646 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
2647
2648 * New commands
2649
2650 set substitute-path
2651 unset substitute-path
2652 show substitute-path
2653 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
2654 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
2655 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
2656 between compilation and debugging.
2657
2658 set trace-commands
2659 show trace-commands
2660 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
2661 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
2662 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
2663
2664 * REMOVED features
2665
2666 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
2667
2668 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
2669 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
2670
2671 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
2672
2673 * New remote packets
2674
2675 qSupported:
2676 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
2677 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
2678 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
2679 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
2680 target.
2681
2682 qXfer:auxv:read:
2683 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
2684 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
2685
2686 qXfer:memory-map:read:
2687 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
2688 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
2689
2690 vFlashErase:
2691 vFlashWrite:
2692 vFlashDone:
2693 Erase and program a flash memory device.
2694
2695 * Removed remote packets
2696
2697 qPart:auxv:read:
2698 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
2699 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
2700
2701 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
2702
2703 * New targets
2704
2705 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
2706
2707 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2708
2709 * New commands
2710
2711 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
2712 only if it doesn't already have a value.
2713
2714 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
2715
2716 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
2717
2718 restart <n> Return the program state to a
2719 previously saved state.
2720
2721 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
2722
2723 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
2724
2725 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
2726 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
2727
2728 info forks List forks of the user program that
2729 are available to be debugged.
2730
2731 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
2732 forks of the user program that are
2733 available to be debugged.
2734
2735 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2736 that are available to be debugged (and
2737 kill the forked process).
2738
2739 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
2740 that are available to be debugged (and
2741 allow the process to continue).
2742
2743 * New architecture
2744
2745 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
2746
2747 * Improved Windows host support
2748
2749 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
2750 native console support, and remote communications using either
2751 network sockets or serial ports.
2752
2753 * Improved Modula-2 language support
2754
2755 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
2756 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
2757 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
2758 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
2759 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
2760 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
2761
2762 * REMOVED features
2763
2764 The ARM rdi-share module.
2765
2766 The Netware NLM debug server.
2767
2768 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
2769
2770 * New native configurations
2771
2772 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
2773 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
2774
2775 * New targets
2776
2777 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
2778
2779 * New command line options
2780
2781 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
2782 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
2783 the child (debugged) program exited with.
2784 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
2785 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
2786 specified multiple times and in conjunction
2787 with the --command (-x) option.
2788
2789 * Deprecated commands removed
2790
2791 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
2792 removed:
2793
2794 Command Replacement
2795 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
2796 othernames set arm disassembler
2797 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
2798 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
2799 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
2800 regs info registers
2801
2802 * New BSD user-level threads support
2803
2804 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
2805 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
2806 configurations are:
2807
2808 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2809 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
2810 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
2811
2812 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
2813 are not yet supported.
2814
2815 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
2816 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
2817
2818 * REMOVED configurations and files
2819
2820 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
2821 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
2822 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
2823
2824 * New "set print array-indexes" command
2825
2826 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
2827 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
2828 behavior.
2829
2830 * VAX floating point support
2831
2832 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
2833
2834 * User-defined command support
2835
2836 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
2837 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
2838 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
2839
2840 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
2841
2842 * New command line option
2843
2844 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
2845 debugging.
2846
2847 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
2848
2849 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
2850 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
2851 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
2852 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
2853 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
2854
2855 * Internationalization
2856
2857 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
2858 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
2859 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
2860
2861 * Ada
2862
2863 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
2864 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
2865 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
2866
2867 * New native configurations
2868
2869 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
2870
2871 * Remote 'p' packet
2872
2873 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
2874 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
2875
2876 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
2877
2878 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2879 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
2880 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
2881 i386 application).
2882
2883 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
2884 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
2885 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
2886 configurations:
2887
2888 hppa-*-hpux
2889 ia64-*-aix
2890 mips-*-irix*
2891 *-*-lynx
2892 mips-*-linux-gnu
2893 sds protocol
2894 xdr protocol
2895 powerpc bdm protocol
2896
2897 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
2898 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
2899
2900 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
2901
2902 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
2903 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
2904 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
2905 permanently REMOVED.
2906
2907 h8300-*-*
2908 mcore-*-*
2909 mn10300-*-*
2910 ns32k-*-*
2911 sh64-*-*
2912 v850-*-*
2913
2914 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
2915
2916 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
2917
2918 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
2919 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
2920 been fixed.
2921
2922 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
2923
2924 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
2925 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
2926 IRIX long double values).
2927
2928 * VAX and "next"
2929
2930 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
2931 command. This problem has been fixed.
2932
2933 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
2934
2935 * Fix for ``many threads''
2936
2937 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
2938 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
2939 error message:
2940
2941 ptrace: No such process.
2942 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
2943
2944 This problem has been fixed.
2945
2946 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
2947
2948 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
2949 GDB to dump core).
2950
2951 * New ``start'' command.
2952
2953 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
2954
2955 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
2956
2957 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
2958 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
2959 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
2960
2961 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
2962 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
2963 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
2964 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
2965 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
2966 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
2967 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
2968 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
2969 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
2970
2971 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
2972
2973 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
2974 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
2975 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
2976 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
2977 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
2978
2979 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
2980 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
2981 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
2982
2983 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
2984
2985 * New native configurations
2986
2987 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
2988 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
2989 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
2990 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
2991 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
2992 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
2993 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
2994
2995 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
2996
2997 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
2998 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
2999 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3000 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3001 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3002 work, was also included.
3003
3004 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3005 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3006
3007 h8300-*-*
3008 mcore-*-*
3009 mn10300-*-*
3010 ns32k-*-*
3011 sh64-*-*
3012 v850-*-*
3013 xstormy16-*-*
3014
3015 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3016 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3017
3018 * REMOVED configurations and files
3019
3020 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3021 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3022 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3023 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3024 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3025 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3026 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3027 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3028 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3029 sonymips mips-sony-*
3030 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3031
3032 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3033
3034 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3035
3036 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3037 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3038 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3039 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3040 with GDB".
3041
3042 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3043
3044 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3045 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3046 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3047 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3048 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3049 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3050 are created.
3051
3052 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3053
3054 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3055
3056 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3057 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3058 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3059
3060 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3061
3062 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3063 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3064
3065 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3066
3067 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3068 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3069 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3070
3071 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3072
3073 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3074 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3075
3076 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3077
3078 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3079 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3080 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3081
3082 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3083
3084 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3085 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3086 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3087
3088 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3089
3090 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3091
3092 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3093 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3094
3095 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3096
3097 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3098 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3099 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3100 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3101
3102 * Revised SPARC target
3103
3104 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3105 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3106 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3107 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3108 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3109
3110 * New C++ demangler
3111
3112 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3113 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3114 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3115 programs.
3116
3117 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3118
3119 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3120 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3121 encountered these.
3122
3123 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3124
3125 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3126 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3127 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3128 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3129 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3130 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3131 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3132 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3133 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3134
3135 * New native configurations
3136
3137 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3138 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3139 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3140 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3141 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3142
3143 * New debugging protocols
3144
3145 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3146
3147 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3148
3149 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3150 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3151 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3152
3153 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3154
3155 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3156 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3157 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3158 permanently REMOVED.
3159
3160 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3161 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3162 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3163 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3164 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3165 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3166 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3167 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3168 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3169 sonymips mips-sony-*
3170 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3171
3172 * REMOVED configurations and files
3173
3174 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3175 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3176 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3177 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3178 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3179 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3180 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3181 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3182 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3183 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3184 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3185 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3186 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3187 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3188 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3189 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3190 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3191
3192 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3193
3194 * Objective-C
3195
3196 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3197 integrated into GDB.
3198
3199 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3200
3201 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3202 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3203 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3204 backtraces.
3205
3206 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3207 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3208 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3209
3210 * Hosted file I/O.
3211
3212 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3213 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3214 remote protocol documentation for details.
3215
3216 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3217
3218 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3219 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3220 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3221 ppc32 on ppc64).
3222
3223 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3224
3225 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3226 per-thread variables.
3227
3228 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3229
3230 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3231 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3232
3233 * Separate debug info.
3234
3235 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3236 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3237 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3238 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3239 and optional debug files.
3240
3241 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3242
3243 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3244 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3245 debugger.
3246
3247 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3248 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3249
3250 * Java
3251
3252 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3253 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3254 considered "useable".
3255
3256 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3257
3258 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3259 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3260 kernel.
3261
3262 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3263
3264 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3265 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3266
3267 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3268
3269 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3270 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3271 command.
3272
3273 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3274
3275 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3276 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3277
3278 * Profiling support
3279
3280 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3281 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3282 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3283 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3284 data, for more informative profiling results.
3285
3286 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3287
3288 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3289 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3290 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3291
3292 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3293 removed.
3294
3295 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3296 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3297 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3298 in a subsequent -var-update.
3299
3300 * New native configurations.
3301
3302 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3303
3304 * Multi-arched targets.
3305
3306 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3307 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3308
3309 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3310
3311 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3312 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3313 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3314 permanently REMOVED.
3315
3316 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3317 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3318 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3319 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3320 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3321 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3322 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3323 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3324 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3325 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3326 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3327 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3328
3329 * REMOVED configurations and files
3330
3331 V850EA ISA
3332 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3333 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3334 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3335 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3336 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3337 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3338 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3339 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3340 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3341 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3342 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3343 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3344 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3345
3346 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3347
3348 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3349 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3350 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3351 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3352 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3353
3354 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3355
3356 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3357
3358 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3359 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3360 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3361 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3362 shared libs like mad''.
3363
3364 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3365
3366 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3367 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3368 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3369 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3370
3371 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3372
3373 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3374 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3375 they expand.
3376
3377 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3378 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3379
3380 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3381 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3382
3383 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3384 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3385 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3386 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3387
3388 * Multi-arched targets.
3389
3390 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3391 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3392 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3393 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3394 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3395 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3396
3397 * New targets.
3398
3399 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3400
3401
3402 * New native configurations
3403
3404 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3405 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3406 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3407 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3408
3409 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3410
3411 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3412 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3413 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3414 permanently REMOVED.
3415
3416 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3417 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3418 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3419 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3420 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3421 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3422 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3423 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3424 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3425 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3426 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3427 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3428 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3429
3430 * OBSOLETE languages
3431
3432 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
3433
3434 * REMOVED configurations and files
3435
3436 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3437 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3438 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3439 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3440 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3441
3442 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3443
3444 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
3445
3446 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
3447 commands. The default is 1024.
3448
3449 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
3450
3451 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
3452
3453 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
3454
3455 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
3456 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
3457 from a file into memory (restore).
3458
3459 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
3460
3461 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
3462 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
3463 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
3464
3465 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
3466
3467 * New targets.
3468
3469 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
3470
3471 * Bug fixes
3472
3473 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
3474 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
3475 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
3476
3477 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
3478 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
3479 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
3480
3481 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
3482 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
3483 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
3484
3485 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
3486 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
3487 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
3488
3489 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
3490
3491 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
3492
3493 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
3494 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
3495 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
3496 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
3497 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
3498 (notably embedded) targets.
3499
3500 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
3501
3502 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
3503 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
3504 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
3505 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
3506
3507 * New command line option
3508
3509 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
3510
3511 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3512
3513 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
3514 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
3515 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
3516 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
3517 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
3518 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
3519 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
3520 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
3521 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
3522 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
3523
3524 * Changes in ARM configurations.
3525
3526 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
3527 configuration is fully multi-arch.
3528
3529 * New native configurations
3530
3531 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
3532 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
3533 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
3534 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
3535
3536 * New targets
3537
3538 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
3539
3540 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3541
3542 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3543 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3544 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3545 permanently REMOVED.
3546
3547 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
3548 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
3549 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3550 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3551 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3552
3553 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
3554
3555 * REMOVED configurations and files
3556
3557 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3558 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3559 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3560 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3561 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3562 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3563 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3564 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3565 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3566 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3567 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3568 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3569 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
3570
3571 * Changes to command line processing
3572
3573 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
3574 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
3575
3576 * Changes to key bindings
3577
3578 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
3579
3580 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
3581
3582 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
3583
3584 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
3585 corrupted.
3586
3587 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
3588
3589 Numerous documentation fixes.
3590
3591 Numerous testsuite fixes.
3592
3593 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
3594
3595 * New native configurations
3596
3597 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
3598 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
3599 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
3600 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
3601 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
3602 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
3603
3604 * New targets
3605
3606 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
3607 CRIS cris-axis
3608 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
3609
3610 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3611
3612 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
3613 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
3614 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
3615 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
3616 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3617 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
3618 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
3619 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
3620 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
3621 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
3622 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
3623 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
3624 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
3625 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
3626
3627 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
3628 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
3629
3630 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3631 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3632 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3633 permanently REMOVED.
3634
3635 * REMOVED configurations and files
3636
3637 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3638 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3639 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3640 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3641 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3642 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
3643
3644 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
3645
3646 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
3647 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
3648 present.
3649
3650 * Other news:
3651
3652 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
3653
3654 * The MI enabled by default.
3655
3656 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
3657 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
3658 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
3659 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
3660 which is now deprecated.
3661
3662 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
3663
3664 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
3665 main features are supported:
3666
3667 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
3668
3669 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
3670 extension;
3671
3672 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
3673
3674 - a Pascal expression parser.
3675
3676 However, some important features are not yet supported.
3677
3678 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
3679
3680 - there are some problems with boolean types;
3681
3682 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
3683 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
3684
3685 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
3686
3687 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
3688
3689 * Changes in completion.
3690
3691 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
3692 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
3693 users expect at the shell prompt.
3694
3695 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
3696 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
3697 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
3698 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
3699 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
3700 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
3701 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
3702
3703 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
3704
3705 * New platform-independent commands:
3706
3707 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
3708 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
3709 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
3710
3711 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
3712
3713 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
3714 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
3715 many threads as your system allows you to have.
3716
3717 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
3718
3719 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
3720 multi-threaded programs though.
3721
3722 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
3723
3724 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
3725
3726 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
3727 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
3728 supported.)
3729
3730 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
3731
3732 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
3733 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
3734 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
3735 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
3736 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
3737 registers.
3738
3739 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
3740 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
3741 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
3742
3743 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
3744
3745 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
3746 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
3747
3748 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
3749 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
3750 IDT.
3751
3752 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
3753 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
3754 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
3755 a given linear address.
3756
3757 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
3758 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
3759 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
3760
3761 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
3762
3763 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
3764
3765 * Changes in documentation.
3766
3767 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
3768 Documentation License.
3769
3770 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3771 manual.
3772
3773 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
3774
3775 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
3776 manual.
3777
3778 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
3779 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
3780 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
3781
3782 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
3783
3784 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
3785 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
3786 contents of this file.
3787
3788 * gdba.el deleted
3789
3790 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
3791
3792 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
3793
3794 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
3795
3796 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
3797 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
3798 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
3799 greater level of detail.
3800
3801 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
3802
3803 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
3804 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
3805 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
3806 written.
3807
3808 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
3809
3810 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
3811 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
3812 machines ``out of the box''.
3813
3814 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
3815 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
3816 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
3817 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
3818 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
3819
3820 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
3821 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
3822 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
3823 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
3824 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
3825
3826 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
3827 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
3828 also works.
3829
3830 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
3831 GDB.
3832
3833 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
3834 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
3835 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
3836 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
3837
3838 * New native configurations
3839
3840 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
3841 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
3842
3843 * New targets
3844
3845 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
3846 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
3847 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
3848 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
3849
3850 * OBSOLETE configurations
3851
3852 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
3853 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
3854 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
3855 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
3856 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
3857
3858 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3859 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3860 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3861 be permanently REMOVED.
3862
3863 * Gould support removed
3864
3865 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
3866
3867 * New features for SVR4
3868
3869 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
3870 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
3871 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
3872
3873 * Many C++ enhancements
3874
3875 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
3876 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
3877
3878 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
3879
3880 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
3881 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
3882 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
3883 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
3884
3885 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
3886 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
3887
3888 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
3889
3890 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
3891 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
3892 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
3893
3894 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
3895 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
3896
3897 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
3898
3899 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
3900 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
3901 include ``set remote P-packet''.
3902
3903 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
3904
3905 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
3906 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
3907 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
3908
3909 * ``apropos'' command added.
3910
3911 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
3912 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
3913 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
3914
3915 * New MI interface
3916
3917 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
3918 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
3919 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
3920 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
3921 enabled by configuring with:
3922
3923 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
3924
3925 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
3926
3927 * New native configurations
3928
3929 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
3930 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
3931 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
3932
3933 * New targets
3934
3935 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3936 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
3937 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3938
3939 * OBSOLETE configurations
3940
3941 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
3942
3943 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
3944 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
3945 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
3946 be permanently REMOVED.
3947
3948 * ANSI/ISO C
3949
3950 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
3951 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
3952 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
3953 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
3954 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
3955 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
3956 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
3957 already.
3958
3959 * Readline 2.2
3960
3961 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
3962
3963 * set extension-language
3964
3965 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
3966 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
3967 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
3968 set extension-language .c c++
3969 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
3970 and their associated languages.
3971
3972 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
3973
3974 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
3975 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
3976 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
3977
3978 set processor NAME
3979
3980 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
3981 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
3982
3983 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
3984 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
3985 403 IBM PowerPC 403
3986 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
3987 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
3988 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
3989 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
3990 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
3991 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
3992 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
3993 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
3994
3995 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
3996 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
3997 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
3998 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
3999
4000 * HP-UX support
4001
4002 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4003 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4004 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4005 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4006 for xdb and dbx commands.
4007
4008 * Catchpoints
4009
4010 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4011 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4012 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4013
4014 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4015 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4016 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4017
4018 * Debugging across forks
4019
4020 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4021 in the inferior.
4022
4023 * TUI
4024
4025 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4026 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4027 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4028
4029 * GDB remote protocol additions
4030
4031 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4032 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4033 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4034 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4035
4036 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4037 full 64-bit address. The command
4038
4039 set remoteaddresssize 32
4040
4041 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4042 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4043 will be discarded.
4044
4045 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4046 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4047
4048 maint packet heythere
4049
4050 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4051 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4052 time.
4053
4054 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4055 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4056 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4057
4058 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4059
4060 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4061 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4062 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4063
4064 * mask-address variable for Mips
4065
4066 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4067 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4068 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4069
4070 * Higher serial baud rates
4071
4072 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4073 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4074 to achieve all of these rates.)
4075
4076 * i960 simulator
4077
4078 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4079 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4080
4081
4082 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4083
4084 * New native configurations
4085
4086 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4087 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4088 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4089 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4090 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4091 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4092 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4093
4094 * New targets
4095
4096 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4097 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4098 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4099 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4100 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4101 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4102 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4103 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4104 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4105 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4106 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4107
4108 * New debugging protocols
4109
4110 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4111 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4112 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4113 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4114 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4115 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4116
4117 * DWARF 2
4118
4119 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4120 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4121 information.
4122
4123 * Java frontend
4124
4125 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4126 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4127
4128 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4129
4130 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4131 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4132 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4133
4134 * Live range splitting
4135
4136 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4137 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4138 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4139
4140 * Hurd support
4141
4142 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4143 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4144
4145 * ARM Thumb support
4146
4147 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4148 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4149 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4150 accordingly.
4151
4152 * MIPS16 support
4153
4154 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4155 instruction set.
4156
4157 * Overlay support
4158
4159 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4160 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4161 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4162 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4163 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4164 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4165
4166 * info symbol
4167
4168 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4169 the symbol at the specified address.
4170
4171 * Trace support
4172
4173 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4174 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4175 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4176 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4177 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4178
4179 * MIPS simulator
4180
4181 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4182 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4183 of most MIPS variants.
4184
4185 * Sparc simulator
4186
4187 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4188 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4189 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4190
4191 * set architecture
4192
4193 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4194 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4195 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4196 the possible architectures.
4197
4198 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4199
4200 * New native configurations
4201
4202 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4203 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4204 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4205 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4206 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4207 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4208
4209 * New targets
4210
4211 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4212 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4213 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4214 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4215 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4216 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4217 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4218
4219 * PowerPC simulator
4220
4221 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4222 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4223 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4224 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4225 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4226
4227 * Solaris 2.5
4228
4229 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4230
4231 * Windows 95/NT native
4232
4233 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4234 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4235 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4236 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4237 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4238
4239 * dont-repeat command
4240
4241 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4242 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4243 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4244 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4245
4246 * Send break instead of ^C
4247
4248 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4249 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4250 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4251
4252 * Remote protocol timeout
4253
4254 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4255 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4256 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4257
4258 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4259
4260 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4261 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4262 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4263 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4264 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4265
4266 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4267 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4268 automatically on hpux10.
4269
4270 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4271
4272 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4273
4274 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4275
4276 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4277 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4278 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4279 every character. The default value is 1050.
4280
4281 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4282
4283 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4284 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4285 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4286 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4287 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4288 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4289
4290 * Speedups for remote debugging
4291
4292 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4293 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4294 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4295
4296 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4297
4298 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4299 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4300
4301 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4302
4303 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4304
4305 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4306 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4307
4308 * Remote targets use caching
4309
4310 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4311 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4312 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4313 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4314 off' turns the the data cache off.
4315
4316 * Remote targets may have threads
4317
4318 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4319 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4320 gdb/remote.c for details.
4321
4322 * NetROM support
4323
4324 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4325 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4326 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4327 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4328 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4329 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4330 sequence is something like
4331
4332 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4333 load <prog>
4334 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4335
4336 * Macintosh host
4337
4338 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4339 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4340 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4341 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4342 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4343 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4344 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4345 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4346
4347 * Autoconf
4348
4349 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4350 but does simplify configuration and building.
4351
4352 * hpux10
4353
4354 GDB now supports hpux10.
4355
4356 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4357
4358 * New native configurations
4359
4360 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4361 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4362 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4363 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4364
4365 * New targets
4366
4367 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4368 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4369 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4370 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4371 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4372
4373 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4374
4375 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4376 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4377 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4378 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4379 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4380
4381 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4382
4383 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4384 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4385 trivial example:
4386 define adder
4387 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4388
4389 To execute the command use:
4390 adder 1 2 3
4391
4392 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4393 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4394 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4395
4396 * New `if' and `while' commands
4397
4398 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4399 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4400 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4401 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4402 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4403 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4404 if the expression is zero.
4405
4406 * Fortran source language mode
4407
4408 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4409 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4410 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4411 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4412 Fortran compilers.
4413
4414 * Better HPUX support
4415
4416 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4417 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4418 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
4419 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
4420 that behavior do the following before running the program:
4421
4422 adb -w a.out
4423 __dld_flags?W 0x5
4424 control-d
4425
4426 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
4427 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
4428
4429 adb -w a.out
4430 __dld_flags?W 0x4
4431 control-d
4432
4433 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
4434 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
4435 external linkage.
4436
4437 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
4438 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
4439
4440 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
4441
4442 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
4443 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
4444 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
4445 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
4446 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
4447 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
4448
4449 * New DOS host serial code
4450
4451 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
4452 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
4453 a PC's serial port.
4454
4455 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
4456
4457 * New "complete" command
4458
4459 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
4460 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
4461
4462 * Trailing space optional in prompt
4463
4464 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
4465 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
4466
4467 * Breakpoint hit counts
4468
4469 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
4470 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
4471 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
4472 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
4473 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
4474 that breakpoint.
4475
4476 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
4477
4478 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
4479 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
4480 arrays actually contain only short strings.
4481
4482 * Shared library breakpoints
4483
4484 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
4485 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
4486
4487 * Hardware watchpoints
4488
4489 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
4490 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
4491
4492 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
4493
4494 * Annotations
4495
4496 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
4497 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
4498
4499 * Improved Irix 5 support
4500
4501 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
4502
4503 * Improved HPPA support
4504
4505 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
4506
4507 * New native configurations
4508
4509 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
4510 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4511 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
4512 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
4513
4514 * New targets
4515
4516 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4517 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
4518 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
4519
4520 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
4521
4522 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
4523 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
4524
4525 * Fixes
4526
4527 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
4528 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
4529
4530 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
4531
4532 * Irix 5 is now supported
4533
4534 * HPPA support
4535
4536 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
4537 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
4538 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
4539 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
4540 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
4541
4542
4543 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
4544
4545 * User visible changes:
4546
4547 * Remote Debugging
4548
4549 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
4550 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
4551 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
4552 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
4553 debugging info for the mips target).
4554
4555 * DEC Alpha native support
4556
4557 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
4558 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
4559 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
4560 Alpha-specific notes.
4561
4562 * Preliminary thread implementation
4563
4564 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
4565
4566 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
4567
4568 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
4569 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
4570 for details).
4571
4572 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
4573
4574 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
4575 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
4576 call methods, ...etc.
4577
4578 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
4579
4580 * User visible changes:
4581
4582 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
4583 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
4584 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
4585 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
4586
4587 Filename completion now works.
4588
4589 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
4590 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
4591 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
4592
4593 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
4594 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
4595 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
4596 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
4597 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
4598
4599 * DEC alpha support
4600
4601 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
4602 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
4603
4604
4605 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
4606
4607 * Testsuite
4608
4609 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
4610 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
4611 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
4612
4613 * C++ demangling
4614
4615 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
4616 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
4617 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
4618 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
4619 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
4620
4621 * Simulators
4622
4623 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
4624 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
4625 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
4626
4627 * New targets supported
4628
4629 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
4630 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4631 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
4632 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4633 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
4634
4635 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
4636 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
4637 GO32 memory extender.
4638
4639 * New remote protocols
4640
4641 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
4642
4643 * New source languages supported
4644
4645 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
4646 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
4647 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
4648
4649
4650 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
4651
4652 * HP Precision Architecture supported
4653
4654 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
4655 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
4656 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
4657 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
4658 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
4659 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
4660
4661 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
4662
4663 * Faster and better demangling
4664
4665 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
4666 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
4667 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
4668 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
4669 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
4670 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
4671 symbol lookups.
4672
4673 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
4674 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
4675 compiler does not actually implement.
4676
4677 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
4678
4679 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
4680 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
4681 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
4682 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
4683 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
4684 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
4685 fix.
4686
4687 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
4688 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
4689
4690 * Improved configure script
4691
4692 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
4693 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
4694 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
4695 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
4696
4697 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
4698 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
4699 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
4700 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
4701 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
4702 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
4703
4704 * Documentation improvements
4705
4706 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
4707 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
4708 before submitting changes.
4709
4710 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
4711 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
4712 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
4713 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
4714 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
4715
4716 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
4717 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
4718 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
4719 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
4720 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
4721 around this problem.
4722
4723 * New features
4724
4725 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
4726 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
4727 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
4728 the target program.
4729
4730 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
4731 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
4732
4733 * New native hosts supported
4734
4735 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
4736 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
4737
4738 * New targets supported
4739
4740 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
4741
4742 * New file formats supported
4743
4744 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
4745 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
4746
4747 * Major bug fixes
4748
4749 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
4750
4751 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
4752 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
4753
4754 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
4755 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
4756 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
4757
4758 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
4759 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
4760
4761 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
4762 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
4763 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
4764 libraries.
4765
4766 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
4767 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
4768 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
4769 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
4770 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
4771
4772 * Internal improvements
4773
4774 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
4775 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
4776
4777 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
4778 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
4779 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
4780 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
4781 shared code that handles any of them.
4782
4783 * New command line options
4784
4785 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
4786
4787 * Mmalloc licensing
4788
4789 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
4790 General Public License.
4791
4792 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
4793
4794 * Host/native/target split
4795
4796 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
4797 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
4798 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
4799 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
4800 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
4801
4802 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
4803 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
4804 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
4805 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
4806 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
4807 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
4808 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
4809
4810 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
4811 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
4812 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
4813
4814 * New hosts supported
4815
4816 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
4817 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4818 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
4819
4820 * New targets supported
4821
4822 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4823 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
4824
4825 * New native hosts supported
4826
4827 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
4828 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
4829 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
4830
4831 * New file formats supported
4832
4833 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
4834 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
4835 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
4836
4837 * New commands
4838
4839 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
4840 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
4841 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
4842
4843 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
4844
4845 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
4846 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
4847 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
4848 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
4849
4850 * C++ improvements
4851
4852 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
4853 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
4854 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
4855
4856 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
4857
4858 * Major bug fixes
4859
4860 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
4861 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
4862 by the compiler.
4863
4864 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
4865 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
4866
4867 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
4868 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
4869 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
4870 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
4871 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
4872 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
4873
4874 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
4875 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
4876 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
4877 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
4878
4879 * AMD 29k support
4880
4881 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
4882 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
4883 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
4884 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
4885 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
4886
4887 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
4888 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
4889 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
4890 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
4891
4892 * Remote interfaces
4893
4894 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
4895 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
4896 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
4897 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
4898 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
4899 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
4900 each instruction being stepped through.
4901
4902 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
4903 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
4904
4905 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
4906 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
4907 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
4908 processor with a serial port.
4909
4910 * Configuration
4911
4912 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
4913 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
4914 supported, and what files each one uses.
4915
4916 * Library changes
4917
4918 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
4919 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
4920 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
4921 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
4922
4923 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
4924 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
4925 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
4926 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
4927
4928 * Documentation
4929
4930 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
4931 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
4932 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
4933 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
4934 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
4935 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
4936
4937 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
4938
4939
4940 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
4941
4942 * Better support for C++ function names
4943
4944 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
4945 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
4946 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
4947 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
4948 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
4949
4950 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
4951 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
4952 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
4953 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
4954 for the list of formats.
4955
4956 * G++ symbol mangling problem
4957
4958 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
4959 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
4960 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
4961 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
4962 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
4963 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
4964 this problem.)
4965
4966 * New 'maintenance' command
4967
4968 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
4969 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
4970 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
4971
4972 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
4973 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
4974 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
4975 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
4976 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
4977 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
4978
4979 The following commands are new:
4980
4981 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
4982 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
4983 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
4984
4985 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
4986
4987 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
4988 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
4989 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
4990 read after argv processing.
4991
4992 * New hosts supported
4993
4994 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
4995
4996 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
4997
4998 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
4999 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5000 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5001 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5002 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5003 It costs extra.
5004
5005 * New targets supported
5006
5007 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5008
5009 * More smarts about finding #include files
5010
5011 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5012 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5013 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5014 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5015 the one that contains your sources.
5016
5017 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5018 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5019 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5020
5021 * Interesting infernals change
5022
5023 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5024 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5025 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5026 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5027
5028 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5029
5030 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5031 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5032 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5033
5034 See the ChangeLog for details.
5035
5036 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5037
5038 * New machines supported (host and target)
5039
5040 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5041
5042 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5043
5044 * New malloc package
5045
5046 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5047 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5048 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5049 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5050 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5051 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5052
5053 * info proc
5054
5055 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5056 'help info proc' for details.
5057
5058 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5059
5060 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5061 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5062 possible.
5063
5064 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5065
5066 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5067 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5068 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5069 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5070 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5071 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5072
5073 * Cross byte order fixes
5074
5075 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5076 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5077
5078 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5079
5080 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5081 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5082 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5083 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5084 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5085 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5086 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5087 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5088 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5089 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5090
5091 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5092 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5093 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5094 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5095
5096 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5097 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5098 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5099 use is:
5100
5101 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5102
5103 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5104 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5105 shared across multiple host platforms.
5106
5107 * longjmp() handling
5108
5109 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5110 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5111 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5112 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5113
5114 * Solaris 2.0
5115
5116 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5117 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5118 reading symbols.
5119
5120 * Bug fixes
5121
5122 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5123 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5124 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5125
5126 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5127
5128 * New machines supported (host and target)
5129
5130 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5131 (except core files)
5132 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5133 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5134
5135 * New machines supported (target)
5136
5137 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5138
5139 * C++ support
5140
5141 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5142 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5143 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5144
5145 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5146 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5147 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5148 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5149 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5150 released.
5151
5152 * New features for SVR4
5153
5154 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5155 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5156 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5157
5158 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5159 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5160 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5161
5162 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5163 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5164
5165 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5166
5167 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5168 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5169 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5170 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5171 same code linked statically.
5172
5173 * New Getopt
5174
5175 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5176 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5177 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5178 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5179 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5180 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5181
5182 * Bugs fixed
5183
5184 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5185 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5186 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5187
5188
5189 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5190
5191 * New machines supported (host and target)
5192
5193 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5194 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5195 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5196
5197 * Almost SCO Unix support
5198
5199 We had hoped to support:
5200 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5201 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5202 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5203 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5204
5205 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5206
5207 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5208 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5209 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5210 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5211 reqired (if any).
5212
5213 * New Readline
5214
5215 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5216 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5217 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5218
5219 * Bugs fixed
5220
5221 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5222 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5223 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5224
5225 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5226
5227 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5228 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5229 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5230
5231 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5232 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5233 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5234 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5235 version 2.
5236
5237 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5238 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5239 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5240 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5241 situation somewhat.
5242
5243 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5244 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5245 methods.
5246
5247 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5248 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5249 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5250
5251
5252 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5253
5254 * Improved configuration
5255
5256 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5257 Porting BFD is simpler.
5258
5259 * Stepping improved
5260
5261 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5262 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5263 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5264 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5265
5266 * Bug fixing
5267
5268 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5269
5270 * New host supported (not target)
5271
5272 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5273
5274
5275 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5276
5277 * Multiple source language support
5278
5279 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5280 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5281 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5282 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5283 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5284 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5285
5286 * GDB and Modula-2
5287
5288 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5289 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5290 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5291 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5292
5293 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5294 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5295 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5296
5297 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5298 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5299
5300 * set write on/off
5301
5302 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5303 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5304 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5305 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5306 effect immediately.
5307
5308 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5309
5310 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5311 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5312 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5313 examining core files.
5314
5315 * set listsize
5316
5317 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5318 The default is 10.
5319
5320 * New machines supported (host and target)
5321
5322 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5323 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5324 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5325
5326 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5327
5328 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5329
5330 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5331
5332 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5333 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5334 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5335
5336 * New remote interfaces
5337
5338 AMD 29000 Adapt
5339 AMD 29000 Minimon
5340
5341
5342 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5343
5344 * New Facilities
5345
5346 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5347
5348 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5349 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5350 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5351 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5352 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5353 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5354 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5355 stub on the target system.
5356
5357 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5358
5359 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5360 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5361 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5362
5363 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5364 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5365
5366
5367 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5368
5369 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5370 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5371
5372 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5373 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5374 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5375
5376 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5377 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5378 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5379 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5380
5381 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5382 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5383 it is already running. Default is ON.
5384
5385 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5386 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5387 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5388 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5389 Default is ON.
5390
5391 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5392 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5393 or the value of the environment variable
5394 GDBHISTFILE.
5395
5396 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5397 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5398 HISTSIZE.
5399
5400 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5401 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5402 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5403
5404 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5405 history expansion will be performed on
5406 command line input. The default is OFF.
5407
5408 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5409 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5410 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5411
5412 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5413 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5414 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5415 variable TERM.
5416
5417 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5418 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
5419 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5420 variable TERM.
5421
5422 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
5423 ``set width'' instead.
5424
5425 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
5426 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
5427 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
5428 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
5429
5430 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
5431 is OFF.
5432
5433 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
5434 "raw" form if off.
5435
5436 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
5437 like instructions.
5438
5439 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
5440
5441
5442 * Support for Epoch Environment.
5443
5444 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
5445 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
5446 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
5447 window.
5448
5449
5450 * Support for Shared Libraries
5451
5452 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
5453 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
5454 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
5455 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
5456 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
5457 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
5458 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
5459 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
5460
5461 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
5462 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
5463 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
5464
5465 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
5466
5467
5468 * Watchpoints
5469
5470 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
5471 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
5472 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
5473 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
5474 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
5475 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
5476
5477 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
5478
5479 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
5480
5481 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5482 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5483 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
5484
5485
5486 * C++ multiple inheritance
5487
5488 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
5489 for C++ programs.
5490
5491 * C++ exception handling
5492
5493 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
5494 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
5495 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
5496 handler's context).
5497
5498 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
5499 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
5500 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
5501
5502 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
5503 current stack frame.
5504
5505
5506 * Minor command changes
5507
5508 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
5509 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
5510 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
5511
5512 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
5513 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
5514 frames without printing.
5515
5516 * New directory command
5517
5518 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
5519 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
5520 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
5521 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
5522 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
5523
5524 * Configuring GDB for compilation
5525
5526 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
5527 for more details.
5528
5529 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
5530 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
5531 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
5532 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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