windows-nat: Also ignore ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE from SuspendThread()
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.9
5
6 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
7 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
8 including advance SIMD instructions.
9
10 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
11 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
12 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
13 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
14 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
15 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
16 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
17
18 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
19 cpu information :
20 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
21
22 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
23 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
24 remote serial I/O.
25
26 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
27 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
28 and may include things like its command line arguments.
29
30 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
31 is now available on all platforms.
32
33 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
34 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
35 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
36 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
37 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
38 backward compatibility.
39
40 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
41 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
42 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
43 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
44
45 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
46 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
47 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
48 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
49 packets" below.
50
51 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
52
53 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
54
55 * Guile Scripting
56
57 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
58
59 * Python Scripting
60
61 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
62 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
63 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
64 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
65 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
66 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
67 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
68 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
69 "const" version of the value respectively.
70
71 * New commands
72
73 maint print symbol-cache
74 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
75
76 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
77 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
78
79 maint flush-symbol-cache
80 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
81
82 record btrace bts
83 record bts
84 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
85
86 compile print
87 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
88
89 tui enable
90 tui disable
91 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
92
93 show mpx bound
94 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
95 Support for bound table investigation on Intel(R) MPX enabled applications.
96
97 * New options
98
99 set debug dwarf-die
100 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
101 show debug dwarf-die
102 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
103
104 set debug dwarf-read
105 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
106 show debug dwarf-read
107 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
108
109 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
110 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
111 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
112 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
113
114 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
115 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
116 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
117 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
118
119 set debug dwarf-line
120 show debug dwarf-line
121 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
122
123 set max-completions
124 show max-completions
125 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
126 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
127 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
128 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
129
130 maint set symbol-cache-size
131 maint show symbol-cache-size
132 Control the size of the symbol cache.
133
134 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
135 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
136 BTS format.
137 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
138 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
139
140 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
141 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
142
143 * Python/Guile scripting
144
145 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
146 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
147
148 * New remote packets
149
150 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
151 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
152
153 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
154 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
155
156 swbreak stop reason
157 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
158 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
159 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
160 mode operation.
161
162 hwbreak stop reason
163 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
164 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
165
166 vFile:fstat:
167 Return information about files on the remote system.
168
169 qXfer:exec-file:read
170 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
171 create a process running on the remote system.
172
173 fork stop reason
174 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
175
176 vfork stop reason
177 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
178
179 vforkdone stop reason
180 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
181 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
182
183 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
184 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
185 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
186 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
187 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
188 whether these features are enabled.
189
190 * Extended-remote fork events
191
192 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
193 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
194 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
195 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
196
197 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
198 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
199 the btrace record target.
200 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
201
202 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
203 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
204
205 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
206 targets.
207
208 * Removed command line options
209
210 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
211
212 * Removed targets and native configurations
213
214 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
215 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
216
217 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
218
219 * Python Scripting
220
221 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
222
223 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
224
225 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
226
227 * Python Scripting
228
229 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
230 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
231 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
232 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
233 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
234 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
235 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
236 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
237 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
238 selecting a new file to debug.
239 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
240 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
241
242 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
243 inferior.
244
245 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
246 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
247 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
248 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
249
250 * New Python-based convenience functions:
251
252 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
253 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
254 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
255 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
256
257 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
258 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
259 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
260 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
261 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
262 interface with this new feature are:
263
264 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
265 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
266
267 * New commands
268
269 demangle [-l language] [--] name
270 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
271 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
272 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
273 as "maint demangler-warning".
274
275 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
276 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
277
278 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
279 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
280 scripts.
281
282 maint print user-registers
283 List all currently available "user" registers.
284
285 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
286 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
287 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
288
289 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
290 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
291 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
292 provided.
293
294 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
295 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
296 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
297 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
298 at resume time.
299
300 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
301 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
302 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
303 switched threads meanwhile.
304
305 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
306
307 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
308 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
309 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
310 is now the default mode.
311
312 * New options
313
314 set debug symbol-lookup
315 show debug symbol-lookup
316 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
317
318 * MI changes
319
320 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
321 inferiors that have exited.
322
323 * New targets
324
325 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
326
327 * Removed targets
328
329 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
330
331 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
332 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
333 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
334 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
335 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
336
337 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
338 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
339 its alias "share", instead.
340
341 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
342
343 * New command line options
344
345 -D data-directory
346 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
347
348 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
349 as specified in ISO C99.
350
351 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
352 with or without disassembly.
353
354 * Guile scripting
355
356 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
357 available is determined at configure time.
358 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
359 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
360
361 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
362
363 guile [code]
364 gu [code]
365 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
366
367 guile-repl
368 gr
369 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
370
371 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
372 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
373
374 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
375 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
376
377 * New options
378
379 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
380 show print symbol-loading
381 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
382 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
383 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
384 becomes less useful.
385
386 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
387 show guile print-stack
388 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
389
390 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
391 show auto-load guile-scripts
392 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
393
394 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
395 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
396 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
397 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
398 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
399 usage of this option.
400
401 set auto-connect-native-target
402
403 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
404 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
405 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
406
407 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
408 show record btrace replay-memory-access
409 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
410
411 maint set target-async (on|off)
412 maint show target-async
413 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
414 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
415 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
416 occurring only in synchronous mode.
417
418 set mi-async (on|off)
419 show mi-async
420 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
421 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
422
423 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
424 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
425
426 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
427 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
428 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
429 "set target-async on" command.
430
431 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
432
433 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
434 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
435 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
436 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
437 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
438
439 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
440 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
441 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
442
443 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
444 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
445 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
446 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
447 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
448 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
449 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
450
451 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
452 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
453
454 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
455 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
456 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
457
458 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
459 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
460 memory or registers.
461
462 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
463
464 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
465 remote. It now works with all targets.
466
467 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
468 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
469 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
470 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
471 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
472 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
473 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
474 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
475 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
476 target-stack".
477
478 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
479 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
480 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
481
482 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
483
484 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
485 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
486 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
487
488 * New remote packets
489
490 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
491 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
492 branch trace incrementally.
493
494 * Python Scripting
495
496 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
497 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
498 available.
499 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
500 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
501 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
502 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
503 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
504
505 * New targets
506 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
507
508 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
509 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
510 its alias "share", instead.
511
512 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
513 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
514 instead.
515
516 * MI changes
517
518 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
519 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
520 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
521 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
522 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
523 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
524 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
525 commands and CLI execution commands.
526
527 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
528
529 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
530 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
531 recording has been added.
532
533 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
534
535 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
536 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
537
538 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
539 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
540 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
541 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
542 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
543 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
544 "void".
545
546 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
547
548 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
549
550 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
551 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
552 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
553 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
554
555 (gdb) p $rax
556 $1 = <not saved>
557
558 (gdb) info registers rax
559 rax <not saved>
560
561 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
562 "*value not available*".
563
564 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
565 to binaries.
566
567 * Python scripting
568
569 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
570 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
571 ** Line tables representation has been added.
572 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
573 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
574 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
575
576 * New targets
577
578 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
579 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
580 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
581
582 * Removed native configurations
583
584 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
585 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
586
587 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
588 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
589 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
590 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
591 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
592 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
593 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
594
595 * New commands:
596 catch rethrow
597 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
598 maint check-psymtabs
599 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
600 maint check-symtabs
601 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
602 maint expand-symtabs
603 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
604
605 show configuration
606 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
607
608 maint set|show per-command
609 maint set|show per-command space
610 maint set|show per-command time
611 maint set|show per-command symtab
612 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
613
614 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
615 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
616 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
617 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
618 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
619
620 info exceptions
621 info exceptions REGEXP
622 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
623 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
624 are listed.
625
626 * New options
627
628 set debug symfile off|on
629 show debug symfile
630 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
631 symbol tables within those files
632
633 set print raw frame-arguments
634 show print raw frame-arguments
635 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
636 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
637
638 set remote trace-status-packet
639 show remote trace-status-packet
640 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
641
642 set debug nios2
643 show debug nios2
644 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
645
646 set range-stepping
647 show range-stepping
648 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
649
650 set startup-with-shell
651 show startup-with-shell
652 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
653 directly.
654
655 set code-cache
656 show code-cache
657 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
658 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
659
660 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
661 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
662 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
663 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
664 "set height 0".
665
666 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
667 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
668 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
669
670 * New command-line options
671 --configuration
672 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
673
674 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
675 buffer in Common Trace Format.
676
677 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
678 GDB command gcore.
679
680 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
681
682 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
683 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
684
685 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
686 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
687
688 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
689 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
690 due to an uncaught signal.
691
692 * MI changes
693
694 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
695 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
696 command, which should contain "language-option".
697
698 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
699 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
700
701 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
702 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
703 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
704 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
705 "undefined-command-error-code".
706
707 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
708 Trace Format now.
709
710 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
711
712 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
713 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
714 are displayed.
715
716 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
717 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
718
719 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
720 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
721 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
722
723 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
724 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
725 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
726 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
727 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
728 "exec-run-start-option".
729
730 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
731 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
732
733 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
734 the new "info exceptions" command.
735
736 * New system-wide configuration scripts
737 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
738 configuration scripts for the following systems:
739 ** ElinOS
740 ** Wind River Linux
741
742 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
743 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
744 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
745 below.
746
747 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
748 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
749
750 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
751 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
752 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
753
754 * New remote packets
755
756 vCont;r
757
758 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
759 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
760 involvemement at each single-step.
761
762 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
763 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
764 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
765 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
766 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
767 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
768 speedup.
769
770 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
771
772 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
773 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
774
775 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
776 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
777 trace state variables.
778
779 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
780 target.
781
782 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
783 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
784
785 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
786
787 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
788 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
789 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
790 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
791
792 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
793
794 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
795 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
796 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
797 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
798
799 set|show record full insn-number-max
800 set|show record full stop-at-limit
801 set|show record full memory-query
802
803 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
804 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
805 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
806 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
807 This new recording method can be enabled using:
808
809 record btrace
810
811 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
812 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
813
814 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
815 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
816 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
817
818 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
819 instruction granularity
820
821 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
822 function granularity
823
824 * New native configurations
825
826 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
827 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
828 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
829 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
830
831 * New targets
832
833 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
834 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
835 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
836 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
837 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
838
839 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
840 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
841 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
842 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
843 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
844 --data-directory command-line option.
845
846 * New command line options:
847
848 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
849 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
850
851 * Removed command line options
852
853 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
854 Emacs.
855
856 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
857 type formatting.
858
859 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
860
861 * Python scripting
862
863 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
864
865 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
866
867 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
868
869 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
870
871 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
872 of architecture in the Python API.
873
874 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
875 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
876
877 * New Python-based convenience functions:
878
879 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
880 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
881 ** $_strlen(str)
882 ** $_regex(str, regex)
883
884 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
885 given an argument.
886
887 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
888 default for GCC since November 2000.
889
890 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
891
892 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
893 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
894
895 * New configure options
896
897 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
898 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
899 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
900 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
901 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
902 options allow the user to override that default.
903 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
904 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
905 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
906
907 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
908
909 catch signal
910 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
911 conditions to be attached.
912
913 maint info bfds
914 List the BFDs known to GDB.
915
916 python-interactive [command]
917 pi [command]
918 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
919 and print the result of expressions.
920
921 py [command]
922 "py" is a new alias for "python".
923
924 enable type-printer [name]...
925 disable type-printer [name]...
926 Enable or disable type printers.
927
928 * Removed commands
929
930 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
931 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
932 instead.
933
934 * New options
935
936 set print type methods (on|off)
937 show print type methods
938 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
939 The default is to show them.
940
941 set print type typedefs (on|off)
942 show print type typedefs
943 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
944 The default is to show them.
945
946 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
947 show filename-display
948 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
949 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
950
951 set trace-buffer-size
952 show trace-buffer-size
953 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
954
955 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
956 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
957 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
958
959 set debug aarch64
960 show debug aarch64
961 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
962 The default is off.
963
964 set debug coff-pe-read
965 show debug coff-pe-read
966 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
967 exported symbols.
968
969 set debug mach-o
970 show debug mach-o
971 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
972 processing.
973
974 set debug notification
975 show debug notification
976 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
977
978 * MI changes
979
980 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
981 "=cmd-param-changed".
982 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
983 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
984 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
985 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
986 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
987 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
988 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
989 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
990 "=memory-changed".
991 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
992 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
993 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
994 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
995 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
996 library load/unload events.
997 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
998 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
999 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1000 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1001 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1002 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1003 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1004 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1005
1006 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1007 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1008 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1009 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1010
1011 * New remote packets
1012
1013 QTBuffer:size
1014 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1015 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1016
1017 Qbtrace:bts
1018 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1019 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1020 qSupported query.
1021
1022 Qbtrace:off
1023 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1024 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1025
1026 qXfer:btrace:read
1027 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1028 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1029
1030 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1031
1032 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1033 for more x32 ABI info.
1034
1035 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1036
1037 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1038
1039 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1040 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1041 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1042 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1043 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1044 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1045 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1046 "info os msg" lists message queues
1047 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1048
1049 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1050 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1051 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1052 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1053 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1054 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1055
1056 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1057 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1058 record/replay support.
1059
1060 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1061
1062 * Python scripting
1063
1064 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1065 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1066
1067 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1068
1069 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1070 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1071
1072 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1073
1074 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1075 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1076
1077 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1078 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1079 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1080 symbol's value.
1081
1082 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1083 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1084
1085 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1086 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1087 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1088
1089 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1090 object associated with a PC value.
1091
1092 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1093 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1094
1095 * Go language support.
1096 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1097 language.
1098
1099 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1100 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1101
1102 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1103 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1104
1105 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1106 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1107 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1108 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1109 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1110 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1111
1112 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1113 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1114 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1115 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1116
1117 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1118 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1119
1120 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1121 since December 2007.
1122
1123 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1124 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1125 command does. For instance:
1126
1127 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1128
1129 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1130 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1131 created, using the "condition" command.
1132
1133 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1134 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1135
1136 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1137
1138 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1139 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1140 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1141 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1142 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1143 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1144 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1145 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1146
1147 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1148 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1149 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1150 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1151 the .gdb_index section.
1152
1153 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1154
1155 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1156 target.
1157
1158 * MI changes
1159
1160 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1161
1162 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1163
1164 * New commands
1165
1166 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1167 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1168 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1169
1170 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1171 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1172
1173 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1174 several hits.
1175
1176 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1177 C++ and Java objects.
1178
1179 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1180 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1181 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1182 configured with '--with-python'.
1183
1184 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1185 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1186 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1187 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1188 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1189 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1190 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1191
1192 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1193 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1194 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1195 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1196
1197 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1198 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1199 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1200 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1201
1202 ** "set print symbol"
1203 "show print symbol"
1204 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1205 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1206 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1207
1208 * Deprecated commands
1209
1210 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1211 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1212
1213 * New targets
1214
1215 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1216 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1217
1218 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1219 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1220 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1221 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1222 evaluates to true.
1223
1224 * New options
1225
1226 set mips compression
1227 show mips compression
1228 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1229 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1230 mips16
1231 micromips
1232 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1233
1234 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1235 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1236 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1237 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1238 available mode.
1239 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1240 target.
1241
1242 set auto-load off
1243 Disable auto-loading globally.
1244
1245 show auto-load
1246 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1247
1248 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1249 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1250 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1251
1252 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1253 show auto-load python-scripts
1254 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1255
1256 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1257 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1258 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1259
1260 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1261 show auto-load libthread-db
1262 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1263
1264 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1265 show auto-load scripts-directory
1266 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1267 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1268 of the directories listed by this option.
1269 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1270
1271 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1272 show auto-load safe-path
1273 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1274 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1275
1276 set debug auto-load on|off
1277 show debug auto-load
1278 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1279
1280 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1281 show dprintf-style
1282 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1283 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1284 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1285 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1286
1287 set dprintf-function <expr>
1288 show dprintf-function
1289 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1290 show dprintf-channel
1291 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1292 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1293
1294 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1295 show disconnected-dprintf
1296 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1297 after GDB disconnects.
1298
1299 * New configure options
1300
1301 --with-auto-load-dir
1302 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1303 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1304 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1305 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1306 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1307
1308 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1309 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1310 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1311
1312 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1313 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1314 security feature.
1315
1316 * New remote packets
1317
1318 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1319
1320 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1321 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1322 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1323 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1324
1325 QProgramSignals:
1326
1327 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1328 program without GDB involvement.
1329
1330 * New command line options
1331
1332 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1333 before loading inferior.
1334 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1335 execute it before loading inferior.
1336
1337 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1338
1339 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1340 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1341 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1342 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1343 inferior changes.
1344
1345 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1346 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1347
1348 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1349 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1350 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1351 target hardware watchpoint.
1352
1353 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1354 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1355 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1356 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1357
1358 * Python scripting
1359
1360 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1361 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1362 existing one.
1363
1364 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1365 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1366 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1367 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1368 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1369 the stack trace.
1370
1371 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1372 Python API.
1373
1374 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1375 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1376 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1377 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1378 corresponding value.
1379
1380 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1381 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1382 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1383 on GDB start-up.
1384
1385 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1386 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1387 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1388 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1389
1390 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1391
1392 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1393 "gdb.breakpoints".
1394
1395 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1396 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1397 available in the CLI.
1398
1399 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1400 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1401 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1402 "some_type.items()".
1403
1404 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1405 new object file.
1406
1407 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1408 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1409 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1410 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1411 any anonymous fields.
1412
1413 * MI changes
1414
1415 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1416 "solib-event".
1417
1418 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1419 "=breakpoint-modified".
1420
1421 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1422
1423 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1424 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1425 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1426 lives.
1427
1428 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1429 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1430 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1431 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1432 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1433
1434 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1435 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1436
1437 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1438 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1439 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1440 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1441 use this option to specify where to find it.
1442
1443 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1444 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1445 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1446 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1447 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1448 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1449 section in the user manual for more details.
1450
1451 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1452 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1453 become available after that.
1454
1455 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1456
1457 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1458 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1459 gcc version 4.7.
1460
1461 * New commands
1462
1463 !SHELL COMMAND
1464 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1465 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1466
1467 * Changed commands
1468
1469 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1470 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1471 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1472
1473 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1474 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1475 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1476
1477 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1478 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1479 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1480 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1481 name starts with a hyphen.
1482
1483 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1484 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1485 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1486 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1487 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1488 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1489 number of bytes that will be collected.
1490
1491 tstart [NOTES]
1492 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1493 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1494 setting the variable trace-notes.
1495
1496 tstop [NOTES]
1497 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1498 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1499 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1500 trace-stop-notes.
1501
1502 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1503 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1504 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1505 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1506 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1507 is running.
1508
1509 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1510 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1511 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1512
1513 * New options
1514
1515 set debug dwarf2-read
1516 show debug dwarf2-read
1517 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1518 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1519
1520 set debug symtab-create
1521 show debug symtab-create
1522 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1523 creation. The default is off.
1524
1525 set extended-prompt
1526 show extended-prompt
1527 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1528 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1529 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1530 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1531 prompt is displayed.
1532
1533 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1534 show print entry-values
1535 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1536 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1537 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1538
1539 set debug entry-values
1540 show debug entry-values
1541 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1542 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1543
1544 set basenames-may-differ
1545 show basenames-may-differ
1546 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1547 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1548 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1549 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1550 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1551 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1552 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1553 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1554
1555 set trace-user
1556 show trace-user
1557 set trace-notes
1558 show trace-notes
1559 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1560 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1561 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1562 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1563
1564 set trace-stop-notes
1565 show trace-stop-notes
1566 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1567 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1568 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1569 started by someone else.
1570
1571 * New remote packets
1572
1573 QTEnable
1574
1575 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1576
1577 QTDisable
1578
1579 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1580
1581 QTNotes
1582
1583 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1584
1585 qTP
1586
1587 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1588
1589 qTMinFTPILen
1590
1591 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1592 be placed.
1593
1594 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1595 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1596
1597 * New targets
1598
1599 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1600
1601 * New Simulators
1602
1603 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1604
1605 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1606
1607 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1608
1609 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1610
1611 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1612 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1613 matches the given regular expression.
1614
1615 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1616
1617 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1618 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1619
1620 * New command line options
1621
1622 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1623 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1624
1625 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1626 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1627
1628 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1629 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1630 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1631
1632 * GDB now understands thread names.
1633
1634 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1635 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1636
1637 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1638 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1639
1640 * OpenCL C
1641 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1642 has been integrated into GDB.
1643
1644 * Python scripting
1645
1646 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1647 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1648 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1649
1650 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1651 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1652 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1653 and allows for more dynamic content.
1654
1655 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1656 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1657 have an is_valid method.
1658
1659 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1660 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1661 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1662
1663 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1664
1665 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1666 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1667 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1668 that function like so:
1669
1670 result = some_value (10,20)
1671
1672 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1673 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1674 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1675
1676 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1677 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1678 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1679 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1680 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1681
1682 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1683 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1684
1685 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1686
1687 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1688 selected thread.
1689
1690 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1691 holds the thread's name.
1692
1693 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1694 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1695 occurring in the process being debugged.
1696 The following events are currently supported:
1697 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1698 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1699 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1700
1701 * C++ Improvements:
1702
1703 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1704 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1705
1706 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1707
1708 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1709 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1710 was added to GCC 4.5.
1711
1712 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1713 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1714 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1715 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1716 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1717 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1718
1719 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1720 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1721 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1722 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1723 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1724
1725 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1726 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1727 execution to a label.
1728
1729 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1730 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1731 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1732 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1733
1734 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1735 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1736 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1737 of scope.
1738
1739 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1740
1741 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1742 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1743 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1744 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1745 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1746 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1747
1748 (gdb) info threads
1749 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1750
1751 While now you see this:
1752
1753 (gdb) info threads
1754 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1755
1756 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1757 dumps.
1758
1759 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1760 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1761 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1762 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1763
1764 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1765 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1766 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1767 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1768 section in the user manual for more details.
1769
1770 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1771
1772 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1773 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1774
1775 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1776
1777 * New native configurations
1778
1779 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1780
1781 * New targets:
1782
1783 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1784
1785 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1786 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1787 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1788 in the GDB user manual.
1789
1790 * Guile support was removed.
1791
1792 * New features in the GNU simulator
1793
1794 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1795
1796 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1797
1798 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1799
1800 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1801
1802 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1803 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1804 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1805 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1806 was always disabled for such configurations.
1807
1808 * C++ Improvements:
1809
1810 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1811
1812 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1813 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1814 For example:
1815 namespace A
1816 {
1817 class B { };
1818 void foo (B) { }
1819 }
1820 ...
1821 A::B b
1822 foo(b)
1823 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1824 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1825 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1826
1827 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1828
1829 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1830 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1831 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1832 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1833 entry.
1834 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1835 mentioned flavors of operators.
1836
1837 ** static const class members
1838
1839 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1840 class definition has been fixed.
1841
1842 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1843
1844 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1845 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1846 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1847 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1848 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1849 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1850
1851 * Static tracepoints
1852
1853 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1854 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1855 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1856 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1857 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1858 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1859 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1860 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1861 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1862 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1863 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1864 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1865 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1866 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1867 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1868 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1869 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1870 the "New remote packets" section below.
1871
1872 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1873
1874 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1875 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1876 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1877 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1878
1879 * Observer mode
1880
1881 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1882 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1883 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1884 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1885 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1886 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1887 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1888
1889 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1890 current thread.
1891
1892 * New remote packets
1893
1894 qGetTIBAddr
1895
1896 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1897
1898 qRelocInsn
1899
1900 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1901 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1902 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1903 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1904 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1905 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1906
1907 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1908
1909 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1910
1911 qTSTMat
1912
1913 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1914 program.
1915
1916 qXfer:statictrace:read
1917
1918 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1919 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1920 to gdb's qSupported query.
1921
1922 QAllow
1923
1924 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1925
1926 QTDPsrc
1927
1928 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1929 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1930
1931 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1932 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1933 a directory.
1934
1935 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1936
1937 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1938 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1939 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1940 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1941
1942 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1943 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1944 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1945 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1946 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1947 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1948 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1949
1950 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1951 for static tracepoints support.
1952
1953 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1954
1955 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1956 it understands register description.
1957
1958 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1959
1960 * X86 general purpose registers
1961
1962 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1963 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1964 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1965 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1966 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1967
1968 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1969 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1970 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1971 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1972 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1973 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1974
1975 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1976 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1977 in the specified file.
1978
1979 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1980 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1981 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1982 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1983 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1984 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1985 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1986 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1987 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1988 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1989
1990 * New commands
1991
1992 eval template, expressions...
1993 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
1994 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
1995
1996 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
1997 show target-file-system-kind
1998 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
1999 names.
2000
2001 save breakpoints <filename>
2002 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2003 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2004 definitions, use the `source' command.
2005
2006 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2007 is now deprecated.
2008
2009 info static-tracepoint-markers
2010 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2011
2012 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2013 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2014 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2015
2016 set observer on|off
2017 show observer
2018 Enable and disable observer mode.
2019
2020 set may-write-registers on|off
2021 set may-write-memory on|off
2022 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2023 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2024 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2025 set may-interrupt on|off
2026 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2027 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2028 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2029 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2030 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2031 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2032 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2033
2034 set record memory-query on|off
2035 show record memory-query
2036 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2037 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2038
2039 * Changed commands
2040
2041 disassemble
2042 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2043
2044 * Python scripting
2045
2046 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2047 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2048 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2049 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2050 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2051
2052 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2053 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2054 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2055 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2056
2057 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2058 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2059
2060 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2061
2062 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2063
2064 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2065
2066 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2067 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2068 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2069
2070 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2071 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2072 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2073 regular breakpoints.
2074
2075 * New targets
2076
2077 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2078
2079 * D language support.
2080 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2081 language.
2082
2083 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2084 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2085 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2086 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2087 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2088
2089 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2090 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2091 conditions of the form:
2092
2093 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2094
2095 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2096 interface mentioned above.
2097
2098 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2099
2100 * C++ Improvements
2101
2102 ** Namespace Support
2103
2104 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2105 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2106 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2107 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2108 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2109
2110 ** Bug Fixes
2111
2112 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2113 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2114 qualified name.
2115
2116 ** Cast Operators
2117
2118 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2119 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2120
2121 * New targets
2122
2123 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2124 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2125
2126 * New Simulators
2127
2128 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2129 Renesas RX rx
2130
2131 * Multi-program debugging.
2132
2133 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2134 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2135 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2136 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2137 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2138 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2139 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2140 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2141
2142 * New tracing features
2143
2144 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2145
2146 ** Trace state variables
2147
2148 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2149 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2150 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2151 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2152 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2153 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2154 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2155 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2156 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2157 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2158
2159 ** Fast tracepoints
2160
2161 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2162 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2163 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2164 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2165 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2166 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2167 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2168 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2169 the regular trace command.
2170
2171 ** Disconnected tracing
2172
2173 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2174 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2175 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2176 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2177 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2178
2179 ** Trace files
2180
2181 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2182 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2183 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2184 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2185 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2186 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2187 <name>".
2188
2189 ** Circular trace buffer
2190
2191 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2192 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2193 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2194 not be available for all target agents.
2195
2196 * Changed commands
2197
2198 disassemble
2199 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2200 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2201
2202 info variables
2203 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2204 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2205
2206 source
2207 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2208 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2209 support.
2210
2211 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2212 "set script-extension" (see below).
2213
2214 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2215
2216 record save [<FILENAME>]
2217 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2218 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2219
2220 record restore <FILENAME>
2221 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2222 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2223
2224 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2225 Add a new inferior.
2226
2227 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2228 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2229 inferior has loaded.
2230
2231 remove-inferior ID
2232 Remove an inferior.
2233
2234 maint info program-spaces
2235 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2236
2237 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2238 show remote interrupt-sequence
2239 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2240 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2241 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2242 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2243 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2244
2245 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2246 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2247 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2248 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2249 Linux kernel.
2250
2251 set remotebreak [on | off]
2252 show remotebreak
2253 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2254
2255 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2256 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2257
2258 info tvariables
2259 List trace state variables and their values.
2260
2261 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2262 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2263
2264 teval EXPR, ...
2265 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2266 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2267
2268 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2269 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2270
2271 * New expression syntax
2272
2273 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2274 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2275
2276 * New options
2277
2278 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2279 show follow-exec-mode
2280 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2281 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2282 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2283
2284 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2285 show default-collect
2286 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2287 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2288 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2289
2290 set disconnected-tracing
2291 show disconnected-tracing
2292 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2293 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2294 upon disconnection.
2295
2296 set circular-trace-buffer
2297 show circular-trace-buffer
2298 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2299 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2300 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2301 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2302
2303 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2304 show script-extension
2305 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2306 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2307 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2308 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2309 evaluation failed.
2310 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2311
2312 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2313 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2314 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2315 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2316 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2317 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2318 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2319 is on.
2320
2321 * Python API Improvements
2322
2323 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2324 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2325 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2326
2327 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2328 `is_base_class' attribute.
2329
2330 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2331
2332 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2333 evaluate an expression.
2334
2335 * New remote packets
2336
2337 QTDV
2338 Define a trace state variable.
2339
2340 qTV
2341 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2342
2343 QTDisconnected
2344 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2345
2346 QTBuffer:circular
2347 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2348
2349 qTfP, qTsP
2350 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2351
2352 * Bug fixes
2353
2354 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2355
2356 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2357 much more reliable. In particular:
2358 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2359 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2360 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2361 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2362 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2363 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2364 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2365 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2366 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2367 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2368 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2369 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2370 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2371 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2372 non-threaded programs.
2373
2374 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2375 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2376 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2377 executable program.
2378
2379 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2380
2381 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2382 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2383 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2384 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2385 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2386
2387 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2388 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2389 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2390 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2391 for tracepoint actions.
2392
2393 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2394 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2395 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2396
2397 * Process record and replay
2398
2399 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2400 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2401 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2402 execute commands.
2403
2404 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2405 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2406 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2407 reverse execution.
2408
2409 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2410 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2411 2.6.28 or later.
2412
2413 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2414 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2415 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2416 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2417 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2418 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2419 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2420 the installation instructions for more information.
2421
2422 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2423 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2424 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2425 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2426
2427 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2428 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2429
2430 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2431 now complete on file names.
2432
2433 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2434 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2435 For instance, consider:
2436
2437 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2438 # struct example variable;
2439 (gdb) p variable.
2440
2441 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2442 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2443
2444 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2445 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2446
2447 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2448 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2449 macros.
2450
2451 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2452 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2453 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2454
2455 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2456 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2457 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2458 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2459
2460 * New remote packets
2461
2462 qSearch:memory:
2463 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2464
2465 QStartNoAckMode
2466 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2467 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2468 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2469
2470 vKill
2471 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2472 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2473
2474 qXfer:osdata:read
2475 Obtains additional operating system information
2476
2477 qXfer:siginfo:read
2478 qXfer:siginfo:write
2479 Read or write additional signal information.
2480
2481 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2482
2483 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2484 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2485 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2486
2487 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2488 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2489
2490 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2491 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2492 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2493
2494 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2495 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2496
2497 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2498
2499 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2500
2501 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2502 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2503
2504 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2505 list of section offsets.
2506
2507 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2508 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2509 have also been fixed.
2510
2511 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2512 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2513 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2514
2515 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2516 example, given:
2517
2518 template<typename T> class C { };
2519 C<char const *> c;
2520
2521 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2522
2523 ptype C<char const *>
2524 ptype C<char const*>
2525 ptype C<const char *>
2526 ptype C<const char*>
2527
2528 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2529
2530 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2531 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2532
2533 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2534 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2535 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2536
2537 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2538 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2539
2540 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2541 gdbserver.
2542
2543 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2544 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2545
2546 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2547 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2548 as appropriate.
2549
2550 * Python scripting
2551
2552 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2553 available is determined at configure time.
2554
2555 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2556
2557 * Ada tasking support
2558
2559 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2560 been introduced:
2561
2562 info tasks
2563 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2564 info task N
2565 Print detailed information about task number N.
2566 task
2567 Print the task number of the current task.
2568 task N
2569 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2570
2571 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2572 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2573
2574 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2575
2576 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2577 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2578 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2579 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2580 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2581 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2582 below.
2583
2584 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2585 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2586 information.
2587
2588 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2589 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2590 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2591 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2592 more information.
2593
2594 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2595
2596 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2597 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2598 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2599 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2600 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2601
2602 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2603 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2604 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2605 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2606 --enable-targets configure option.
2607
2608 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2609
2610 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2611 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2612 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2613 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2614 section in the user manual for more information.
2615
2616 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2617 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2618 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2619 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2620 extensions on linux targets.
2621
2622 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2623
2624 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2625 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2626 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2627 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2628 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2629 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2630 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2631 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2632 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2633
2634 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2635 val1 [, val2, ...]
2636 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2637
2638 maint set python print-stack
2639 maint show python print-stack
2640 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2641
2642 python [CODE]
2643 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2644
2645 macro define
2646 macro list
2647 macro undef
2648 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2649 interactively.
2650
2651 info os processes
2652 Show operating system information about processes.
2653
2654 info inferiors
2655 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2656
2657 inferior NUM
2658 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2659
2660 detach inferior NUM
2661 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2662
2663 kill inferior NUM
2664 Kill inferior number NUM.
2665
2666 * New options
2667
2668 set spu stop-on-load
2669 show spu stop-on-load
2670 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2671
2672 set spu auto-flush-cache
2673 show spu auto-flush-cache
2674 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2675 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2676
2677 set sh calling-convention
2678 show sh calling-convention
2679 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2680
2681 set debug timestamp
2682 show debug timestamp
2683 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2684
2685 set disassemble-next-line
2686 show disassemble-next-line
2687 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2688 the debuggee stops.
2689
2690 set remote noack-packet
2691 show remote noack-packet
2692 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2693 under "New remote packets."
2694
2695 set remote query-attached-packet
2696 show remote query-attached-packet
2697 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2698
2699 set remote read-siginfo-object
2700 show remote read-siginfo-object
2701 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2702 packet.
2703
2704 set remote write-siginfo-object
2705 show remote write-siginfo-object
2706 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2707 packet.
2708
2709 set remote reverse-continue
2710 show remote reverse-continue
2711 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2712
2713 set remote reverse-step
2714 show remote reverse-step
2715 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2716
2717 set displaced-stepping
2718 show displaced-stepping
2719 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2720 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2721 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2722
2723 set debug displaced
2724 show debug displaced
2725 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2726
2727 maint set internal-error
2728 maint show internal-error
2729 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2730
2731 maint set internal-warning
2732 maint show internal-warning
2733 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2734
2735 set exec-wrapper
2736 show exec-wrapper
2737 unset exec-wrapper
2738 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2739
2740 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2741 show multiple-symbols
2742 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2743 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2744 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2745
2746 set breakpoint always-inserted
2747 show breakpoint always-inserted
2748 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2749 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2750 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2751
2752 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2753 show arm fallback-mode
2754 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2755 show arm force-mode
2756 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2757 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2758 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2759 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2760
2761 set disable-randomization
2762 show disable-randomization
2763 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2764 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2765 multiple debugging sessions.
2766
2767 set non-stop
2768 show non-stop
2769 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2770 a breakpoint.
2771
2772 set target-async
2773 show target-async
2774 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2775 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2776 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2777 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2778
2779 set target-wide-charset
2780 show target-wide-charset
2781 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2782 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2783
2784 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2785 show tcp auto-retry
2786 set tcp connect-timeout
2787 show tcp connect-timeout
2788 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2789 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2790 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2791
2792 set libthread-db-search-path
2793 show libthread-db-search-path
2794 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2795 libthread_db.
2796
2797 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2798 show schedule-multiple
2799 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2800 the current process.
2801
2802 set stack-cache
2803 show stack-cache
2804 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2805 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2806 affecting correctness.
2807
2808 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2809 show interactive-mode
2810 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2811 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2812 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2813 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2814 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2815
2816 * Removed commands
2817
2818 info forks
2819 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2820 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2821 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2822 command.
2823
2824 fork NUM
2825 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2826 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2827 alias for the `fork' command.
2828
2829 process PID
2830 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2831 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2832 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2833
2834 delete fork NUM
2835 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2836 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2837 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2838 fork' command.
2839
2840 detach fork NUM
2841 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2842 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2843 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2844 fork' command.
2845
2846 * New native configurations
2847
2848 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2849
2850 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2851
2852 * New targets
2853
2854 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2855 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2856 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2857 S+core 3 score-*-*
2858
2859 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2860 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2861
2862 * Removed commands
2863
2864 catch load
2865 catch unload
2866 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2867
2868 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2869
2870 * New native configurations
2871
2872 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2873 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2874
2875 * New targets
2876
2877 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2878 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2879
2880 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2881
2882 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2883 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2884 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2885 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2886
2887 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2888 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2889
2890 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2891 is resolved.
2892
2893 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2894 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2895 and in inlined functions.
2896
2897 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2898 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2899 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2900
2901 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2902
2903 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2904 registers on PowerPC targets.
2905
2906 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2907 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2908
2909 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2910 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2911
2912 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2913 extended-remote mode.
2914
2915 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2916 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2917 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2918 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2919
2920 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2921 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2922 target architectures.
2923
2924 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2925 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2926 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2927 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2928
2929 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2930 breakpoints now.
2931
2932 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2933 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2934 include:
2935 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2936 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2937 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2938 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2939 of an assignment
2940 - Improved command completion in Ada
2941 - Several bug fixes
2942
2943 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2944 process.
2945
2946 * New commands
2947
2948 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2949 show print frame-arguments
2950 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2951 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2952
2953 remote put
2954 remote get
2955 remote delete
2956 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2957
2958 * New MI commands
2959
2960 -target-file-put
2961 -target-file-get
2962 -target-file-delete
2963 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2964
2965 * New remote packets
2966
2967 vFile:open:
2968 vFile:close:
2969 vFile:pread:
2970 vFile:pwrite:
2971 vFile:unlink:
2972 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2973
2974 vAttach
2975 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2976 mode.
2977
2978 vRun
2979 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2980
2981 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2982
2983 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2984 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2985 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2986
2987 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2988 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2989 -Bsymbolic linker option.
2990
2991 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
2992 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
2993 is not supported.
2994
2995 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
2996 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
2997
2998 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
2999 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3000
3001 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3002
3003 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3004 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3005 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3006
3007 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3008 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3009
3010 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3011 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3012 as strings.
3013
3014 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3015 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3016 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3017
3018 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3019 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3020
3021 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3022 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3023 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3024
3025 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3026
3027 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3028
3029 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3030 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3031 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3032
3033 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3034 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3035
3036 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3037 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3038 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3039 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3040 Windows and SymbianOS).
3041
3042 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3043 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3044
3045 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3046 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3047
3048 * New commands
3049
3050 set remoteflow
3051 show remoteflow
3052 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3053 when debugging using remote targets.
3054
3055 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3056 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3057 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3058 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3059 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3060 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3061 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3062
3063 set breakpoint auto-hw
3064 show breakpoint auto-hw
3065 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3066 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3067 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3068 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3069 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3070 including "next" and "finish".
3071
3072 catch exception
3073 catch exception unhandled
3074 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3075
3076 catch assert
3077 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3078
3079 set sysroot
3080 show sysroot
3081 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3082 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3083 an alias to "set sysroot".
3084
3085 info spu
3086 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3087 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3088 architecture.
3089
3090 * New native configurations
3091
3092 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3093
3094 set tdesc filename
3095 unset tdesc filename
3096 show tdesc filename
3097 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3098 not query the target for its built-in description.
3099
3100 * New targets
3101
3102 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3103 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3104 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3105
3106 * New remote packets
3107
3108 QPassSignals:
3109 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3110 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3111
3112 qXfer:features:read:
3113 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3114 features.
3115
3116 qXfer:spu:read:
3117 qXfer:spu:write:
3118 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3119 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3120
3121 qXfer:libraries:read:
3122 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3123 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3124 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3125 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3126
3127 * Removed targets
3128
3129 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3130
3131 alpha*-*-osf1*
3132 alpha*-*-osf2*
3133 d10v-*-*
3134 hppa*-*-hiux*
3135 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3136 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3137 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3138 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3139 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3140 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3141 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3142 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3143 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3144 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3145 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3146 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3147 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3148 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3149 m68*-cisco*-*
3150 m68*-tandem-*
3151 mips*-*-pe
3152 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3153 sh*-*-pe
3154
3155 * Other removed features
3156
3157 target abug
3158 target cpu32bug
3159 target est
3160 target rom68k
3161
3162 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3163
3164 target hms
3165 target e7000
3166 target sh3
3167 target sh3e
3168
3169 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3170 H8/300.
3171
3172 target ocd
3173
3174 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3175 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3176 interfaces.
3177
3178 DWARF 1 support
3179
3180 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3181 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3182
3183 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3184
3185 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3186 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3187 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3188 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3189
3190 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3191
3192 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3193 in debugging information.
3194
3195 Scheme support
3196
3197 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3198 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3199
3200 set mips stack-arg-size
3201 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3202
3203 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3204
3205 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3206
3207 * New targets
3208
3209 Xtensa xtensa-elf
3210 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3211
3212 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3213 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3214 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3215
3216 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3217 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3218 supported.
3219
3220 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3221 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3222
3223 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3224 stub provides the required support.
3225
3226 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3227 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3228
3229 * New commands
3230
3231 set substitute-path
3232 unset substitute-path
3233 show substitute-path
3234 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3235 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3236 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3237 between compilation and debugging.
3238
3239 set trace-commands
3240 show trace-commands
3241 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3242 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3243 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3244
3245 * REMOVED features
3246
3247 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3248
3249 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3250 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3251
3252 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3253
3254 * New remote packets
3255
3256 qSupported:
3257 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3258 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3259 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3260 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3261 target.
3262
3263 qXfer:auxv:read:
3264 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3265 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3266
3267 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3268 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3269 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3270
3271 vFlashErase:
3272 vFlashWrite:
3273 vFlashDone:
3274 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3275
3276 * Removed remote packets
3277
3278 qPart:auxv:read:
3279 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3280 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3281
3282 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3283
3284 * New targets
3285
3286 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3287
3288 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3289
3290 * New commands
3291
3292 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3293 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3294
3295 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3296
3297 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3298
3299 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3300 previously saved state.
3301
3302 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3303
3304 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3305
3306 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3307 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3308
3309 info forks List forks of the user program that
3310 are available to be debugged.
3311
3312 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3313 forks of the user program that are
3314 available to be debugged.
3315
3316 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3317 that are available to be debugged (and
3318 kill the forked process).
3319
3320 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3321 that are available to be debugged (and
3322 allow the process to continue).
3323
3324 * New architecture
3325
3326 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3327
3328 * Improved Windows host support
3329
3330 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3331 native console support, and remote communications using either
3332 network sockets or serial ports.
3333
3334 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3335
3336 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3337 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3338 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3339 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3340 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3341 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3342
3343 * REMOVED features
3344
3345 The ARM rdi-share module.
3346
3347 The Netware NLM debug server.
3348
3349 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3350
3351 * New native configurations
3352
3353 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3354 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3355
3356 * New targets
3357
3358 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3359
3360 * New command line options
3361
3362 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3363 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3364 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3365 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3366 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3367 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3368 with the --command (-x) option.
3369
3370 * Deprecated commands removed
3371
3372 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3373 removed:
3374
3375 Command Replacement
3376 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3377 othernames set arm disassembler
3378 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3379 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3380 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3381 regs info registers
3382
3383 * New BSD user-level threads support
3384
3385 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3386 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3387 configurations are:
3388
3389 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3390 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3391 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3392
3393 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3394 are not yet supported.
3395
3396 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3397 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3398
3399 * REMOVED configurations and files
3400
3401 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3402 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3403 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3404
3405 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3406
3407 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3408 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3409 behavior.
3410
3411 * VAX floating point support
3412
3413 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3414
3415 * User-defined command support
3416
3417 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3418 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3419 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3420
3421 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3422
3423 * New command line option
3424
3425 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3426 debugging.
3427
3428 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3429
3430 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3431 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3432 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3433 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3434 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3435
3436 * Internationalization
3437
3438 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3439 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3440 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3441
3442 * Ada
3443
3444 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3445 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3446 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3447
3448 * New native configurations
3449
3450 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3451
3452 * Remote 'p' packet
3453
3454 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3455 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3456
3457 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3458
3459 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3460 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3461 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3462 i386 application).
3463
3464 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3465 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3466 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3467 configurations:
3468
3469 hppa-*-hpux
3470 ia64-*-aix
3471 mips-*-irix*
3472 *-*-lynx
3473 mips-*-linux-gnu
3474 sds protocol
3475 xdr protocol
3476 powerpc bdm protocol
3477
3478 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3479 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3480
3481 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3482
3483 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3484 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3485 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3486 permanently REMOVED.
3487
3488 h8300-*-*
3489 mcore-*-*
3490 mn10300-*-*
3491 ns32k-*-*
3492 sh64-*-*
3493 v850-*-*
3494
3495 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3496
3497 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3498
3499 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3500 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3501 been fixed.
3502
3503 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3504
3505 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3506 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3507 IRIX long double values).
3508
3509 * VAX and "next"
3510
3511 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3512 command. This problem has been fixed.
3513
3514 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3515
3516 * Fix for ``many threads''
3517
3518 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3519 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3520 error message:
3521
3522 ptrace: No such process.
3523 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3524
3525 This problem has been fixed.
3526
3527 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3528
3529 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3530 GDB to dump core).
3531
3532 * New ``start'' command.
3533
3534 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3535
3536 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3537
3538 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3539 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3540 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3541
3542 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3543 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3544 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3545 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3546 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3547 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3548 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3549 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3550 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3551
3552 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3553
3554 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3555 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3556 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3557 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3558 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3559
3560 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3561 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3562 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3563
3564 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3565
3566 * New native configurations
3567
3568 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3569 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3570 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3571 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3572 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3573 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3574 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3575
3576 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3577
3578 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3579 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3580 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3581 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3582 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3583 work, was also included.
3584
3585 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3586 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3587
3588 h8300-*-*
3589 mcore-*-*
3590 mn10300-*-*
3591 ns32k-*-*
3592 sh64-*-*
3593 v850-*-*
3594 xstormy16-*-*
3595
3596 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3597 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3598
3599 * REMOVED configurations and files
3600
3601 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3602 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3603 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3604 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3605 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3606 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3607 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3608 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3609 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3610 sonymips mips-sony-*
3611 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3612
3613 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3614
3615 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3616
3617 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3618 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3619 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3620 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3621 with GDB".
3622
3623 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3624
3625 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3626 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3627 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3628 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3629 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3630 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3631 are created.
3632
3633 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3634
3635 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3636
3637 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3638 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3639 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3640
3641 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3642
3643 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3644 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3645
3646 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3647
3648 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3649 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3650 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3651
3652 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3653
3654 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3655 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3656
3657 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3658
3659 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3660 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3661 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3662
3663 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3664
3665 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3666 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3667 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3668
3669 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3670
3671 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3672
3673 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3674 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3675
3676 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3677
3678 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3679 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3680 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3681 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3682
3683 * Revised SPARC target
3684
3685 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3686 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3687 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3688 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3689 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3690
3691 * New C++ demangler
3692
3693 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3694 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3695 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3696 programs.
3697
3698 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3699
3700 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3701 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3702 encountered these.
3703
3704 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3705
3706 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3707 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3708 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3709 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3710 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3711 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3712 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3713 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3714 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3715
3716 * New native configurations
3717
3718 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3719 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3720 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3721 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3722 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3723
3724 * New debugging protocols
3725
3726 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3727
3728 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3729
3730 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3731 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3732 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3733
3734 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3735
3736 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3737 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3738 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3739 permanently REMOVED.
3740
3741 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3742 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3743 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3744 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3745 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3746 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3747 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3748 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3749 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3750 sonymips mips-sony-*
3751 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3752
3753 * REMOVED configurations and files
3754
3755 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3756 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3757 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3758 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3759 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3760 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3761 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3762 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3763 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3764 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3765 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3766 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3767 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3768 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3769 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3770 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3771 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3772
3773 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3774
3775 * Objective-C
3776
3777 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3778 integrated into GDB.
3779
3780 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3781
3782 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3783 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3784 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3785 backtraces.
3786
3787 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3788 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3789 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3790
3791 * Hosted file I/O.
3792
3793 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3794 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3795 remote protocol documentation for details.
3796
3797 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3798
3799 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3800 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3801 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3802 ppc32 on ppc64).
3803
3804 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3805
3806 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3807 per-thread variables.
3808
3809 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3810
3811 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3812 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3813
3814 * Separate debug info.
3815
3816 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3817 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3818 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3819 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3820 and optional debug files.
3821
3822 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3823
3824 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3825 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3826 debugger.
3827
3828 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3829 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3830
3831 * Java
3832
3833 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3834 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3835 considered "useable".
3836
3837 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3838
3839 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3840 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3841 kernel.
3842
3843 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3844
3845 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3846 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3847
3848 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3849
3850 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3851 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3852 command.
3853
3854 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3855
3856 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3857 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3858
3859 * Profiling support
3860
3861 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3862 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3863 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3864 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3865 data, for more informative profiling results.
3866
3867 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3868
3869 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3870 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3871 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3872
3873 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3874 removed.
3875
3876 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3877 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3878 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3879 in a subsequent -var-update.
3880
3881 * New native configurations.
3882
3883 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3884
3885 * Multi-arched targets.
3886
3887 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3888 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3889
3890 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3891
3892 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3893 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3894 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3895 permanently REMOVED.
3896
3897 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3898 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3899 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3900 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3901 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3902 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3903 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3904 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3905 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3906 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3907 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3908 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3909
3910 * REMOVED configurations and files
3911
3912 V850EA ISA
3913 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3914 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3915 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3916 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3917 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3918 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3919 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3920 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3921 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3922 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3923 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3924 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3925 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3926
3927 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3928
3929 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3930 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3931 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3932 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3933 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3934
3935 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3936
3937 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3938
3939 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3940 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3941 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3942 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3943 shared libs like mad''.
3944
3945 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3946
3947 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3948 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3949 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3950 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3951
3952 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3953
3954 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3955 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3956 they expand.
3957
3958 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3959 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3960
3961 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3962 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3963
3964 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3965 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3966 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3967 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3968
3969 * Multi-arched targets.
3970
3971 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3972 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3973 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3974 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3975 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3976 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3977
3978 * New targets.
3979
3980 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3981
3982
3983 * New native configurations
3984
3985 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3986 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3987 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3988 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3989
3990 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3991
3992 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3993 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3994 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3995 permanently REMOVED.
3996
3997 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3998 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3999 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4000 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4001 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4002 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4003 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4004 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4005 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4006 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4007 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4008 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4009 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4010
4011 * OBSOLETE languages
4012
4013 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4014
4015 * REMOVED configurations and files
4016
4017 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4018 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4019 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4020 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4021 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4022
4023 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4024
4025 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4026
4027 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4028 commands. The default is 1024.
4029
4030 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4031
4032 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4033
4034 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4035
4036 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4037 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4038 from a file into memory (restore).
4039
4040 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4041
4042 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4043 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4044 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4045
4046 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4047
4048 * New targets.
4049
4050 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4051
4052 * Bug fixes
4053
4054 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4055 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4056 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4057
4058 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4059 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4060 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4061
4062 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4063 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4064 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4065
4066 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4067 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4068 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4069
4070 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4071
4072 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4073
4074 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4075 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4076 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4077 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4078 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4079 (notably embedded) targets.
4080
4081 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4082
4083 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4084 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4085 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4086 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4087
4088 * New command line option
4089
4090 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4091
4092 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4093
4094 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4095 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4096 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4097 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4098 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4099 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4100 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4101 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4102 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4103 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4104
4105 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4106
4107 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4108 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4109
4110 * New native configurations
4111
4112 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4113 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4114 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4115 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4116
4117 * New targets
4118
4119 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4120
4121 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4122
4123 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4124 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4125 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4126 permanently REMOVED.
4127
4128 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4129 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4130 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4131 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4132 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4133
4134 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4135
4136 * REMOVED configurations and files
4137
4138 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4139 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4140 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4141 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4142 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4143 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4144 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4145 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4146 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4147 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4148 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4149 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4150 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4151
4152 * Changes to command line processing
4153
4154 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4155 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4156
4157 * Changes to key bindings
4158
4159 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4160
4161 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4162
4163 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4164
4165 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4166 corrupted.
4167
4168 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4169
4170 Numerous documentation fixes.
4171
4172 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4173
4174 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4175
4176 * New native configurations
4177
4178 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4179 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4180 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4181 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4182 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4183 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4184
4185 * New targets
4186
4187 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4188 CRIS cris-axis
4189 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4190
4191 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4192
4193 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4194 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4195 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4196 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4197 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4198 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4199 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4200 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4201 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4202 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4203 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4204 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4205 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4206 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4207
4208 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4209 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4210
4211 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4212 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4213 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4214 permanently REMOVED.
4215
4216 * REMOVED configurations and files
4217
4218 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4219 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4220 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4221 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4222 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4223 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4224
4225 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4226
4227 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4228 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4229 present.
4230
4231 * Other news:
4232
4233 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4234
4235 * The MI enabled by default.
4236
4237 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4238 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4239 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4240 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4241 which is now deprecated.
4242
4243 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4244
4245 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4246 main features are supported:
4247
4248 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4249
4250 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4251 extension;
4252
4253 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4254
4255 - a Pascal expression parser.
4256
4257 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4258
4259 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4260
4261 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4262
4263 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4264 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4265
4266 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4267
4268 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4269
4270 * Changes in completion.
4271
4272 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4273 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4274 users expect at the shell prompt.
4275
4276 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4277 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4278 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4279 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4280 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4281 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4282 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4283
4284 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4285
4286 * New platform-independent commands:
4287
4288 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4289 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4290 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4291
4292 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4293
4294 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4295 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4296 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4297
4298 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4299
4300 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4301 multi-threaded programs though.
4302
4303 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4304
4305 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4306
4307 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4308 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4309 supported.)
4310
4311 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4312
4313 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4314 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4315 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4316 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4317 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4318 registers.
4319
4320 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4321 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4322 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4323
4324 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4325
4326 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4327 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4328
4329 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4330 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4331 IDT.
4332
4333 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4334 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4335 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4336 a given linear address.
4337
4338 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4339 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4340 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4341
4342 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4343
4344 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4345
4346 * Changes in documentation.
4347
4348 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4349 Documentation License.
4350
4351 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4352 manual.
4353
4354 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4355
4356 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4357 manual.
4358
4359 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4360 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4361 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4362
4363 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4364
4365 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4366 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4367 contents of this file.
4368
4369 * gdba.el deleted
4370
4371 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4372
4373 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4374
4375 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4376
4377 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4378 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4379 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4380 greater level of detail.
4381
4382 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4383
4384 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4385 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4386 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4387 written.
4388
4389 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4390
4391 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4392 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4393 machines ``out of the box''.
4394
4395 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4396 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4397 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4398 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4399 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4400
4401 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4402 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4403 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4404 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4405 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4406
4407 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4408 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4409 also works.
4410
4411 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4412 GDB.
4413
4414 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4415 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4416 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4417 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4418
4419 * New native configurations
4420
4421 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4422 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4423
4424 * New targets
4425
4426 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4427 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4428 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4429 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4430
4431 * OBSOLETE configurations
4432
4433 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4434 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4435 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4436 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4437 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4438
4439 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4440 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4441 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4442 be permanently REMOVED.
4443
4444 * Gould support removed
4445
4446 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4447
4448 * New features for SVR4
4449
4450 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4451 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4452 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4453
4454 * Many C++ enhancements
4455
4456 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4457 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4458
4459 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4460
4461 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4462 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4463 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4464 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4465
4466 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4467 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4468
4469 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4470
4471 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4472 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4473 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4474
4475 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4476 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4477
4478 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4479
4480 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4481 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4482 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4483
4484 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4485
4486 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4487 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4488 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4489
4490 * ``apropos'' command added.
4491
4492 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4493 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4494 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4495
4496 * New MI interface
4497
4498 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4499 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4500 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4501 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4502 enabled by configuring with:
4503
4504 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4505
4506 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4507
4508 * New native configurations
4509
4510 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4511 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4512 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4513
4514 * New targets
4515
4516 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4517 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4518 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4519
4520 * OBSOLETE configurations
4521
4522 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4523
4524 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4525 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4526 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4527 be permanently REMOVED.
4528
4529 * ANSI/ISO C
4530
4531 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4532 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4533 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4534 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4535 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4536 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4537 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4538 already.
4539
4540 * Readline 2.2
4541
4542 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4543
4544 * set extension-language
4545
4546 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4547 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4548 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4549 set extension-language .c c++
4550 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4551 and their associated languages.
4552
4553 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4554
4555 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4556 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4557 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4558
4559 set processor NAME
4560
4561 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4562 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4563
4564 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4565 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4566 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4567 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4568 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4569 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4570 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4571 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4572 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4573 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4574 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4575
4576 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4577 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4578 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4579 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4580
4581 * HP-UX support
4582
4583 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4584 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4585 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4586 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4587 for xdb and dbx commands.
4588
4589 * Catchpoints
4590
4591 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4592 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4593 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4594
4595 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4596 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4597 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4598
4599 * Debugging across forks
4600
4601 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4602 in the inferior.
4603
4604 * TUI
4605
4606 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4607 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4608 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4609
4610 * GDB remote protocol additions
4611
4612 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4613 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4614 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4615 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4616
4617 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4618 full 64-bit address. The command
4619
4620 set remoteaddresssize 32
4621
4622 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4623 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4624 will be discarded.
4625
4626 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4627 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4628
4629 maint packet heythere
4630
4631 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4632 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4633 time.
4634
4635 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4636 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4637 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4638
4639 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4640
4641 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4642 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4643 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4644
4645 * mask-address variable for Mips
4646
4647 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4648 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4649 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4650
4651 * Higher serial baud rates
4652
4653 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4654 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4655 to achieve all of these rates.)
4656
4657 * i960 simulator
4658
4659 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4660 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4661
4662
4663 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4664
4665 * New native configurations
4666
4667 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4668 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4669 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4670 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4671 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4672 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4673 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4674
4675 * New targets
4676
4677 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4678 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4679 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4680 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4681 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4682 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4683 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4684 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4685 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4686 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4687 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4688
4689 * New debugging protocols
4690
4691 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4692 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4693 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4694 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4695 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4696 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4697
4698 * DWARF 2
4699
4700 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4701 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4702 information.
4703
4704 * Java frontend
4705
4706 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4707 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4708
4709 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4710
4711 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4712 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4713 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4714
4715 * Live range splitting
4716
4717 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4718 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4719 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4720
4721 * Hurd support
4722
4723 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4724 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4725
4726 * ARM Thumb support
4727
4728 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4729 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4730 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4731 accordingly.
4732
4733 * MIPS16 support
4734
4735 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4736 instruction set.
4737
4738 * Overlay support
4739
4740 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4741 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4742 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4743 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4744 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4745 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4746
4747 * info symbol
4748
4749 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4750 the symbol at the specified address.
4751
4752 * Trace support
4753
4754 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4755 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4756 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4757 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4758 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4759
4760 * MIPS simulator
4761
4762 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4763 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4764 of most MIPS variants.
4765
4766 * Sparc simulator
4767
4768 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4769 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4770 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4771
4772 * set architecture
4773
4774 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4775 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4776 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4777 the possible architectures.
4778
4779 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4780
4781 * New native configurations
4782
4783 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4784 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4785 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4786 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4787 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4788 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4789
4790 * New targets
4791
4792 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4793 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4794 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4795 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4796 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4797 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4798 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4799
4800 * PowerPC simulator
4801
4802 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4803 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4804 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4805 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4806 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4807
4808 * Solaris 2.5
4809
4810 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4811
4812 * Windows 95/NT native
4813
4814 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4815 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4816 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4817 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4818 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4819
4820 * dont-repeat command
4821
4822 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4823 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4824 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4825 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4826
4827 * Send break instead of ^C
4828
4829 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4830 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4831 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4832
4833 * Remote protocol timeout
4834
4835 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4836 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4837 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4838
4839 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4840
4841 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4842 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4843 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4844 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4845 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4846
4847 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4848 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4849 automatically on hpux10.
4850
4851 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4852
4853 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4854
4855 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4856
4857 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4858 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4859 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4860 every character. The default value is 1050.
4861
4862 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4863
4864 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4865 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4866 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4867 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4868 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4869 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4870
4871 * Speedups for remote debugging
4872
4873 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4874 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4875 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4876
4877 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4878
4879 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4880 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4881
4882 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4883
4884 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4885
4886 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4887 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4888
4889 * Remote targets use caching
4890
4891 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4892 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4893 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4894 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4895 off' turns the the data cache off.
4896
4897 * Remote targets may have threads
4898
4899 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4900 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4901 gdb/remote.c for details.
4902
4903 * NetROM support
4904
4905 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4906 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4907 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4908 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4909 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4910 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4911 sequence is something like
4912
4913 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4914 load <prog>
4915 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4916
4917 * Macintosh host
4918
4919 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4920 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4921 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4922 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4923 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4924 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4925 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4926 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4927
4928 * Autoconf
4929
4930 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4931 but does simplify configuration and building.
4932
4933 * hpux10
4934
4935 GDB now supports hpux10.
4936
4937 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4938
4939 * New native configurations
4940
4941 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4942 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4943 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4944 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4945
4946 * New targets
4947
4948 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4949 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4950 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4951 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4952 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4953
4954 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4955
4956 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4957 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4958 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4959 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4960 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4961
4962 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4963
4964 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4965 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4966 trivial example:
4967 define adder
4968 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4969
4970 To execute the command use:
4971 adder 1 2 3
4972
4973 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4974 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4975 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4976
4977 * New `if' and `while' commands
4978
4979 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4980 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4981 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4982 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4983 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4984 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4985 if the expression is zero.
4986
4987 * Fortran source language mode
4988
4989 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
4990 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
4991 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
4992 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
4993 Fortran compilers.
4994
4995 * Better HPUX support
4996
4997 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
4998 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
4999 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5000 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5001 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5002
5003 adb -w a.out
5004 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5005 control-d
5006
5007 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5008 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5009
5010 adb -w a.out
5011 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5012 control-d
5013
5014 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5015 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5016 external linkage.
5017
5018 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5019 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5020
5021 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5022
5023 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5024 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5025 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5026 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5027 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5028 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5029
5030 * New DOS host serial code
5031
5032 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5033 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5034 a PC's serial port.
5035
5036 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5037
5038 * New "complete" command
5039
5040 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5041 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5042
5043 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5044
5045 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5046 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5047
5048 * Breakpoint hit counts
5049
5050 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5051 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5052 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5053 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5054 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5055 that breakpoint.
5056
5057 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5058
5059 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5060 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5061 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5062
5063 * Shared library breakpoints
5064
5065 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5066 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5067
5068 * Hardware watchpoints
5069
5070 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5071 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5072
5073 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5074
5075 * Annotations
5076
5077 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5078 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5079
5080 * Improved Irix 5 support
5081
5082 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5083
5084 * Improved HPPA support
5085
5086 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5087
5088 * New native configurations
5089
5090 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5091 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5092 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5093 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5094
5095 * New targets
5096
5097 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5098 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5099 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5100
5101 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5102
5103 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5104 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5105
5106 * Fixes
5107
5108 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5109 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5110
5111 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5112
5113 * Irix 5 is now supported
5114
5115 * HPPA support
5116
5117 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5118 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5119 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5120 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5121 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5122
5123
5124 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5125
5126 * User visible changes:
5127
5128 * Remote Debugging
5129
5130 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5131 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5132 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5133 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5134 debugging info for the mips target).
5135
5136 * DEC Alpha native support
5137
5138 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5139 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5140 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5141 Alpha-specific notes.
5142
5143 * Preliminary thread implementation
5144
5145 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5146
5147 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5148
5149 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5150 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5151 for details).
5152
5153 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5154
5155 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5156 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5157 call methods, ...etc.
5158
5159 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5160
5161 * User visible changes:
5162
5163 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5164 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5165 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5166 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5167
5168 Filename completion now works.
5169
5170 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5171 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5172 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5173
5174 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5175 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5176 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5177 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5178 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5179
5180 * DEC alpha support
5181
5182 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5183 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5184
5185
5186 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5187
5188 * Testsuite
5189
5190 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5191 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5192 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5193
5194 * C++ demangling
5195
5196 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5197 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5198 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5199 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5200 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5201
5202 * Simulators
5203
5204 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5205 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5206 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5207
5208 * New targets supported
5209
5210 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5211 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5212 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5213 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5214 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5215
5216 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5217 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5218 GO32 memory extender.
5219
5220 * New remote protocols
5221
5222 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5223
5224 * New source languages supported
5225
5226 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5227 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5228 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5229
5230
5231 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5232
5233 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5234
5235 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5236 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5237 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5238 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5239 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5240 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5241
5242 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5243
5244 * Faster and better demangling
5245
5246 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5247 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5248 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5249 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5250 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5251 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5252 symbol lookups.
5253
5254 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5255 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5256 compiler does not actually implement.
5257
5258 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5259
5260 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5261 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5262 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5263 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5264 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5265 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5266 fix.
5267
5268 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5269 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5270
5271 * Improved configure script
5272
5273 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5274 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5275 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5276 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5277
5278 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5279 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5280 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5281 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5282 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5283 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5284
5285 * Documentation improvements
5286
5287 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5288 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5289 before submitting changes.
5290
5291 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5292 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5293 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5294 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5295 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5296
5297 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5298 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5299 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5300 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5301 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5302 around this problem.
5303
5304 * New features
5305
5306 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5307 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5308 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5309 the target program.
5310
5311 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5312 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5313
5314 * New native hosts supported
5315
5316 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5317 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5318
5319 * New targets supported
5320
5321 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5322
5323 * New file formats supported
5324
5325 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5326 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5327
5328 * Major bug fixes
5329
5330 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5331
5332 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5333 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5334
5335 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5336 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5337 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5338
5339 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5340 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5341
5342 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5343 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5344 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5345 libraries.
5346
5347 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5348 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5349 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5350 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5351 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5352
5353 * Internal improvements
5354
5355 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5356 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5357
5358 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5359 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5360 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5361 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5362 shared code that handles any of them.
5363
5364 * New command line options
5365
5366 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5367
5368 * Mmalloc licensing
5369
5370 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5371 General Public License.
5372
5373 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5374
5375 * Host/native/target split
5376
5377 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5378 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5379 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5380 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5381 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5382
5383 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5384 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5385 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5386 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5387 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5388 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5389 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5390
5391 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5392 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5393 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5394
5395 * New hosts supported
5396
5397 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5398 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5399 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5400
5401 * New targets supported
5402
5403 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5404 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5405
5406 * New native hosts supported
5407
5408 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5409 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5410 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5411
5412 * New file formats supported
5413
5414 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5415 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5416 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5417
5418 * New commands
5419
5420 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5421 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5422 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5423
5424 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5425
5426 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5427 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5428 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5429 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5430
5431 * C++ improvements
5432
5433 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5434 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5435 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5436
5437 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5438
5439 * Major bug fixes
5440
5441 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5442 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5443 by the compiler.
5444
5445 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5446 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5447
5448 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5449 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5450 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5451 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5452 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5453 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5454
5455 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5456 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5457 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5458 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5459
5460 * AMD 29k support
5461
5462 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5463 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5464 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5465 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5466 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5467
5468 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5469 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5470 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5471 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5472
5473 * Remote interfaces
5474
5475 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5476 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5477 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5478 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5479 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5480 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5481 each instruction being stepped through.
5482
5483 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5484 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5485
5486 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5487 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5488 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5489 processor with a serial port.
5490
5491 * Configuration
5492
5493 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5494 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5495 supported, and what files each one uses.
5496
5497 * Library changes
5498
5499 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5500 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5501 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5502 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5503
5504 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5505 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5506 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5507 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5508
5509 * Documentation
5510
5511 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5512 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5513 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5514 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5515 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5516 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5517
5518 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5519
5520
5521 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5522
5523 * Better support for C++ function names
5524
5525 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5526 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5527 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5528 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5529 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5530
5531 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5532 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5533 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5534 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5535 for the list of formats.
5536
5537 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5538
5539 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5540 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5541 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5542 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5543 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5544 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5545 this problem.)
5546
5547 * New 'maintenance' command
5548
5549 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5550 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5551 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5552
5553 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5554 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5555 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5556 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5557 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5558 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5559
5560 The following commands are new:
5561
5562 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5563 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5564 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5565
5566 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5567
5568 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5569 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5570 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5571 read after argv processing.
5572
5573 * New hosts supported
5574
5575 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5576
5577 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5578
5579 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5580 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5581 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5582 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5583 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5584 It costs extra.
5585
5586 * New targets supported
5587
5588 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5589
5590 * More smarts about finding #include files
5591
5592 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5593 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5594 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5595 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5596 the one that contains your sources.
5597
5598 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5599 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5600 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5601
5602 * Interesting infernals change
5603
5604 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5605 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5606 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5607 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5608
5609 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5610
5611 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5612 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5613 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5614
5615 See the ChangeLog for details.
5616
5617 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5618
5619 * New machines supported (host and target)
5620
5621 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5622
5623 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5624
5625 * New malloc package
5626
5627 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5628 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5629 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5630 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5631 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5632 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5633
5634 * info proc
5635
5636 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5637 'help info proc' for details.
5638
5639 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5640
5641 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5642 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5643 possible.
5644
5645 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5646
5647 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5648 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5649 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5650 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5651 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5652 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5653
5654 * Cross byte order fixes
5655
5656 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5657 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5658
5659 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5660
5661 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5662 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5663 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5664 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5665 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5666 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5667 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5668 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5669 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5670 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5671
5672 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5673 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5674 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5675 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5676
5677 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5678 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5679 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5680 use is:
5681
5682 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5683
5684 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5685 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5686 shared across multiple host platforms.
5687
5688 * longjmp() handling
5689
5690 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5691 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5692 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5693 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5694
5695 * Solaris 2.0
5696
5697 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5698 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5699 reading symbols.
5700
5701 * Bug fixes
5702
5703 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5704 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5705 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5706
5707 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5708
5709 * New machines supported (host and target)
5710
5711 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5712 (except core files)
5713 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5714 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5715
5716 * New machines supported (target)
5717
5718 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5719
5720 * C++ support
5721
5722 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5723 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5724 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5725
5726 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5727 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5728 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5729 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5730 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5731 released.
5732
5733 * New features for SVR4
5734
5735 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5736 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5737 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5738
5739 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5740 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5741 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5742
5743 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5744 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5745
5746 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5747
5748 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5749 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5750 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5751 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5752 same code linked statically.
5753
5754 * New Getopt
5755
5756 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5757 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5758 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5759 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5760 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5761 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5762
5763 * Bugs fixed
5764
5765 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5766 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5767 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5768
5769
5770 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5771
5772 * New machines supported (host and target)
5773
5774 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5775 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5776 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5777
5778 * Almost SCO Unix support
5779
5780 We had hoped to support:
5781 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5782 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5783 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5784 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5785
5786 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5787
5788 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5789 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5790 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5791 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5792 reqired (if any).
5793
5794 * New Readline
5795
5796 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5797 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5798 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5799
5800 * Bugs fixed
5801
5802 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5803 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5804 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5805
5806 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5807
5808 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5809 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5810 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5811
5812 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5813 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5814 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5815 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5816 version 2.
5817
5818 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5819 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5820 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5821 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5822 situation somewhat.
5823
5824 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5825 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5826 methods.
5827
5828 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5829 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5830 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5831
5832
5833 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5834
5835 * Improved configuration
5836
5837 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5838 Porting BFD is simpler.
5839
5840 * Stepping improved
5841
5842 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5843 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5844 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5845 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5846
5847 * Bug fixing
5848
5849 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5850
5851 * New host supported (not target)
5852
5853 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5854
5855
5856 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5857
5858 * Multiple source language support
5859
5860 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5861 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5862 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5863 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5864 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5865 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5866
5867 * GDB and Modula-2
5868
5869 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5870 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5871 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5872 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5873
5874 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5875 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5876 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5877
5878 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5879 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5880
5881 * set write on/off
5882
5883 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5884 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5885 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5886 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5887 effect immediately.
5888
5889 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5890
5891 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5892 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5893 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5894 examining core files.
5895
5896 * set listsize
5897
5898 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5899 The default is 10.
5900
5901 * New machines supported (host and target)
5902
5903 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5904 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5905 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5906
5907 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5908
5909 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5910
5911 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5912
5913 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5914 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5915 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5916
5917 * New remote interfaces
5918
5919 AMD 29000 Adapt
5920 AMD 29000 Minimon
5921
5922
5923 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5924
5925 * New Facilities
5926
5927 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5928
5929 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5930 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5931 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5932 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5933 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5934 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5935 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5936 stub on the target system.
5937
5938 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5939
5940 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5941 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5942 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5943
5944 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5945 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5946
5947
5948 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5949
5950 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5951 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5952
5953 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5954 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5955 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5956
5957 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5958 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5959 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5960 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5961
5962 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5963 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5964 it is already running. Default is ON.
5965
5966 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5967 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5968 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5969 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5970 Default is ON.
5971
5972 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5973 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5974 or the value of the environment variable
5975 GDBHISTFILE.
5976
5977 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5978 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5979 HISTSIZE.
5980
5981 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5982 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5983 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5984
5985 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5986 history expansion will be performed on
5987 command line input. The default is OFF.
5988
5989 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
5990 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
5991 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
5992
5993 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
5994 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
5995 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
5996 variable TERM.
5997
5998 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
5999 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6000 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6001 variable TERM.
6002
6003 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6004 ``set width'' instead.
6005
6006 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6007 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6008 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6009 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6010
6011 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6012 is OFF.
6013
6014 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6015 "raw" form if off.
6016
6017 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6018 like instructions.
6019
6020 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6021
6022
6023 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6024
6025 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6026 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6027 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6028 window.
6029
6030
6031 * Support for Shared Libraries
6032
6033 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6034 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6035 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6036 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6037 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6038 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6039 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6040 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6041
6042 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6043 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6044 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6045
6046 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6047
6048
6049 * Watchpoints
6050
6051 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6052 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6053 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6054 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6055 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6056 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6057
6058 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6059
6060 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6061
6062 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6063 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6064 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6065
6066
6067 * C++ multiple inheritance
6068
6069 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6070 for C++ programs.
6071
6072 * C++ exception handling
6073
6074 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6075 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6076 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6077 handler's context).
6078
6079 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6080 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6081 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6082
6083 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6084 current stack frame.
6085
6086
6087 * Minor command changes
6088
6089 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6090 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6091 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6092
6093 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6094 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6095 frames without printing.
6096
6097 * New directory command
6098
6099 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6100 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6101 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6102 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6103 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6104
6105 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6106
6107 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6108 for more details.
6109
6110 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6111 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6112 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6113 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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