174924f119d6ab229f56ede517b57f549f29c44f
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.10
5
6 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
7
8 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
9 when using the Intel(R) Processor Trace recording format.
10
11 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
12 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
13 clients.
14
15 * New commands
16
17 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
18 maint show target-non-stop
19 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
20 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
21 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
22
23 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
24 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
25 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
26 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
27 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
28 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
29
30 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
31
32 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
33 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
34 including advance SIMD instructions.
35
36 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
37
38 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
39 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
40 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
41 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
42 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
43 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
44 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
45
46 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
47 cpu information :
48 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
49
50 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
51 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
52 remote serial I/O.
53
54 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
55 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
56 and may include things like its command line arguments.
57
58 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
59 is now available on all platforms.
60
61 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
62 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
63 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
64 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
65 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
66 backward compatibility.
67
68 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
69 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
70 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
71 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
72
73 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
74 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
75 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
76 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
77 packets" below.
78
79 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
80
81 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
82
83 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
84 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
85 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
86 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
87 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
88 See "New remote packets" below.
89
90 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
91 available register groups, including target specific groups.
92
93 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
94 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
95 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
96 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
97 are ignored.
98
99 * Guile Scripting
100
101 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
102
103 * Python Scripting
104
105 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
106 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
107 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
108 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
109 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
110 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
111 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
112 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
113 "const" version of the value respectively.
114
115 * New commands
116
117 maint print symbol-cache
118 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
119
120 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
121 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
122
123 maint flush-symbol-cache
124 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
125
126 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
127 maint show target-non-stop
128 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
129 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
130 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
131
132 record btrace bts
133 record bts
134 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
135
136 compile print
137 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
138
139 tui enable
140 tui disable
141 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
142
143 show mpx bound
144 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
145 Support for bound table investigation on Intel(R) MPX enabled applications.
146
147 record btrace pt
148 record pt
149 Start branch trace recording using Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
150
151 maint info btrace
152 Print information about branch tracing internals.
153
154 maint btrace packet-history
155 Print the raw branch tracing data.
156
157 maint btrace clear-packet-history
158 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
159
160 maint btrace clear
161 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
162 anew by the next "record" command.
163
164 * New options
165
166 set debug dwarf-die
167 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
168 show debug dwarf-die
169 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
170
171 set debug dwarf-read
172 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
173 show debug dwarf-read
174 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
175
176 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
177 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
178 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
179 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
180
181 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
182 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
183 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
184 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
185
186 set debug dwarf-line
187 show debug dwarf-line
188 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
189
190 set max-completions
191 show max-completions
192 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
193 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
194 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
195 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
196
197 set history remove-duplicates
198 show history remove-duplicates
199 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
200
201 maint set symbol-cache-size
202 maint show symbol-cache-size
203 Control the size of the symbol cache.
204
205 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
206 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
207 BTS format.
208 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
209 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
210
211 set debug linux-namespaces
212 show debug linux-namespaces
213 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
214
215 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
216 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
217 Intel(R) Processor Trace format.
218 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
219 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
220
221 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
222 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
223 packet history.
224
225 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
226 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
227
228 * Python/Guile scripting
229
230 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
231 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
232
233 * New remote packets
234
235 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
236 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
237
238 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
239 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
240
241 Qbtrace:pt
242 Enable Intel(R) Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
243 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
244 qSupported query.
245
246 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
247 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel(R) Processor
248 Trace format.
249
250 swbreak stop reason
251 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
252 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
253 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
254 mode operation.
255
256 hwbreak stop reason
257 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
258 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
259
260 vFile:fstat:
261 Return information about files on the remote system.
262
263 qXfer:exec-file:read
264 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
265 create a process running on the remote system.
266
267 vFile:setfs:
268 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
269 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
270 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
271 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
272
273 fork stop reason
274 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
275
276 vfork stop reason
277 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
278
279 vforkdone stop reason
280 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
281 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
282
283 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
284 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
285 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
286 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
287 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
288 whether these features are enabled.
289
290 * Extended-remote fork events
291
292 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
293 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
294 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
295 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
296
297 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
298 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
299 the btrace record target.
300 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
301
302 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
303 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
304
305 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
306 targets.
307
308 * Removed command line options
309
310 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
311
312 * Removed targets and native configurations
313
314 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
315 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
316
317 * New configure options
318
319 --with-intel-pt
320 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
321 Intel(R) Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
322
323 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
324 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
325 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
326 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
327
328 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
329
330 * Python Scripting
331
332 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
333
334 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
335
336 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
337
338 * Python Scripting
339
340 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
341 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
342 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
343 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
344 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
345 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
346 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
347 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
348 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
349 selecting a new file to debug.
350 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
351 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
352
353 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
354 inferior.
355
356 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
357 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
358 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
359 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
360
361 * New Python-based convenience functions:
362
363 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
364 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
365 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
366 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
367
368 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
369 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
370 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
371 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
372 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
373 interface with this new feature are:
374
375 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
376 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
377
378 * New commands
379
380 demangle [-l language] [--] name
381 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
382 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
383 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
384 as "maint demangler-warning".
385
386 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
387 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
388
389 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
390 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
391 scripts.
392
393 maint print user-registers
394 List all currently available "user" registers.
395
396 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
397 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
398 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
399
400 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
401 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
402 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
403 provided.
404
405 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
406 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
407 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
408 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
409 at resume time.
410
411 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
412 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
413 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
414 switched threads meanwhile.
415
416 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
417
418 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
419 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
420 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
421 is now the default mode.
422
423 * New options
424
425 set debug symbol-lookup
426 show debug symbol-lookup
427 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
428
429 * MI changes
430
431 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
432 inferiors that have exited.
433
434 * New targets
435
436 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
437
438 * Removed targets
439
440 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
441
442 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
443 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
444 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
445 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
446 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
447
448 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
449 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
450 its alias "share", instead.
451
452 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
453
454 * New command line options
455
456 -D data-directory
457 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
458
459 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
460 as specified in ISO C99.
461
462 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
463 with or without disassembly.
464
465 * Guile scripting
466
467 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
468 available is determined at configure time.
469 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
470 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
471
472 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
473
474 guile [code]
475 gu [code]
476 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
477
478 guile-repl
479 gr
480 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
481
482 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
483 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
484
485 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
486 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
487
488 * New options
489
490 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
491 show print symbol-loading
492 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
493 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
494 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
495 becomes less useful.
496
497 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
498 show guile print-stack
499 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
500
501 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
502 show auto-load guile-scripts
503 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
504
505 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
506 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
507 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
508 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
509 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
510 usage of this option.
511
512 set auto-connect-native-target
513
514 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
515 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
516 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
517
518 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
519 show record btrace replay-memory-access
520 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
521
522 maint set target-async (on|off)
523 maint show target-async
524 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
525 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
526 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
527 occurring only in synchronous mode.
528
529 set mi-async (on|off)
530 show mi-async
531 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
532 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
533
534 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
535 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
536
537 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
538 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
539 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
540 "set target-async on" command.
541
542 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
543
544 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
545 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
546 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
547 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
548 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
549
550 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
551 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
552 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
553
554 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
555 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
556 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
557 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
558 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
559 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
560 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
561
562 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
563 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
564
565 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
566 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
567 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
568
569 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
570 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
571 memory or registers.
572
573 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
574
575 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
576 remote. It now works with all targets.
577
578 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
579 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
580 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
581 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
582 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
583 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
584 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
585 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
586 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
587 target-stack".
588
589 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
590 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
591 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
592
593 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
594
595 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
596 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
597 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
598
599 * New remote packets
600
601 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
602 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
603 branch trace incrementally.
604
605 * Python Scripting
606
607 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
608 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
609 available.
610 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
611 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
612 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
613 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
614 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
615
616 * New targets
617 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
618
619 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
620 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
621 its alias "share", instead.
622
623 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
624 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
625 instead.
626
627 * MI changes
628
629 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
630 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
631 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
632 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
633 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
634 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
635 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
636 commands and CLI execution commands.
637
638 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
639
640 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
641 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
642 recording has been added.
643
644 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
645
646 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
647 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
648
649 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
650 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
651 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
652 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
653 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
654 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
655 "void".
656
657 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
658
659 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
660
661 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
662 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
663 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
664 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
665
666 (gdb) p $rax
667 $1 = <not saved>
668
669 (gdb) info registers rax
670 rax <not saved>
671
672 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
673 "*value not available*".
674
675 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
676 to binaries.
677
678 * Python scripting
679
680 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
681 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
682 ** Line tables representation has been added.
683 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
684 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
685 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
686
687 * New targets
688
689 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
690 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
691 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
692
693 * Removed native configurations
694
695 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
696 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
697
698 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
699 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
700 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
701 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
702 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
703 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
704 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
705
706 * New commands:
707 catch rethrow
708 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
709 maint check-psymtabs
710 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
711 maint check-symtabs
712 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
713 maint expand-symtabs
714 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
715
716 show configuration
717 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
718
719 maint set|show per-command
720 maint set|show per-command space
721 maint set|show per-command time
722 maint set|show per-command symtab
723 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
724
725 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
726 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
727 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
728 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
729 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
730
731 info exceptions
732 info exceptions REGEXP
733 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
734 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
735 are listed.
736
737 * New options
738
739 set debug symfile off|on
740 show debug symfile
741 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
742 symbol tables within those files
743
744 set print raw frame-arguments
745 show print raw frame-arguments
746 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
747 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
748
749 set remote trace-status-packet
750 show remote trace-status-packet
751 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
752
753 set debug nios2
754 show debug nios2
755 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
756
757 set range-stepping
758 show range-stepping
759 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
760
761 set startup-with-shell
762 show startup-with-shell
763 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
764 directly.
765
766 set code-cache
767 show code-cache
768 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
769 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
770
771 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
772 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
773 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
774 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
775 "set height 0".
776
777 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
778 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
779 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
780
781 * New command-line options
782 --configuration
783 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
784
785 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
786 buffer in Common Trace Format.
787
788 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
789 GDB command gcore.
790
791 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
792
793 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
794 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
795
796 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
797 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
798
799 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
800 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
801 due to an uncaught signal.
802
803 * MI changes
804
805 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
806 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
807 command, which should contain "language-option".
808
809 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
810 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
811
812 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
813 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
814 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
815 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
816 "undefined-command-error-code".
817
818 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
819 Trace Format now.
820
821 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
822
823 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
824 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
825 are displayed.
826
827 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
828 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
829
830 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
831 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
832 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
833
834 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
835 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
836 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
837 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
838 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
839 "exec-run-start-option".
840
841 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
842 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
843
844 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
845 the new "info exceptions" command.
846
847 * New system-wide configuration scripts
848 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
849 configuration scripts for the following systems:
850 ** ElinOS
851 ** Wind River Linux
852
853 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
854 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
855 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
856 below.
857
858 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
859 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
860
861 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
862 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
863 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
864
865 * New remote packets
866
867 vCont;r
868
869 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
870 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
871 involvemement at each single-step.
872
873 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
874 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
875 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
876 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
877 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
878 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
879 speedup.
880
881 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
882
883 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
884 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
885
886 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
887 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
888 trace state variables.
889
890 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
891 target.
892
893 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
894 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
895
896 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
897
898 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
899 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
900 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
901 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
902
903 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
904
905 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
906 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
907 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
908 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
909
910 set|show record full insn-number-max
911 set|show record full stop-at-limit
912 set|show record full memory-query
913
914 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
915 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
916 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
917 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
918 This new recording method can be enabled using:
919
920 record btrace
921
922 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
923 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
924
925 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
926 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
927 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
928
929 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
930 instruction granularity
931
932 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
933 function granularity
934
935 * New native configurations
936
937 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
938 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
939 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
940 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
941
942 * New targets
943
944 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
945 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
946 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
947 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
948 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
949
950 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
951 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
952 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
953 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
954 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
955 --data-directory command-line option.
956
957 * New command line options:
958
959 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
960 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
961
962 * Removed command line options
963
964 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
965 Emacs.
966
967 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
968 type formatting.
969
970 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
971
972 * Python scripting
973
974 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
975
976 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
977
978 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
979
980 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
981
982 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
983 of architecture in the Python API.
984
985 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
986 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
987
988 * New Python-based convenience functions:
989
990 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
991 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
992 ** $_strlen(str)
993 ** $_regex(str, regex)
994
995 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
996 given an argument.
997
998 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
999 default for GCC since November 2000.
1000
1001 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1002
1003 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1004 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1005
1006 * New configure options
1007
1008 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1009 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1010 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1011 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1012 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1013 options allow the user to override that default.
1014 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1015 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1016 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1017
1018 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1019
1020 catch signal
1021 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1022 conditions to be attached.
1023
1024 maint info bfds
1025 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1026
1027 python-interactive [command]
1028 pi [command]
1029 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1030 and print the result of expressions.
1031
1032 py [command]
1033 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1034
1035 enable type-printer [name]...
1036 disable type-printer [name]...
1037 Enable or disable type printers.
1038
1039 * Removed commands
1040
1041 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1042 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1043 instead.
1044
1045 * New options
1046
1047 set print type methods (on|off)
1048 show print type methods
1049 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1050 The default is to show them.
1051
1052 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1053 show print type typedefs
1054 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1055 The default is to show them.
1056
1057 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1058 show filename-display
1059 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1060 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1061
1062 set trace-buffer-size
1063 show trace-buffer-size
1064 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1065
1066 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1067 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1068 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1069
1070 set debug aarch64
1071 show debug aarch64
1072 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1073 The default is off.
1074
1075 set debug coff-pe-read
1076 show debug coff-pe-read
1077 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1078 exported symbols.
1079
1080 set debug mach-o
1081 show debug mach-o
1082 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1083 processing.
1084
1085 set debug notification
1086 show debug notification
1087 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1088
1089 * MI changes
1090
1091 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1092 "=cmd-param-changed".
1093 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1094 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1095 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1096 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1097 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1098 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1099 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1100 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1101 "=memory-changed".
1102 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1103 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1104 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1105 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1106 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1107 library load/unload events.
1108 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1109 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1110 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1111 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1112 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1113 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1114 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1115 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1116
1117 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1118 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1119 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1120 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1121
1122 * New remote packets
1123
1124 QTBuffer:size
1125 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1126 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1127
1128 Qbtrace:bts
1129 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1130 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1131 qSupported query.
1132
1133 Qbtrace:off
1134 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1135 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1136
1137 qXfer:btrace:read
1138 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1139 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1140
1141 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1142
1143 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1144 for more x32 ABI info.
1145
1146 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1147
1148 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1149
1150 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1151 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1152 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1153 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1154 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1155 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1156 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1157 "info os msg" lists message queues
1158 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1159
1160 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1161 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1162 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1163 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1164 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1165 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1166
1167 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1168 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1169 record/replay support.
1170
1171 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1172
1173 * Python scripting
1174
1175 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1176 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1177
1178 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1179
1180 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1181 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1182
1183 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1184
1185 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1186 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1187
1188 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1189 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1190 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1191 symbol's value.
1192
1193 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1194 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1195
1196 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1197 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1198 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1199
1200 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1201 object associated with a PC value.
1202
1203 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1204 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1205
1206 * Go language support.
1207 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1208 language.
1209
1210 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1211 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1212
1213 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1214 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1215
1216 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1217 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1218 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1219 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1220 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1221 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1222
1223 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1224 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1225 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1226 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1227
1228 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1229 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1230
1231 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1232 since December 2007.
1233
1234 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1235 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1236 command does. For instance:
1237
1238 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1239
1240 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1241 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1242 created, using the "condition" command.
1243
1244 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1245 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1246
1247 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1248
1249 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1250 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1251 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1252 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1253 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1254 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1255 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1256 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1257
1258 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1259 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1260 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1261 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1262 the .gdb_index section.
1263
1264 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1265
1266 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1267 target.
1268
1269 * MI changes
1270
1271 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1272
1273 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1274
1275 * New commands
1276
1277 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1278 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1279 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1280
1281 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1282 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1283
1284 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1285 several hits.
1286
1287 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1288 C++ and Java objects.
1289
1290 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1291 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1292 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1293 configured with '--with-python'.
1294
1295 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1296 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1297 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1298 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1299 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1300 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1301 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1302
1303 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1304 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1305 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1306 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1307
1308 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1309 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1310 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1311 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1312
1313 ** "set print symbol"
1314 "show print symbol"
1315 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1316 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1317 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1318
1319 * Deprecated commands
1320
1321 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1322 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1323
1324 * New targets
1325
1326 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1327 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1328
1329 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1330 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1331 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1332 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1333 evaluates to true.
1334
1335 * New options
1336
1337 set mips compression
1338 show mips compression
1339 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1340 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1341 mips16
1342 micromips
1343 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1344
1345 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1346 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1347 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1348 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1349 available mode.
1350 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1351 target.
1352
1353 set auto-load off
1354 Disable auto-loading globally.
1355
1356 show auto-load
1357 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1358
1359 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1360 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1361 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1362
1363 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1364 show auto-load python-scripts
1365 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1366
1367 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1368 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1369 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1370
1371 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1372 show auto-load libthread-db
1373 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1374
1375 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1376 show auto-load scripts-directory
1377 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1378 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1379 of the directories listed by this option.
1380 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1381
1382 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1383 show auto-load safe-path
1384 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1385 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1386
1387 set debug auto-load on|off
1388 show debug auto-load
1389 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1390
1391 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1392 show dprintf-style
1393 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1394 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1395 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1396 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1397
1398 set dprintf-function <expr>
1399 show dprintf-function
1400 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1401 show dprintf-channel
1402 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1403 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1404
1405 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1406 show disconnected-dprintf
1407 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1408 after GDB disconnects.
1409
1410 * New configure options
1411
1412 --with-auto-load-dir
1413 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1414 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1415 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1416 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1417 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1418
1419 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1420 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1421 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1422
1423 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1424 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1425 security feature.
1426
1427 * New remote packets
1428
1429 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1430
1431 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1432 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1433 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1434 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1435
1436 QProgramSignals:
1437
1438 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1439 program without GDB involvement.
1440
1441 * New command line options
1442
1443 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1444 before loading inferior.
1445 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1446 execute it before loading inferior.
1447
1448 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1449
1450 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1451 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1452 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1453 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1454 inferior changes.
1455
1456 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1457 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1458
1459 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1460 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1461 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1462 target hardware watchpoint.
1463
1464 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1465 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1466 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1467 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1468
1469 * Python scripting
1470
1471 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1472 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1473 existing one.
1474
1475 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1476 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1477 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1478 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1479 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1480 the stack trace.
1481
1482 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1483 Python API.
1484
1485 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1486 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1487 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1488 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1489 corresponding value.
1490
1491 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1492 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1493 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1494 on GDB start-up.
1495
1496 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1497 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1498 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1499 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1500
1501 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1502
1503 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1504 "gdb.breakpoints".
1505
1506 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1507 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1508 available in the CLI.
1509
1510 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1511 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1512 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1513 "some_type.items()".
1514
1515 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1516 new object file.
1517
1518 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1519 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1520 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1521 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1522 any anonymous fields.
1523
1524 * MI changes
1525
1526 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1527 "solib-event".
1528
1529 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1530 "=breakpoint-modified".
1531
1532 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1533
1534 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1535 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1536 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1537 lives.
1538
1539 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1540 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1541 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1542 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1543 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1544
1545 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1546 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1547
1548 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1549 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1550 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1551 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1552 use this option to specify where to find it.
1553
1554 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1555 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1556 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1557 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1558 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1559 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1560 section in the user manual for more details.
1561
1562 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1563 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1564 become available after that.
1565
1566 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1567
1568 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1569 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1570 gcc version 4.7.
1571
1572 * New commands
1573
1574 !SHELL COMMAND
1575 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1576 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1577
1578 * Changed commands
1579
1580 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1581 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1582 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1583
1584 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1585 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1586 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1587
1588 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1589 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1590 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1591 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1592 name starts with a hyphen.
1593
1594 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1595 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1596 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1597 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1598 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1599 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1600 number of bytes that will be collected.
1601
1602 tstart [NOTES]
1603 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1604 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1605 setting the variable trace-notes.
1606
1607 tstop [NOTES]
1608 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1609 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1610 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1611 trace-stop-notes.
1612
1613 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1614 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1615 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1616 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1617 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1618 is running.
1619
1620 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1621 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1622 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1623
1624 * New options
1625
1626 set debug dwarf2-read
1627 show debug dwarf2-read
1628 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1629 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1630
1631 set debug symtab-create
1632 show debug symtab-create
1633 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1634 creation. The default is off.
1635
1636 set extended-prompt
1637 show extended-prompt
1638 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1639 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1640 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1641 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1642 prompt is displayed.
1643
1644 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1645 show print entry-values
1646 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1647 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1648 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1649
1650 set debug entry-values
1651 show debug entry-values
1652 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1653 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1654
1655 set basenames-may-differ
1656 show basenames-may-differ
1657 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1658 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1659 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1660 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1661 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1662 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1663 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1664 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1665
1666 set trace-user
1667 show trace-user
1668 set trace-notes
1669 show trace-notes
1670 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1671 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1672 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1673 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1674
1675 set trace-stop-notes
1676 show trace-stop-notes
1677 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1678 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1679 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1680 started by someone else.
1681
1682 * New remote packets
1683
1684 QTEnable
1685
1686 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1687
1688 QTDisable
1689
1690 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1691
1692 QTNotes
1693
1694 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1695
1696 qTP
1697
1698 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1699
1700 qTMinFTPILen
1701
1702 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1703 be placed.
1704
1705 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1706 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1707
1708 * New targets
1709
1710 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1711
1712 * New Simulators
1713
1714 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1715
1716 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1717
1718 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1719
1720 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1721
1722 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1723 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1724 matches the given regular expression.
1725
1726 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1727
1728 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1729 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1730
1731 * New command line options
1732
1733 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1734 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1735
1736 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1737 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1738
1739 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1740 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1741 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1742
1743 * GDB now understands thread names.
1744
1745 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1746 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1747
1748 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1749 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1750
1751 * OpenCL C
1752 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1753 has been integrated into GDB.
1754
1755 * Python scripting
1756
1757 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1758 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1759 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1760
1761 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1762 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1763 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1764 and allows for more dynamic content.
1765
1766 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1767 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1768 have an is_valid method.
1769
1770 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1771 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1772 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1773
1774 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1775
1776 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1777 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1778 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1779 that function like so:
1780
1781 result = some_value (10,20)
1782
1783 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1784 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1785 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1786
1787 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1788 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1789 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1790 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1791 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1792
1793 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1794 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1795
1796 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1797
1798 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1799 selected thread.
1800
1801 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1802 holds the thread's name.
1803
1804 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1805 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1806 occurring in the process being debugged.
1807 The following events are currently supported:
1808 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1809 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1810 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1811
1812 * C++ Improvements:
1813
1814 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1815 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1816
1817 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1818
1819 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1820 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1821 was added to GCC 4.5.
1822
1823 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1824 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1825 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1826 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1827 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1828 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1829
1830 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1831 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1832 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1833 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1834 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1835
1836 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1837 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1838 execution to a label.
1839
1840 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1841 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1842 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1843 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1844
1845 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1846 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1847 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1848 of scope.
1849
1850 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1851
1852 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1853 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1854 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1855 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1856 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1857 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1858
1859 (gdb) info threads
1860 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1861
1862 While now you see this:
1863
1864 (gdb) info threads
1865 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1866
1867 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1868 dumps.
1869
1870 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1871 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1872 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1873 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1874
1875 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1876 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1877 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1878 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1879 section in the user manual for more details.
1880
1881 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1882
1883 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1884 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1885
1886 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1887
1888 * New native configurations
1889
1890 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1891
1892 * New targets:
1893
1894 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1895
1896 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1897 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1898 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1899 in the GDB user manual.
1900
1901 * Guile support was removed.
1902
1903 * New features in the GNU simulator
1904
1905 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1906
1907 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1908
1909 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1910
1911 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1912
1913 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1914 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1915 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1916 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1917 was always disabled for such configurations.
1918
1919 * C++ Improvements:
1920
1921 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1922
1923 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1924 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1925 For example:
1926 namespace A
1927 {
1928 class B { };
1929 void foo (B) { }
1930 }
1931 ...
1932 A::B b
1933 foo(b)
1934 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1935 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1936 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1937
1938 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1939
1940 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1941 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1942 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1943 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1944 entry.
1945 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1946 mentioned flavors of operators.
1947
1948 ** static const class members
1949
1950 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1951 class definition has been fixed.
1952
1953 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1954
1955 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1956 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1957 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1958 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1959 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1960 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1961
1962 * Static tracepoints
1963
1964 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1965 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1966 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1967 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1968 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1969 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1970 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1971 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1972 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1973 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1974 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1975 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1976 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1977 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1978 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1979 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1980 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1981 the "New remote packets" section below.
1982
1983 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1984
1985 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1986 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1987 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1988 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1989
1990 * Observer mode
1991
1992 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1993 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1994 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1995 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1996 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1997 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1998 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1999
2000 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2001 current thread.
2002
2003 * New remote packets
2004
2005 qGetTIBAddr
2006
2007 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2008
2009 qRelocInsn
2010
2011 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2012 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2013 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2014 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2015 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2016 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2017
2018 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2019
2020 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2021
2022 qTSTMat
2023
2024 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2025 program.
2026
2027 qXfer:statictrace:read
2028
2029 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2030 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2031 to gdb's qSupported query.
2032
2033 QAllow
2034
2035 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2036
2037 QTDPsrc
2038
2039 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2040 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2041
2042 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2043 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2044 a directory.
2045
2046 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2047
2048 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2049 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2050 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2051 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2052
2053 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2054 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2055 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2056 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2057 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2058 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2059 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2060
2061 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2062 for static tracepoints support.
2063
2064 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2065
2066 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2067 it understands register description.
2068
2069 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2070
2071 * X86 general purpose registers
2072
2073 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2074 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2075 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2076 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2077 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2078
2079 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2080 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2081 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2082 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2083 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2084 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2085
2086 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2087 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2088 in the specified file.
2089
2090 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2091 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2092 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2093 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2094 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2095 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2096 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2097 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2098 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2099 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2100
2101 * New commands
2102
2103 eval template, expressions...
2104 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2105 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2106
2107 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2108 show target-file-system-kind
2109 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2110 names.
2111
2112 save breakpoints <filename>
2113 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2114 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2115 definitions, use the `source' command.
2116
2117 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2118 is now deprecated.
2119
2120 info static-tracepoint-markers
2121 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2122
2123 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2124 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2125 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2126
2127 set observer on|off
2128 show observer
2129 Enable and disable observer mode.
2130
2131 set may-write-registers on|off
2132 set may-write-memory on|off
2133 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2134 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2135 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2136 set may-interrupt on|off
2137 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2138 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2139 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2140 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2141 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2142 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2143 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2144
2145 set record memory-query on|off
2146 show record memory-query
2147 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2148 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2149
2150 * Changed commands
2151
2152 disassemble
2153 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2154
2155 * Python scripting
2156
2157 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2158 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2159 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2160 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2161 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2162
2163 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2164 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2165 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2166 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2167
2168 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2169 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2170
2171 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2172
2173 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2174
2175 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2176
2177 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2178 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2179 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2180
2181 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2182 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2183 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2184 regular breakpoints.
2185
2186 * New targets
2187
2188 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2189
2190 * D language support.
2191 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2192 language.
2193
2194 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2195 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2196 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2197 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2198 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2199
2200 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2201 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2202 conditions of the form:
2203
2204 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2205
2206 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2207 interface mentioned above.
2208
2209 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2210
2211 * C++ Improvements
2212
2213 ** Namespace Support
2214
2215 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2216 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2217 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2218 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2219 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2220
2221 ** Bug Fixes
2222
2223 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2224 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2225 qualified name.
2226
2227 ** Cast Operators
2228
2229 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2230 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2231
2232 * New targets
2233
2234 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2235 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2236
2237 * New Simulators
2238
2239 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2240 Renesas RX rx
2241
2242 * Multi-program debugging.
2243
2244 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2245 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2246 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2247 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2248 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2249 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2250 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2251 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2252
2253 * New tracing features
2254
2255 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2256
2257 ** Trace state variables
2258
2259 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2260 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2261 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2262 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2263 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2264 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2265 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2266 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2267 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2268 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2269
2270 ** Fast tracepoints
2271
2272 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2273 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2274 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2275 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2276 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2277 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2278 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2279 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2280 the regular trace command.
2281
2282 ** Disconnected tracing
2283
2284 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2285 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2286 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2287 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2288 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2289
2290 ** Trace files
2291
2292 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2293 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2294 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2295 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2296 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2297 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2298 <name>".
2299
2300 ** Circular trace buffer
2301
2302 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2303 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2304 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2305 not be available for all target agents.
2306
2307 * Changed commands
2308
2309 disassemble
2310 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2311 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2312
2313 info variables
2314 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2315 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2316
2317 source
2318 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2319 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2320 support.
2321
2322 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2323 "set script-extension" (see below).
2324
2325 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2326
2327 record save [<FILENAME>]
2328 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2329 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2330
2331 record restore <FILENAME>
2332 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2333 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2334
2335 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2336 Add a new inferior.
2337
2338 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2339 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2340 inferior has loaded.
2341
2342 remove-inferior ID
2343 Remove an inferior.
2344
2345 maint info program-spaces
2346 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2347
2348 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2349 show remote interrupt-sequence
2350 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2351 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2352 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2353 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2354 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2355
2356 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2357 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2358 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2359 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2360 Linux kernel.
2361
2362 set remotebreak [on | off]
2363 show remotebreak
2364 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2365
2366 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2367 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2368
2369 info tvariables
2370 List trace state variables and their values.
2371
2372 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2373 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2374
2375 teval EXPR, ...
2376 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2377 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2378
2379 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2380 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2381
2382 * New expression syntax
2383
2384 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2385 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2386
2387 * New options
2388
2389 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2390 show follow-exec-mode
2391 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2392 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2393 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2394
2395 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2396 show default-collect
2397 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2398 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2399 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2400
2401 set disconnected-tracing
2402 show disconnected-tracing
2403 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2404 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2405 upon disconnection.
2406
2407 set circular-trace-buffer
2408 show circular-trace-buffer
2409 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2410 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2411 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2412 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2413
2414 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2415 show script-extension
2416 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2417 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2418 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2419 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2420 evaluation failed.
2421 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2422
2423 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2424 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2425 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2426 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2427 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2428 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2429 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2430 is on.
2431
2432 * Python API Improvements
2433
2434 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2435 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2436 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2437
2438 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2439 `is_base_class' attribute.
2440
2441 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2442
2443 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2444 evaluate an expression.
2445
2446 * New remote packets
2447
2448 QTDV
2449 Define a trace state variable.
2450
2451 qTV
2452 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2453
2454 QTDisconnected
2455 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2456
2457 QTBuffer:circular
2458 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2459
2460 qTfP, qTsP
2461 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2462
2463 * Bug fixes
2464
2465 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2466
2467 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2468 much more reliable. In particular:
2469 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2470 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2471 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2472 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2473 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2474 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2475 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2476 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2477 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2478 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2479 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2480 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2481 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2482 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2483 non-threaded programs.
2484
2485 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2486 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2487 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2488 executable program.
2489
2490 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2491
2492 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2493 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2494 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2495 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2496 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2497
2498 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2499 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2500 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2501 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2502 for tracepoint actions.
2503
2504 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2505 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2506 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2507
2508 * Process record and replay
2509
2510 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2511 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2512 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2513 execute commands.
2514
2515 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2516 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2517 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2518 reverse execution.
2519
2520 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2521 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2522 2.6.28 or later.
2523
2524 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2525 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2526 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2527 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2528 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2529 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2530 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2531 the installation instructions for more information.
2532
2533 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2534 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2535 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2536 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2537
2538 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2539 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2540
2541 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2542 now complete on file names.
2543
2544 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2545 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2546 For instance, consider:
2547
2548 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2549 # struct example variable;
2550 (gdb) p variable.
2551
2552 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2553 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2554
2555 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2556 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2557
2558 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2559 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2560 macros.
2561
2562 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2563 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2564 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2565
2566 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2567 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2568 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2569 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2570
2571 * New remote packets
2572
2573 qSearch:memory:
2574 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2575
2576 QStartNoAckMode
2577 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2578 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2579 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2580
2581 vKill
2582 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2583 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2584
2585 qXfer:osdata:read
2586 Obtains additional operating system information
2587
2588 qXfer:siginfo:read
2589 qXfer:siginfo:write
2590 Read or write additional signal information.
2591
2592 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2593
2594 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2595 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2596 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2597
2598 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2599 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2600
2601 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2602 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2603 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2604
2605 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2606 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2607
2608 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2609
2610 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2611
2612 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2613 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2614
2615 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2616 list of section offsets.
2617
2618 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2619 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2620 have also been fixed.
2621
2622 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2623 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2624 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2625
2626 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2627 example, given:
2628
2629 template<typename T> class C { };
2630 C<char const *> c;
2631
2632 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2633
2634 ptype C<char const *>
2635 ptype C<char const*>
2636 ptype C<const char *>
2637 ptype C<const char*>
2638
2639 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2640
2641 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2642 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2643
2644 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2645 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2646 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2647
2648 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2649 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2650
2651 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2652 gdbserver.
2653
2654 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2655 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2656
2657 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2658 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2659 as appropriate.
2660
2661 * Python scripting
2662
2663 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2664 available is determined at configure time.
2665
2666 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2667
2668 * Ada tasking support
2669
2670 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2671 been introduced:
2672
2673 info tasks
2674 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2675 info task N
2676 Print detailed information about task number N.
2677 task
2678 Print the task number of the current task.
2679 task N
2680 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2681
2682 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2683 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2684
2685 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2686
2687 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2688 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2689 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2690 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2691 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2692 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2693 below.
2694
2695 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2696 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2697 information.
2698
2699 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2700 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2701 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2702 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2703 more information.
2704
2705 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2706
2707 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2708 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2709 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2710 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2711 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2712
2713 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2714 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2715 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2716 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2717 --enable-targets configure option.
2718
2719 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2720
2721 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2722 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2723 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2724 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2725 section in the user manual for more information.
2726
2727 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2728 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2729 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2730 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2731 extensions on linux targets.
2732
2733 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2734
2735 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2736 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2737 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2738 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2739 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2740 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2741 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2742 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2743 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2744
2745 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2746 val1 [, val2, ...]
2747 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2748
2749 maint set python print-stack
2750 maint show python print-stack
2751 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2752
2753 python [CODE]
2754 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2755
2756 macro define
2757 macro list
2758 macro undef
2759 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2760 interactively.
2761
2762 info os processes
2763 Show operating system information about processes.
2764
2765 info inferiors
2766 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2767
2768 inferior NUM
2769 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2770
2771 detach inferior NUM
2772 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2773
2774 kill inferior NUM
2775 Kill inferior number NUM.
2776
2777 * New options
2778
2779 set spu stop-on-load
2780 show spu stop-on-load
2781 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2782
2783 set spu auto-flush-cache
2784 show spu auto-flush-cache
2785 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2786 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2787
2788 set sh calling-convention
2789 show sh calling-convention
2790 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2791
2792 set debug timestamp
2793 show debug timestamp
2794 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2795
2796 set disassemble-next-line
2797 show disassemble-next-line
2798 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2799 the debuggee stops.
2800
2801 set remote noack-packet
2802 show remote noack-packet
2803 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2804 under "New remote packets."
2805
2806 set remote query-attached-packet
2807 show remote query-attached-packet
2808 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2809
2810 set remote read-siginfo-object
2811 show remote read-siginfo-object
2812 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2813 packet.
2814
2815 set remote write-siginfo-object
2816 show remote write-siginfo-object
2817 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2818 packet.
2819
2820 set remote reverse-continue
2821 show remote reverse-continue
2822 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2823
2824 set remote reverse-step
2825 show remote reverse-step
2826 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2827
2828 set displaced-stepping
2829 show displaced-stepping
2830 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2831 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2832 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2833
2834 set debug displaced
2835 show debug displaced
2836 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2837
2838 maint set internal-error
2839 maint show internal-error
2840 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2841
2842 maint set internal-warning
2843 maint show internal-warning
2844 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2845
2846 set exec-wrapper
2847 show exec-wrapper
2848 unset exec-wrapper
2849 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2850
2851 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2852 show multiple-symbols
2853 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2854 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2855 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2856
2857 set breakpoint always-inserted
2858 show breakpoint always-inserted
2859 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2860 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2861 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2862
2863 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2864 show arm fallback-mode
2865 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2866 show arm force-mode
2867 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2868 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2869 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2870 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2871
2872 set disable-randomization
2873 show disable-randomization
2874 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2875 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2876 multiple debugging sessions.
2877
2878 set non-stop
2879 show non-stop
2880 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2881 a breakpoint.
2882
2883 set target-async
2884 show target-async
2885 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2886 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2887 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2888 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2889
2890 set target-wide-charset
2891 show target-wide-charset
2892 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2893 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2894
2895 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2896 show tcp auto-retry
2897 set tcp connect-timeout
2898 show tcp connect-timeout
2899 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2900 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2901 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2902
2903 set libthread-db-search-path
2904 show libthread-db-search-path
2905 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2906 libthread_db.
2907
2908 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2909 show schedule-multiple
2910 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2911 the current process.
2912
2913 set stack-cache
2914 show stack-cache
2915 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2916 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2917 affecting correctness.
2918
2919 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2920 show interactive-mode
2921 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2922 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2923 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2924 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2925 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2926
2927 * Removed commands
2928
2929 info forks
2930 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2931 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2932 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2933 command.
2934
2935 fork NUM
2936 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2937 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2938 alias for the `fork' command.
2939
2940 process PID
2941 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2942 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2943 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2944
2945 delete fork NUM
2946 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2947 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2948 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2949 fork' command.
2950
2951 detach fork NUM
2952 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2953 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2954 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2955 fork' command.
2956
2957 * New native configurations
2958
2959 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2960
2961 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2962
2963 * New targets
2964
2965 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2966 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2967 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2968 S+core 3 score-*-*
2969
2970 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2971 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2972
2973 * Removed commands
2974
2975 catch load
2976 catch unload
2977 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2978
2979 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2980
2981 * New native configurations
2982
2983 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2984 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2985
2986 * New targets
2987
2988 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2989 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2990
2991 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2992
2993 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2994 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2995 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2996 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2997
2998 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2999 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3000
3001 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3002 is resolved.
3003
3004 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3005 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3006 and in inlined functions.
3007
3008 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3009 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3010 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3011
3012 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3013
3014 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3015 registers on PowerPC targets.
3016
3017 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3018 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3019
3020 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3021 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3022
3023 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3024 extended-remote mode.
3025
3026 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3027 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3028 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3029 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3030
3031 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3032 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3033 target architectures.
3034
3035 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3036 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3037 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3038 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3039
3040 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3041 breakpoints now.
3042
3043 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3044 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3045 include:
3046 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3047 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3048 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3049 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3050 of an assignment
3051 - Improved command completion in Ada
3052 - Several bug fixes
3053
3054 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3055 process.
3056
3057 * New commands
3058
3059 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3060 show print frame-arguments
3061 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3062 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3063
3064 remote put
3065 remote get
3066 remote delete
3067 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3068
3069 * New MI commands
3070
3071 -target-file-put
3072 -target-file-get
3073 -target-file-delete
3074 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3075
3076 * New remote packets
3077
3078 vFile:open:
3079 vFile:close:
3080 vFile:pread:
3081 vFile:pwrite:
3082 vFile:unlink:
3083 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3084
3085 vAttach
3086 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3087 mode.
3088
3089 vRun
3090 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3091
3092 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3093
3094 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3095 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3096 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3097
3098 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3099 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3100 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3101
3102 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3103 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3104 is not supported.
3105
3106 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3107 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3108
3109 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3110 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3111
3112 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3113
3114 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3115 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3116 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3117
3118 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3119 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3120
3121 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3122 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3123 as strings.
3124
3125 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3126 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3127 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3128
3129 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3130 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3131
3132 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3133 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3134 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3135
3136 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3137
3138 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3139
3140 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3141 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3142 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3143
3144 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3145 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3146
3147 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3148 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3149 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3150 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3151 Windows and SymbianOS).
3152
3153 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3154 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3155
3156 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3157 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3158
3159 * New commands
3160
3161 set remoteflow
3162 show remoteflow
3163 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3164 when debugging using remote targets.
3165
3166 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3167 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3168 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3169 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3170 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3171 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3172 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3173
3174 set breakpoint auto-hw
3175 show breakpoint auto-hw
3176 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3177 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3178 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3179 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3180 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3181 including "next" and "finish".
3182
3183 catch exception
3184 catch exception unhandled
3185 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3186
3187 catch assert
3188 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3189
3190 set sysroot
3191 show sysroot
3192 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3193 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3194 an alias to "set sysroot".
3195
3196 info spu
3197 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3198 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3199 architecture.
3200
3201 * New native configurations
3202
3203 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3204
3205 set tdesc filename
3206 unset tdesc filename
3207 show tdesc filename
3208 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3209 not query the target for its built-in description.
3210
3211 * New targets
3212
3213 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3214 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3215 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3216
3217 * New remote packets
3218
3219 QPassSignals:
3220 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3221 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3222
3223 qXfer:features:read:
3224 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3225 features.
3226
3227 qXfer:spu:read:
3228 qXfer:spu:write:
3229 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3230 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3231
3232 qXfer:libraries:read:
3233 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3234 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3235 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3236 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3237
3238 * Removed targets
3239
3240 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3241
3242 alpha*-*-osf1*
3243 alpha*-*-osf2*
3244 d10v-*-*
3245 hppa*-*-hiux*
3246 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3247 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3248 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3249 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3250 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3251 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3252 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3253 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3254 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3255 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3256 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3257 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3258 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3259 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3260 m68*-cisco*-*
3261 m68*-tandem-*
3262 mips*-*-pe
3263 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3264 sh*-*-pe
3265
3266 * Other removed features
3267
3268 target abug
3269 target cpu32bug
3270 target est
3271 target rom68k
3272
3273 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3274
3275 target hms
3276 target e7000
3277 target sh3
3278 target sh3e
3279
3280 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3281 H8/300.
3282
3283 target ocd
3284
3285 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3286 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3287 interfaces.
3288
3289 DWARF 1 support
3290
3291 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3292 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3293
3294 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3295
3296 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3297 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3298 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3299 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3300
3301 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3302
3303 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3304 in debugging information.
3305
3306 Scheme support
3307
3308 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3309 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3310
3311 set mips stack-arg-size
3312 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3313
3314 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3315
3316 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3317
3318 * New targets
3319
3320 Xtensa xtensa-elf
3321 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3322
3323 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3324 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3325 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3326
3327 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3328 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3329 supported.
3330
3331 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3332 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3333
3334 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3335 stub provides the required support.
3336
3337 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3338 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3339
3340 * New commands
3341
3342 set substitute-path
3343 unset substitute-path
3344 show substitute-path
3345 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3346 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3347 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3348 between compilation and debugging.
3349
3350 set trace-commands
3351 show trace-commands
3352 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3353 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3354 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3355
3356 * REMOVED features
3357
3358 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3359
3360 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3361 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3362
3363 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3364
3365 * New remote packets
3366
3367 qSupported:
3368 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3369 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3370 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3371 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3372 target.
3373
3374 qXfer:auxv:read:
3375 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3376 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3377
3378 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3379 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3380 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3381
3382 vFlashErase:
3383 vFlashWrite:
3384 vFlashDone:
3385 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3386
3387 * Removed remote packets
3388
3389 qPart:auxv:read:
3390 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3391 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3392
3393 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3394
3395 * New targets
3396
3397 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3398
3399 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3400
3401 * New commands
3402
3403 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3404 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3405
3406 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3407
3408 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3409
3410 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3411 previously saved state.
3412
3413 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3414
3415 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3416
3417 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3418 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3419
3420 info forks List forks of the user program that
3421 are available to be debugged.
3422
3423 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3424 forks of the user program that are
3425 available to be debugged.
3426
3427 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3428 that are available to be debugged (and
3429 kill the forked process).
3430
3431 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3432 that are available to be debugged (and
3433 allow the process to continue).
3434
3435 * New architecture
3436
3437 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3438
3439 * Improved Windows host support
3440
3441 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3442 native console support, and remote communications using either
3443 network sockets or serial ports.
3444
3445 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3446
3447 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3448 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3449 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3450 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3451 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3452 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3453
3454 * REMOVED features
3455
3456 The ARM rdi-share module.
3457
3458 The Netware NLM debug server.
3459
3460 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3461
3462 * New native configurations
3463
3464 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3465 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3466
3467 * New targets
3468
3469 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3470
3471 * New command line options
3472
3473 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3474 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3475 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3476 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3477 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3478 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3479 with the --command (-x) option.
3480
3481 * Deprecated commands removed
3482
3483 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3484 removed:
3485
3486 Command Replacement
3487 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3488 othernames set arm disassembler
3489 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3490 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3491 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3492 regs info registers
3493
3494 * New BSD user-level threads support
3495
3496 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3497 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3498 configurations are:
3499
3500 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3501 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3502 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3503
3504 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3505 are not yet supported.
3506
3507 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3508 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3509
3510 * REMOVED configurations and files
3511
3512 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3513 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3514 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3515
3516 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3517
3518 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3519 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3520 behavior.
3521
3522 * VAX floating point support
3523
3524 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3525
3526 * User-defined command support
3527
3528 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3529 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3530 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3531
3532 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3533
3534 * New command line option
3535
3536 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3537 debugging.
3538
3539 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3540
3541 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3542 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3543 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3544 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3545 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3546
3547 * Internationalization
3548
3549 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3550 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3551 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3552
3553 * Ada
3554
3555 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3556 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3557 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3558
3559 * New native configurations
3560
3561 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3562
3563 * Remote 'p' packet
3564
3565 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3566 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3567
3568 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3569
3570 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3571 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3572 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3573 i386 application).
3574
3575 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3576 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3577 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3578 configurations:
3579
3580 hppa-*-hpux
3581 ia64-*-aix
3582 mips-*-irix*
3583 *-*-lynx
3584 mips-*-linux-gnu
3585 sds protocol
3586 xdr protocol
3587 powerpc bdm protocol
3588
3589 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3590 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3591
3592 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3593
3594 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3595 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3596 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3597 permanently REMOVED.
3598
3599 h8300-*-*
3600 mcore-*-*
3601 mn10300-*-*
3602 ns32k-*-*
3603 sh64-*-*
3604 v850-*-*
3605
3606 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3607
3608 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3609
3610 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3611 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3612 been fixed.
3613
3614 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3615
3616 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3617 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3618 IRIX long double values).
3619
3620 * VAX and "next"
3621
3622 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3623 command. This problem has been fixed.
3624
3625 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3626
3627 * Fix for ``many threads''
3628
3629 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3630 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3631 error message:
3632
3633 ptrace: No such process.
3634 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3635
3636 This problem has been fixed.
3637
3638 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3639
3640 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3641 GDB to dump core).
3642
3643 * New ``start'' command.
3644
3645 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3646
3647 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3648
3649 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3650 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3651 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3652
3653 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3654 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3655 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3656 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3657 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3658 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3659 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3660 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3661 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3662
3663 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3664
3665 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3666 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3667 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3668 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3669 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3670
3671 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3672 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3673 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3674
3675 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3676
3677 * New native configurations
3678
3679 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3680 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3681 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3682 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3683 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3684 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3685 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3686
3687 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3688
3689 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3690 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3691 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3692 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3693 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3694 work, was also included.
3695
3696 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3697 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3698
3699 h8300-*-*
3700 mcore-*-*
3701 mn10300-*-*
3702 ns32k-*-*
3703 sh64-*-*
3704 v850-*-*
3705 xstormy16-*-*
3706
3707 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3708 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3709
3710 * REMOVED configurations and files
3711
3712 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3713 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3714 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3715 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3716 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3717 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3718 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3719 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3720 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3721 sonymips mips-sony-*
3722 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3723
3724 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3725
3726 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3727
3728 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3729 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3730 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3731 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3732 with GDB".
3733
3734 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3735
3736 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3737 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3738 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3739 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3740 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3741 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3742 are created.
3743
3744 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3745
3746 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3747
3748 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3749 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3750 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3751
3752 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3753
3754 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3755 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3756
3757 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3758
3759 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3760 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3761 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3762
3763 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3764
3765 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3766 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3767
3768 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3769
3770 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3771 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3772 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3773
3774 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3775
3776 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3777 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3778 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3779
3780 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3781
3782 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3783
3784 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3785 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3786
3787 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3788
3789 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3790 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3791 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3792 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3793
3794 * Revised SPARC target
3795
3796 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3797 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3798 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3799 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3800 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3801
3802 * New C++ demangler
3803
3804 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3805 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3806 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3807 programs.
3808
3809 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3810
3811 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3812 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3813 encountered these.
3814
3815 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3816
3817 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3818 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3819 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3820 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3821 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3822 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3823 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3824 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3825 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3826
3827 * New native configurations
3828
3829 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3830 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3831 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3832 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3833 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3834
3835 * New debugging protocols
3836
3837 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3838
3839 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3840
3841 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3842 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3843 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3844
3845 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3846
3847 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3848 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3849 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3850 permanently REMOVED.
3851
3852 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3853 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3854 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3855 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3856 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3857 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3858 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3859 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3860 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3861 sonymips mips-sony-*
3862 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3863
3864 * REMOVED configurations and files
3865
3866 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3867 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3868 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3869 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3870 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3871 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3872 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3873 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3874 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3875 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3876 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3877 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3878 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3879 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3880 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3881 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3882 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3883
3884 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3885
3886 * Objective-C
3887
3888 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3889 integrated into GDB.
3890
3891 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3892
3893 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3894 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3895 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3896 backtraces.
3897
3898 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3899 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3900 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3901
3902 * Hosted file I/O.
3903
3904 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3905 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3906 remote protocol documentation for details.
3907
3908 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3909
3910 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3911 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3912 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3913 ppc32 on ppc64).
3914
3915 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3916
3917 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3918 per-thread variables.
3919
3920 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3921
3922 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3923 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3924
3925 * Separate debug info.
3926
3927 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3928 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3929 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3930 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3931 and optional debug files.
3932
3933 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3934
3935 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3936 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3937 debugger.
3938
3939 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3940 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3941
3942 * Java
3943
3944 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3945 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3946 considered "useable".
3947
3948 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3949
3950 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3951 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3952 kernel.
3953
3954 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3955
3956 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3957 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3958
3959 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3960
3961 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3962 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3963 command.
3964
3965 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3966
3967 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3968 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3969
3970 * Profiling support
3971
3972 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3973 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3974 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3975 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3976 data, for more informative profiling results.
3977
3978 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3979
3980 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3981 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3982 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3983
3984 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3985 removed.
3986
3987 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3988 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3989 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3990 in a subsequent -var-update.
3991
3992 * New native configurations.
3993
3994 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3995
3996 * Multi-arched targets.
3997
3998 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3999 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4000
4001 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4002
4003 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4004 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4005 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4006 permanently REMOVED.
4007
4008 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4009 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4010 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4011 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4012 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4013 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4014 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4015 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4016 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4017 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4018 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4019 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4020
4021 * REMOVED configurations and files
4022
4023 V850EA ISA
4024 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4025 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4026 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4027 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4028 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4029 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4030 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4031 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4032 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4033 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4034 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4035 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4036 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4037
4038 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4039
4040 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4041 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4042 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4043 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4044 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4045
4046 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4047
4048 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4049
4050 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4051 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4052 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4053 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4054 shared libs like mad''.
4055
4056 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4057
4058 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4059 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4060 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4061 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4062
4063 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4064
4065 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4066 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4067 they expand.
4068
4069 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4070 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4071
4072 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4073 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4074
4075 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4076 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4077 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4078 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4079
4080 * Multi-arched targets.
4081
4082 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4083 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4084 NEC V850 v850-*-*
4085 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4086 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4087 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4088
4089 * New targets.
4090
4091 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4092
4093
4094 * New native configurations
4095
4096 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4097 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4098 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4099 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4100
4101 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4102
4103 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4104 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4105 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4106 permanently REMOVED.
4107
4108 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4109 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4110 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4111 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4112 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4113 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4114 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4115 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4116 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4117 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4118 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4119 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4120 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4121
4122 * OBSOLETE languages
4123
4124 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4125
4126 * REMOVED configurations and files
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 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4137
4138 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4139 commands. The default is 1024.
4140
4141 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4142
4143 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4144
4145 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4146
4147 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4148 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4149 from a file into memory (restore).
4150
4151 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4152
4153 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4154 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4155 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4156
4157 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4158
4159 * New targets.
4160
4161 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4162
4163 * Bug fixes
4164
4165 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4166 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4167 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4168
4169 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4170 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4171 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4172
4173 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4174 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4175 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4176
4177 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4178 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4179 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4180
4181 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4182
4183 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4184
4185 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4186 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4187 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4188 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4189 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4190 (notably embedded) targets.
4191
4192 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4193
4194 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4195 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4196 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4197 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4198
4199 * New command line option
4200
4201 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4202
4203 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4204
4205 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4206 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4207 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4208 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4209 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4210 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4211 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4212 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4213 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4214 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4215
4216 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4217
4218 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4219 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4220
4221 * New native configurations
4222
4223 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4224 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4225 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4226 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4227
4228 * New targets
4229
4230 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4231
4232 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4233
4234 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4235 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4236 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4237 permanently REMOVED.
4238
4239 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4240 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4241 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4242 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4243 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4244
4245 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4246
4247 * REMOVED configurations and files
4248
4249 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4250 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4251 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4252 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4253 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4254 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4255 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4256 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4257 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4258 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4259 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4260 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4261 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4262
4263 * Changes to command line processing
4264
4265 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4266 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4267
4268 * Changes to key bindings
4269
4270 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4271
4272 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4273
4274 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4275
4276 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4277 corrupted.
4278
4279 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4280
4281 Numerous documentation fixes.
4282
4283 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4284
4285 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4286
4287 * New native configurations
4288
4289 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4290 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4291 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4292 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4293 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4294 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4295
4296 * New targets
4297
4298 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4299 CRIS cris-axis
4300 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4301
4302 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4303
4304 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4305 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4306 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4307 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4308 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4309 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4310 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4311 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4312 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4313 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4314 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4315 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4316 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4317 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4318
4319 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4320 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4321
4322 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4323 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4324 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4325 permanently REMOVED.
4326
4327 * REMOVED configurations and files
4328
4329 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4330 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4331 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4332 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4333 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4334 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4335
4336 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4337
4338 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4339 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4340 present.
4341
4342 * Other news:
4343
4344 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4345
4346 * The MI enabled by default.
4347
4348 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4349 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4350 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4351 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4352 which is now deprecated.
4353
4354 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4355
4356 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4357 main features are supported:
4358
4359 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4360
4361 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4362 extension;
4363
4364 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4365
4366 - a Pascal expression parser.
4367
4368 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4369
4370 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4371
4372 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4373
4374 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4375 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4376
4377 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4378
4379 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4380
4381 * Changes in completion.
4382
4383 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4384 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4385 users expect at the shell prompt.
4386
4387 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4388 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4389 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4390 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4391 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4392 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4393 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4394
4395 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4396
4397 * New platform-independent commands:
4398
4399 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4400 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4401 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4402
4403 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4404
4405 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4406 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4407 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4408
4409 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4410
4411 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4412 multi-threaded programs though.
4413
4414 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4415
4416 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4417
4418 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4419 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4420 supported.)
4421
4422 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4423
4424 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4425 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4426 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4427 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4428 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4429 registers.
4430
4431 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4432 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4433 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4434
4435 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4436
4437 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4438 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4439
4440 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4441 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4442 IDT.
4443
4444 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4445 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4446 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4447 a given linear address.
4448
4449 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4450 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4451 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4452
4453 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4454
4455 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4456
4457 * Changes in documentation.
4458
4459 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4460 Documentation License.
4461
4462 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4463 manual.
4464
4465 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4466
4467 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4468 manual.
4469
4470 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4471 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4472 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4473
4474 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4475
4476 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4477 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4478 contents of this file.
4479
4480 * gdba.el deleted
4481
4482 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4483
4484 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4485
4486 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4487
4488 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4489 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4490 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4491 greater level of detail.
4492
4493 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4494
4495 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4496 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4497 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4498 written.
4499
4500 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4501
4502 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4503 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4504 machines ``out of the box''.
4505
4506 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4507 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4508 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4509 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4510 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4511
4512 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4513 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4514 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4515 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4516 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4517
4518 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4519 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4520 also works.
4521
4522 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4523 GDB.
4524
4525 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4526 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4527 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4528 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4529
4530 * New native configurations
4531
4532 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4533 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4534
4535 * New targets
4536
4537 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4538 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4539 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4540 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4541
4542 * OBSOLETE configurations
4543
4544 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4545 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4546 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4547 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4548 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4549
4550 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4551 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4552 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4553 be permanently REMOVED.
4554
4555 * Gould support removed
4556
4557 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4558
4559 * New features for SVR4
4560
4561 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4562 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4563 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4564
4565 * Many C++ enhancements
4566
4567 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4568 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4569
4570 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4571
4572 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4573 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4574 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4575 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4576
4577 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4578 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4579
4580 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4581
4582 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4583 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4584 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4585
4586 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4587 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4588
4589 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4590
4591 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4592 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4593 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4594
4595 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4596
4597 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4598 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4599 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4600
4601 * ``apropos'' command added.
4602
4603 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4604 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4605 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4606
4607 * New MI interface
4608
4609 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4610 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4611 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4612 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4613 enabled by configuring with:
4614
4615 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4616
4617 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4618
4619 * New native configurations
4620
4621 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4622 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4623 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4624
4625 * New targets
4626
4627 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4628 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4629 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4630
4631 * OBSOLETE configurations
4632
4633 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4634
4635 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4636 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4637 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4638 be permanently REMOVED.
4639
4640 * ANSI/ISO C
4641
4642 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4643 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4644 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4645 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4646 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4647 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4648 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4649 already.
4650
4651 * Readline 2.2
4652
4653 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4654
4655 * set extension-language
4656
4657 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4658 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4659 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4660 set extension-language .c c++
4661 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4662 and their associated languages.
4663
4664 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4665
4666 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4667 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4668 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4669
4670 set processor NAME
4671
4672 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4673 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4674
4675 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4676 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4677 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4678 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4679 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4680 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4681 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4682 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4683 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4684 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4685 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4686
4687 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4688 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4689 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4690 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4691
4692 * HP-UX support
4693
4694 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4695 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4696 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4697 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4698 for xdb and dbx commands.
4699
4700 * Catchpoints
4701
4702 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4703 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4704 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4705
4706 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4707 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4708 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4709
4710 * Debugging across forks
4711
4712 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4713 in the inferior.
4714
4715 * TUI
4716
4717 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4718 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4719 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4720
4721 * GDB remote protocol additions
4722
4723 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4724 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4725 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4726 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4727
4728 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4729 full 64-bit address. The command
4730
4731 set remoteaddresssize 32
4732
4733 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4734 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4735 will be discarded.
4736
4737 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4738 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4739
4740 maint packet heythere
4741
4742 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4743 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4744 time.
4745
4746 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4747 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4748 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4749
4750 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4751
4752 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4753 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4754 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4755
4756 * mask-address variable for Mips
4757
4758 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4759 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4760 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4761
4762 * Higher serial baud rates
4763
4764 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4765 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4766 to achieve all of these rates.)
4767
4768 * i960 simulator
4769
4770 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4771 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4772
4773
4774 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4775
4776 * New native configurations
4777
4778 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4779 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4780 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4781 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4782 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4783 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4784 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4785
4786 * New targets
4787
4788 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4789 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4790 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4791 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4792 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4793 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4794 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4795 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4796 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4797 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4798 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4799
4800 * New debugging protocols
4801
4802 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4803 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4804 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4805 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4806 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4807 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4808
4809 * DWARF 2
4810
4811 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4812 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4813 information.
4814
4815 * Java frontend
4816
4817 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4818 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4819
4820 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4821
4822 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4823 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4824 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4825
4826 * Live range splitting
4827
4828 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4829 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4830 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4831
4832 * Hurd support
4833
4834 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4835 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4836
4837 * ARM Thumb support
4838
4839 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4840 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4841 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4842 accordingly.
4843
4844 * MIPS16 support
4845
4846 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4847 instruction set.
4848
4849 * Overlay support
4850
4851 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4852 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4853 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4854 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4855 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4856 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4857
4858 * info symbol
4859
4860 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4861 the symbol at the specified address.
4862
4863 * Trace support
4864
4865 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4866 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4867 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4868 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4869 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4870
4871 * MIPS simulator
4872
4873 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4874 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4875 of most MIPS variants.
4876
4877 * Sparc simulator
4878
4879 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4880 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4881 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4882
4883 * set architecture
4884
4885 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4886 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4887 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4888 the possible architectures.
4889
4890 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4891
4892 * New native configurations
4893
4894 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4895 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4896 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4897 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4898 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4899 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4900
4901 * New targets
4902
4903 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4904 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4905 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4906 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4907 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4908 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4909 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4910
4911 * PowerPC simulator
4912
4913 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4914 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4915 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4916 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4917 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4918
4919 * Solaris 2.5
4920
4921 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4922
4923 * Windows 95/NT native
4924
4925 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4926 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4927 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4928 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4929 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4930
4931 * dont-repeat command
4932
4933 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4934 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4935 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4936 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4937
4938 * Send break instead of ^C
4939
4940 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4941 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4942 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4943
4944 * Remote protocol timeout
4945
4946 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4947 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4948 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4949
4950 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4951
4952 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4953 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4954 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4955 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4956 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4957
4958 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4959 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4960 automatically on hpux10.
4961
4962 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4963
4964 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4965
4966 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4967
4968 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4969 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4970 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4971 every character. The default value is 1050.
4972
4973 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4974
4975 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4976 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4977 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4978 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4979 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4980 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4981
4982 * Speedups for remote debugging
4983
4984 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4985 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4986 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4987
4988 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4989
4990 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4991 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4992
4993 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4994
4995 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4996
4997 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4998 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4999
5000 * Remote targets use caching
5001
5002 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5003 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5004 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5005 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5006 off' turns the the data cache off.
5007
5008 * Remote targets may have threads
5009
5010 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5011 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5012 gdb/remote.c for details.
5013
5014 * NetROM support
5015
5016 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5017 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5018 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5019 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5020 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5021 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5022 sequence is something like
5023
5024 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5025 load <prog>
5026 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5027
5028 * Macintosh host
5029
5030 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5031 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5032 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5033 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5034 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5035 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5036 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5037 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5038
5039 * Autoconf
5040
5041 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5042 but does simplify configuration and building.
5043
5044 * hpux10
5045
5046 GDB now supports hpux10.
5047
5048 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5049
5050 * New native configurations
5051
5052 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5053 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5054 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5055 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5056
5057 * New targets
5058
5059 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5060 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5061 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5062 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5063 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5064
5065 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5066
5067 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5068 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5069 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5070 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5071 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5072
5073 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5074
5075 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5076 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5077 trivial example:
5078 define adder
5079 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5080
5081 To execute the command use:
5082 adder 1 2 3
5083
5084 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5085 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5086 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5087
5088 * New `if' and `while' commands
5089
5090 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5091 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5092 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5093 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5094 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5095 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5096 if the expression is zero.
5097
5098 * Fortran source language mode
5099
5100 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5101 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5102 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5103 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5104 Fortran compilers.
5105
5106 * Better HPUX support
5107
5108 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5109 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5110 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5111 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5112 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5113
5114 adb -w a.out
5115 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5116 control-d
5117
5118 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5119 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5120
5121 adb -w a.out
5122 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5123 control-d
5124
5125 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5126 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5127 external linkage.
5128
5129 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5130 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5131
5132 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5133
5134 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5135 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5136 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5137 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5138 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5139 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5140
5141 * New DOS host serial code
5142
5143 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5144 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5145 a PC's serial port.
5146
5147 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5148
5149 * New "complete" command
5150
5151 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5152 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5153
5154 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5155
5156 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5157 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5158
5159 * Breakpoint hit counts
5160
5161 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5162 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5163 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5164 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5165 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5166 that breakpoint.
5167
5168 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5169
5170 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5171 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5172 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5173
5174 * Shared library breakpoints
5175
5176 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5177 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5178
5179 * Hardware watchpoints
5180
5181 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5182 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5183
5184 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5185
5186 * Annotations
5187
5188 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5189 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5190
5191 * Improved Irix 5 support
5192
5193 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5194
5195 * Improved HPPA support
5196
5197 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5198
5199 * New native configurations
5200
5201 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5202 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5203 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5204 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5205
5206 * New targets
5207
5208 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5209 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5210 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5211
5212 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5213
5214 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5215 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5216
5217 * Fixes
5218
5219 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5220 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5221
5222 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5223
5224 * Irix 5 is now supported
5225
5226 * HPPA support
5227
5228 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5229 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5230 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5231 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5232 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5233
5234
5235 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5236
5237 * User visible changes:
5238
5239 * Remote Debugging
5240
5241 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5242 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5243 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5244 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5245 debugging info for the mips target).
5246
5247 * DEC Alpha native support
5248
5249 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5250 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5251 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5252 Alpha-specific notes.
5253
5254 * Preliminary thread implementation
5255
5256 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5257
5258 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5259
5260 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5261 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5262 for details).
5263
5264 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5265
5266 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5267 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5268 call methods, ...etc.
5269
5270 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5271
5272 * User visible changes:
5273
5274 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5275 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5276 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5277 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5278
5279 Filename completion now works.
5280
5281 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5282 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5283 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5284
5285 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5286 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5287 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5288 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5289 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5290
5291 * DEC alpha support
5292
5293 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5294 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5295
5296
5297 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5298
5299 * Testsuite
5300
5301 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5302 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5303 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5304
5305 * C++ demangling
5306
5307 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5308 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5309 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5310 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5311 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5312
5313 * Simulators
5314
5315 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5316 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5317 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5318
5319 * New targets supported
5320
5321 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5322 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5323 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5324 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5325 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5326
5327 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5328 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5329 GO32 memory extender.
5330
5331 * New remote protocols
5332
5333 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5334
5335 * New source languages supported
5336
5337 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5338 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5339 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5340
5341
5342 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5343
5344 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5345
5346 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5347 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5348 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5349 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5350 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5351 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5352
5353 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5354
5355 * Faster and better demangling
5356
5357 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5358 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5359 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5360 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5361 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5362 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5363 symbol lookups.
5364
5365 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5366 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5367 compiler does not actually implement.
5368
5369 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5370
5371 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5372 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5373 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5374 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5375 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5376 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5377 fix.
5378
5379 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5380 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5381
5382 * Improved configure script
5383
5384 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5385 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5386 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5387 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5388
5389 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5390 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5391 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5392 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5393 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5394 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5395
5396 * Documentation improvements
5397
5398 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5399 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5400 before submitting changes.
5401
5402 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5403 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5404 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5405 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5406 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5407
5408 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5409 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5410 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5411 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5412 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5413 around this problem.
5414
5415 * New features
5416
5417 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5418 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5419 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5420 the target program.
5421
5422 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5423 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5424
5425 * New native hosts supported
5426
5427 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5428 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5429
5430 * New targets supported
5431
5432 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5433
5434 * New file formats supported
5435
5436 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5437 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5438
5439 * Major bug fixes
5440
5441 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5442
5443 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5444 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5445
5446 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5447 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5448 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5449
5450 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5451 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5452
5453 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5454 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5455 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5456 libraries.
5457
5458 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5459 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5460 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5461 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5462 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5463
5464 * Internal improvements
5465
5466 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5467 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5468
5469 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5470 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5471 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5472 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5473 shared code that handles any of them.
5474
5475 * New command line options
5476
5477 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5478
5479 * Mmalloc licensing
5480
5481 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5482 General Public License.
5483
5484 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5485
5486 * Host/native/target split
5487
5488 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5489 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5490 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5491 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5492 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5493
5494 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5495 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5496 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5497 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5498 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5499 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5500 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5501
5502 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5503 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5504 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5505
5506 * New hosts supported
5507
5508 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5509 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5510 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5511
5512 * New targets supported
5513
5514 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5515 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5516
5517 * New native hosts supported
5518
5519 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5520 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5521 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5522
5523 * New file formats supported
5524
5525 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5526 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5527 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5528
5529 * New commands
5530
5531 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5532 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5533 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5534
5535 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5536
5537 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5538 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5539 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5540 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5541
5542 * C++ improvements
5543
5544 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5545 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5546 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5547
5548 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5549
5550 * Major bug fixes
5551
5552 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5553 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5554 by the compiler.
5555
5556 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5557 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5558
5559 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5560 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5561 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5562 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5563 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5564 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5565
5566 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5567 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5568 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5569 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5570
5571 * AMD 29k support
5572
5573 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5574 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5575 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5576 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5577 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5578
5579 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5580 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5581 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5582 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5583
5584 * Remote interfaces
5585
5586 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5587 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5588 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5589 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5590 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5591 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5592 each instruction being stepped through.
5593
5594 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5595 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5596
5597 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5598 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5599 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5600 processor with a serial port.
5601
5602 * Configuration
5603
5604 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5605 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5606 supported, and what files each one uses.
5607
5608 * Library changes
5609
5610 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5611 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5612 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5613 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5614
5615 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5616 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5617 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5618 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5619
5620 * Documentation
5621
5622 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5623 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5624 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5625 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5626 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5627 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5628
5629 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5630
5631
5632 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5633
5634 * Better support for C++ function names
5635
5636 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5637 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5638 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5639 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5640 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5641
5642 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5643 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5644 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5645 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5646 for the list of formats.
5647
5648 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5649
5650 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5651 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5652 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5653 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5654 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5655 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5656 this problem.)
5657
5658 * New 'maintenance' command
5659
5660 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5661 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5662 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5663
5664 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5665 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5666 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5667 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5668 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5669 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5670
5671 The following commands are new:
5672
5673 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5674 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5675 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5676
5677 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5678
5679 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5680 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5681 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5682 read after argv processing.
5683
5684 * New hosts supported
5685
5686 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5687
5688 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5689
5690 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5691 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5692 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5693 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5694 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5695 It costs extra.
5696
5697 * New targets supported
5698
5699 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5700
5701 * More smarts about finding #include files
5702
5703 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5704 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5705 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5706 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5707 the one that contains your sources.
5708
5709 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5710 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5711 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5712
5713 * Interesting infernals change
5714
5715 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5716 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5717 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5718 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5719
5720 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5721
5722 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5723 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5724 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5725
5726 See the ChangeLog for details.
5727
5728 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5729
5730 * New machines supported (host and target)
5731
5732 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5733
5734 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5735
5736 * New malloc package
5737
5738 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5739 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5740 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5741 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5742 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5743 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5744
5745 * info proc
5746
5747 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5748 'help info proc' for details.
5749
5750 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5751
5752 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5753 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5754 possible.
5755
5756 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5757
5758 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5759 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5760 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5761 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5762 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5763 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5764
5765 * Cross byte order fixes
5766
5767 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5768 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5769
5770 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5771
5772 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5773 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5774 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5775 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5776 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5777 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5778 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5779 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5780 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5781 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5782
5783 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5784 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5785 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5786 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5787
5788 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5789 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5790 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5791 use is:
5792
5793 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5794
5795 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5796 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5797 shared across multiple host platforms.
5798
5799 * longjmp() handling
5800
5801 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5802 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5803 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5804 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5805
5806 * Solaris 2.0
5807
5808 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5809 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5810 reading symbols.
5811
5812 * Bug fixes
5813
5814 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5815 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5816 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5817
5818 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5819
5820 * New machines supported (host and target)
5821
5822 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5823 (except core files)
5824 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5825 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5826
5827 * New machines supported (target)
5828
5829 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5830
5831 * C++ support
5832
5833 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5834 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5835 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5836
5837 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5838 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5839 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5840 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5841 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5842 released.
5843
5844 * New features for SVR4
5845
5846 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5847 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5848 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5849
5850 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5851 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5852 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5853
5854 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5855 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5856
5857 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5858
5859 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5860 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5861 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5862 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5863 same code linked statically.
5864
5865 * New Getopt
5866
5867 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5868 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5869 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5870 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5871 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5872 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5873
5874 * Bugs fixed
5875
5876 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5877 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5878 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5879
5880
5881 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5882
5883 * New machines supported (host and target)
5884
5885 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5886 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5887 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5888
5889 * Almost SCO Unix support
5890
5891 We had hoped to support:
5892 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5893 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5894 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5895 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5896
5897 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5898
5899 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5900 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5901 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5902 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5903 reqired (if any).
5904
5905 * New Readline
5906
5907 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5908 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5909 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5910
5911 * Bugs fixed
5912
5913 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5914 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5915 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5916
5917 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5918
5919 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5920 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5921 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5922
5923 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5924 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5925 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5926 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5927 version 2.
5928
5929 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5930 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5931 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5932 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5933 situation somewhat.
5934
5935 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5936 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5937 methods.
5938
5939 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5940 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5941 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5942
5943
5944 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5945
5946 * Improved configuration
5947
5948 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5949 Porting BFD is simpler.
5950
5951 * Stepping improved
5952
5953 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5954 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5955 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5956 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5957
5958 * Bug fixing
5959
5960 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5961
5962 * New host supported (not target)
5963
5964 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5965
5966
5967 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5968
5969 * Multiple source language support
5970
5971 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5972 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5973 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5974 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5975 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5976 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5977
5978 * GDB and Modula-2
5979
5980 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5981 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5982 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5983 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5984
5985 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5986 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5987 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5988
5989 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5990 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5991
5992 * set write on/off
5993
5994 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5995 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5996 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5997 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5998 effect immediately.
5999
6000 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6001
6002 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6003 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6004 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6005 examining core files.
6006
6007 * set listsize
6008
6009 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6010 The default is 10.
6011
6012 * New machines supported (host and target)
6013
6014 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6015 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6016 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6017
6018 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6019
6020 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6021
6022 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6023
6024 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6025 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6026 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6027
6028 * New remote interfaces
6029
6030 AMD 29000 Adapt
6031 AMD 29000 Minimon
6032
6033
6034 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6035
6036 * New Facilities
6037
6038 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6039
6040 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6041 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6042 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6043 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6044 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6045 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6046 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6047 stub on the target system.
6048
6049 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6050
6051 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6052 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6053 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6054
6055 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6056 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6057
6058
6059 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6060
6061 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6062 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6063
6064 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6065 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6066 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6067
6068 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6069 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6070 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6071 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6072
6073 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6074 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6075 it is already running. Default is ON.
6076
6077 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6078 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6079 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6080 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6081 Default is ON.
6082
6083 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6084 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6085 or the value of the environment variable
6086 GDBHISTFILE.
6087
6088 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6089 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6090 HISTSIZE.
6091
6092 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6093 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6094 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6095
6096 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6097 history expansion will be performed on
6098 command line input. The default is OFF.
6099
6100 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6101 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6102 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6103
6104 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6105 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6106 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6107 variable TERM.
6108
6109 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6110 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6111 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6112 variable TERM.
6113
6114 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6115 ``set width'' instead.
6116
6117 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6118 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6119 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6120 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6121
6122 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6123 is OFF.
6124
6125 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6126 "raw" form if off.
6127
6128 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6129 like instructions.
6130
6131 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6132
6133
6134 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6135
6136 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6137 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6138 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6139 window.
6140
6141
6142 * Support for Shared Libraries
6143
6144 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6145 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6146 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6147 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6148 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6149 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6150 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6151 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6152
6153 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6154 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6155 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6156
6157 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6158
6159
6160 * Watchpoints
6161
6162 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6163 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6164 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6165 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6166 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6167 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6168
6169 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6170
6171 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6172
6173 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6174 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6175 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6176
6177
6178 * C++ multiple inheritance
6179
6180 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6181 for C++ programs.
6182
6183 * C++ exception handling
6184
6185 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6186 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6187 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6188 handler's context).
6189
6190 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6191 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6192 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6193
6194 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6195 current stack frame.
6196
6197
6198 * Minor command changes
6199
6200 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6201 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6202 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6203
6204 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6205 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6206 frames without printing.
6207
6208 * New directory command
6209
6210 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6211 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6212 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6213 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6214 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6215
6216 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6217
6218 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6219 for more details.
6220
6221 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6222 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6223 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6224 where the program that you are debugging will run.
This page took 0.157638 seconds and 3 git commands to generate.