Implement multiple-filesystem support for remote targets
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.9
5
6 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
7 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
8 including advance SIMD instructions.
9
10 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
11 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
12 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
13 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
14 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
15 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
16 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
17
18 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
19 cpu information :
20 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
21
22 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
23 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
24 remote serial I/O.
25
26 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
27 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
28 and may include things like its command line arguments.
29
30 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
31 is now available on all platforms.
32
33 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
34 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
35 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
36 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
37 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
38 backward compatibility.
39
40 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
41 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
42 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
43 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
44
45 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
46 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
47 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
48 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
49 packets" below.
50
51 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
52
53 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
54
55 * Guile Scripting
56
57 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
58
59 * Python Scripting
60
61 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
62 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
63 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
64 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
65 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
66 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
67 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
68 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
69 "const" version of the value respectively.
70
71 * New commands
72
73 maint print symbol-cache
74 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
75
76 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
77 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
78
79 maint flush-symbol-cache
80 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
81
82 record btrace bts
83 record bts
84 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
85
86 compile print
87 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
88
89 tui enable
90 tui disable
91 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
92
93 show mpx bound
94 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
95 Support for bound table investigation on Intel(R) MPX enabled applications.
96
97 * New options
98
99 set debug dwarf-die
100 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
101 show debug dwarf-die
102 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
103
104 set debug dwarf-read
105 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
106 show debug dwarf-read
107 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
108
109 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
110 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
111 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
112 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
113
114 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
115 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
116 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
117 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
118
119 set debug dwarf-line
120 show debug dwarf-line
121 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
122
123 set max-completions
124 show max-completions
125 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
126 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
127 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
128 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
129
130 maint set symbol-cache-size
131 maint show symbol-cache-size
132 Control the size of the symbol cache.
133
134 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
135 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
136 BTS format.
137 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
138 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
139
140 set debug linux-namespaces
141 show debug linux-namespaces
142 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
143
144 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
145 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
146
147 * Python/Guile scripting
148
149 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
150 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
151
152 * New remote packets
153
154 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
155 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
156
157 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
158 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
159
160 swbreak stop reason
161 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
162 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
163 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
164 mode operation.
165
166 hwbreak stop reason
167 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
168 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
169
170 vFile:fstat:
171 Return information about files on the remote system.
172
173 qXfer:exec-file:read
174 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
175 create a process running on the remote system.
176
177 vFile:setfs:
178 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
179 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
180 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
181 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
182
183 fork stop reason
184 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
185
186 vfork stop reason
187 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
188
189 vforkdone stop reason
190 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
191 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
192
193 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
194 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
195 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
196 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
197 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
198 whether these features are enabled.
199
200 * Extended-remote fork events
201
202 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
203 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
204 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
205 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
206
207 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
208 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
209 the btrace record target.
210 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
211
212 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
213 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
214
215 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
216 targets.
217
218 * Removed command line options
219
220 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
221
222 * Removed targets and native configurations
223
224 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
225 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
226
227 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
228
229 * Python Scripting
230
231 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
232
233 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
234
235 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
236
237 * Python Scripting
238
239 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
240 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
241 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
242 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
243 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
244 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
245 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
246 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
247 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
248 selecting a new file to debug.
249 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
250 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
251
252 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
253 inferior.
254
255 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
256 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
257 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
258 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
259
260 * New Python-based convenience functions:
261
262 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
263 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
264 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
265 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
266
267 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
268 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
269 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
270 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
271 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
272 interface with this new feature are:
273
274 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
275 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
276
277 * New commands
278
279 demangle [-l language] [--] name
280 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
281 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
282 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
283 as "maint demangler-warning".
284
285 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
286 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
287
288 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
289 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
290 scripts.
291
292 maint print user-registers
293 List all currently available "user" registers.
294
295 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
296 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
297 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
298
299 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
300 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
301 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
302 provided.
303
304 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
305 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
306 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
307 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
308 at resume time.
309
310 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
311 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
312 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
313 switched threads meanwhile.
314
315 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
316
317 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
318 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
319 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
320 is now the default mode.
321
322 * New options
323
324 set debug symbol-lookup
325 show debug symbol-lookup
326 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
327
328 * MI changes
329
330 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
331 inferiors that have exited.
332
333 * New targets
334
335 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
336
337 * Removed targets
338
339 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
340
341 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
342 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
343 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
344 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
345 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
346
347 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
348 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
349 its alias "share", instead.
350
351 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
352
353 * New command line options
354
355 -D data-directory
356 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
357
358 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
359 as specified in ISO C99.
360
361 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
362 with or without disassembly.
363
364 * Guile scripting
365
366 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
367 available is determined at configure time.
368 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
369 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
370
371 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
372
373 guile [code]
374 gu [code]
375 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
376
377 guile-repl
378 gr
379 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
380
381 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
382 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
383
384 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
385 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
386
387 * New options
388
389 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
390 show print symbol-loading
391 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
392 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
393 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
394 becomes less useful.
395
396 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
397 show guile print-stack
398 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
399
400 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
401 show auto-load guile-scripts
402 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
403
404 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
405 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
406 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
407 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
408 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
409 usage of this option.
410
411 set auto-connect-native-target
412
413 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
414 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
415 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
416
417 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
418 show record btrace replay-memory-access
419 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
420
421 maint set target-async (on|off)
422 maint show target-async
423 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
424 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
425 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
426 occurring only in synchronous mode.
427
428 set mi-async (on|off)
429 show mi-async
430 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
431 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
432
433 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
434 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
435
436 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
437 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
438 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
439 "set target-async on" command.
440
441 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
442
443 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
444 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
445 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
446 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
447 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
448
449 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
450 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
451 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
452
453 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
454 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
455 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
456 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
457 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
458 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
459 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
460
461 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
462 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
463
464 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
465 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
466 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
467
468 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
469 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
470 memory or registers.
471
472 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
473
474 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
475 remote. It now works with all targets.
476
477 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
478 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
479 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
480 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
481 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
482 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
483 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
484 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
485 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
486 target-stack".
487
488 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
489 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
490 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
491
492 * GDB now supports access to Intel(R) MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
493
494 * Support for Intel(R) AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
495 Support displaying and modifying Intel(R) AVX-512 registers
496 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
497
498 * New remote packets
499
500 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
501 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
502 branch trace incrementally.
503
504 * Python Scripting
505
506 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
507 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
508 available.
509 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
510 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
511 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
512 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
513 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
514
515 * New targets
516 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
517
518 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
519 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
520 its alias "share", instead.
521
522 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
523 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
524 instead.
525
526 * MI changes
527
528 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
529 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
530 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
531 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
532 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
533 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
534 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
535 commands and CLI execution commands.
536
537 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
538
539 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
540 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
541 recording has been added.
542
543 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
544
545 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
546 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
547
548 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
549 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
550 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
551 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
552 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
553 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
554 "void".
555
556 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
557
558 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
559
560 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
561 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
562 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
563 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
564
565 (gdb) p $rax
566 $1 = <not saved>
567
568 (gdb) info registers rax
569 rax <not saved>
570
571 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
572 "*value not available*".
573
574 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
575 to binaries.
576
577 * Python scripting
578
579 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
580 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
581 ** Line tables representation has been added.
582 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
583 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
584 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
585
586 * New targets
587
588 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
589 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
590 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
591
592 * Removed native configurations
593
594 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
595 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
596
597 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
598 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
599 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
600 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
601 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
602 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
603 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
604
605 * New commands:
606 catch rethrow
607 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
608 maint check-psymtabs
609 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
610 maint check-symtabs
611 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
612 maint expand-symtabs
613 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
614
615 show configuration
616 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
617
618 maint set|show per-command
619 maint set|show per-command space
620 maint set|show per-command time
621 maint set|show per-command symtab
622 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
623
624 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
625 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
626 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
627 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
628 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
629
630 info exceptions
631 info exceptions REGEXP
632 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
633 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
634 are listed.
635
636 * New options
637
638 set debug symfile off|on
639 show debug symfile
640 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
641 symbol tables within those files
642
643 set print raw frame-arguments
644 show print raw frame-arguments
645 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
646 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
647
648 set remote trace-status-packet
649 show remote trace-status-packet
650 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
651
652 set debug nios2
653 show debug nios2
654 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
655
656 set range-stepping
657 show range-stepping
658 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
659
660 set startup-with-shell
661 show startup-with-shell
662 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
663 directly.
664
665 set code-cache
666 show code-cache
667 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
668 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
669
670 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
671 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
672 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
673 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
674 "set height 0".
675
676 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
677 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
678 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
679
680 * New command-line options
681 --configuration
682 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
683
684 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
685 buffer in Common Trace Format.
686
687 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
688 GDB command gcore.
689
690 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
691
692 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
693 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
694
695 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
696 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
697
698 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
699 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
700 due to an uncaught signal.
701
702 * MI changes
703
704 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
705 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
706 command, which should contain "language-option".
707
708 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
709 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
710
711 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
712 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
713 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
714 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
715 "undefined-command-error-code".
716
717 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
718 Trace Format now.
719
720 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
721
722 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
723 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
724 are displayed.
725
726 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
727 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
728
729 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
730 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
731 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
732
733 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
734 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
735 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
736 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
737 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
738 "exec-run-start-option".
739
740 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
741 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
742
743 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
744 the new "info exceptions" command.
745
746 * New system-wide configuration scripts
747 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
748 configuration scripts for the following systems:
749 ** ElinOS
750 ** Wind River Linux
751
752 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
753 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
754 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
755 below.
756
757 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
758 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
759
760 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
761 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
762 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
763
764 * New remote packets
765
766 vCont;r
767
768 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
769 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
770 involvemement at each single-step.
771
772 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
773 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
774 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
775 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
776 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
777 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
778 speedup.
779
780 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
781
782 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
783 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
784
785 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
786 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
787 trace state variables.
788
789 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
790 target.
791
792 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
793 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
794
795 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
796
797 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
798 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
799 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
800 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
801
802 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
803
804 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
805 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
806 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
807 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
808
809 set|show record full insn-number-max
810 set|show record full stop-at-limit
811 set|show record full memory-query
812
813 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
814 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
815 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
816 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
817 This new recording method can be enabled using:
818
819 record btrace
820
821 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
822 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
823
824 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
825 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
826 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
827
828 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
829 instruction granularity
830
831 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
832 function granularity
833
834 * New native configurations
835
836 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
837 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
838 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
839 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
840
841 * New targets
842
843 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
844 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
845 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
846 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
847 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
848
849 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
850 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
851 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
852 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
853 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
854 --data-directory command-line option.
855
856 * New command line options:
857
858 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
859 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
860
861 * Removed command line options
862
863 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
864 Emacs.
865
866 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
867 type formatting.
868
869 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
870
871 * Python scripting
872
873 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
874
875 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
876
877 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
878
879 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
880
881 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
882 of architecture in the Python API.
883
884 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
885 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
886
887 * New Python-based convenience functions:
888
889 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
890 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
891 ** $_strlen(str)
892 ** $_regex(str, regex)
893
894 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
895 given an argument.
896
897 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
898 default for GCC since November 2000.
899
900 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
901
902 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
903 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
904
905 * New configure options
906
907 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
908 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
909 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
910 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
911 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
912 options allow the user to override that default.
913 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
914 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
915 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
916
917 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
918
919 catch signal
920 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
921 conditions to be attached.
922
923 maint info bfds
924 List the BFDs known to GDB.
925
926 python-interactive [command]
927 pi [command]
928 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
929 and print the result of expressions.
930
931 py [command]
932 "py" is a new alias for "python".
933
934 enable type-printer [name]...
935 disable type-printer [name]...
936 Enable or disable type printers.
937
938 * Removed commands
939
940 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
941 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
942 instead.
943
944 * New options
945
946 set print type methods (on|off)
947 show print type methods
948 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
949 The default is to show them.
950
951 set print type typedefs (on|off)
952 show print type typedefs
953 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
954 The default is to show them.
955
956 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
957 show filename-display
958 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
959 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
960
961 set trace-buffer-size
962 show trace-buffer-size
963 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
964
965 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
966 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
967 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
968
969 set debug aarch64
970 show debug aarch64
971 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
972 The default is off.
973
974 set debug coff-pe-read
975 show debug coff-pe-read
976 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
977 exported symbols.
978
979 set debug mach-o
980 show debug mach-o
981 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
982 processing.
983
984 set debug notification
985 show debug notification
986 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
987
988 * MI changes
989
990 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
991 "=cmd-param-changed".
992 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
993 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
994 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
995 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
996 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
997 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
998 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
999 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1000 "=memory-changed".
1001 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1002 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1003 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1004 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1005 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1006 library load/unload events.
1007 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1008 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1009 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1010 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1011 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1012 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1013 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1014 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1015
1016 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1017 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1018 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1019 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1020
1021 * New remote packets
1022
1023 QTBuffer:size
1024 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1025 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1026
1027 Qbtrace:bts
1028 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1029 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1030 qSupported query.
1031
1032 Qbtrace:off
1033 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1034 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1035
1036 qXfer:btrace:read
1037 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1038 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1039
1040 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1041
1042 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1043 for more x32 ABI info.
1044
1045 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1046
1047 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1048
1049 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1050 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1051 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1052 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1053 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1054 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1055 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1056 "info os msg" lists message queues
1057 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1058
1059 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1060 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1061 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1062 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1063 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1064 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1065
1066 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1067 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1068 record/replay support.
1069
1070 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1071
1072 * Python scripting
1073
1074 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1075 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1076
1077 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1078
1079 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1080 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1081
1082 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1083
1084 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1085 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1086
1087 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1088 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1089 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1090 symbol's value.
1091
1092 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1093 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1094
1095 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1096 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1097 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1098
1099 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1100 object associated with a PC value.
1101
1102 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1103 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1104
1105 * Go language support.
1106 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1107 language.
1108
1109 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1110 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1111
1112 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1113 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1114
1115 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1116 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1117 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1118 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1119 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1120 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1121
1122 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1123 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1124 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1125 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1126
1127 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1128 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1129
1130 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1131 since December 2007.
1132
1133 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1134 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1135 command does. For instance:
1136
1137 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1138
1139 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1140 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1141 created, using the "condition" command.
1142
1143 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1144 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1145
1146 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1147
1148 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1149 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1150 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1151 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1152 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1153 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1154 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1155 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1156
1157 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1158 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1159 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1160 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1161 the .gdb_index section.
1162
1163 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1164
1165 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1166 target.
1167
1168 * MI changes
1169
1170 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1171
1172 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1173
1174 * New commands
1175
1176 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1177 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1178 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1179
1180 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1181 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1182
1183 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1184 several hits.
1185
1186 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1187 C++ and Java objects.
1188
1189 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1190 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1191 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1192 configured with '--with-python'.
1193
1194 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1195 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1196 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1197 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1198 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1199 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1200 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1201
1202 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1203 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1204 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1205 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1206
1207 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1208 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1209 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1210 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1211
1212 ** "set print symbol"
1213 "show print symbol"
1214 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1215 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1216 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1217
1218 * Deprecated commands
1219
1220 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1221 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1222
1223 * New targets
1224
1225 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1226 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1227
1228 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1229 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1230 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1231 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1232 evaluates to true.
1233
1234 * New options
1235
1236 set mips compression
1237 show mips compression
1238 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1239 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1240 mips16
1241 micromips
1242 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1243
1244 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1245 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1246 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1247 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1248 available mode.
1249 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1250 target.
1251
1252 set auto-load off
1253 Disable auto-loading globally.
1254
1255 show auto-load
1256 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1257
1258 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1259 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1260 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1261
1262 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1263 show auto-load python-scripts
1264 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1265
1266 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1267 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1268 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1269
1270 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1271 show auto-load libthread-db
1272 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1273
1274 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1275 show auto-load scripts-directory
1276 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1277 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1278 of the directories listed by this option.
1279 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1280
1281 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1282 show auto-load safe-path
1283 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1284 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1285
1286 set debug auto-load on|off
1287 show debug auto-load
1288 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1289
1290 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1291 show dprintf-style
1292 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1293 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1294 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1295 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1296
1297 set dprintf-function <expr>
1298 show dprintf-function
1299 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1300 show dprintf-channel
1301 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1302 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1303
1304 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1305 show disconnected-dprintf
1306 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1307 after GDB disconnects.
1308
1309 * New configure options
1310
1311 --with-auto-load-dir
1312 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1313 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1314 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1315 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1316 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1317
1318 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1319 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1320 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1321
1322 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1323 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1324 security feature.
1325
1326 * New remote packets
1327
1328 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1329
1330 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1331 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1332 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1333 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1334
1335 QProgramSignals:
1336
1337 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1338 program without GDB involvement.
1339
1340 * New command line options
1341
1342 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1343 before loading inferior.
1344 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1345 execute it before loading inferior.
1346
1347 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1348
1349 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1350 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1351 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1352 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1353 inferior changes.
1354
1355 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1356 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1357
1358 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1359 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1360 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1361 target hardware watchpoint.
1362
1363 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1364 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1365 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1366 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1367
1368 * Python scripting
1369
1370 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1371 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1372 existing one.
1373
1374 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1375 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1376 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1377 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1378 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1379 the stack trace.
1380
1381 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1382 Python API.
1383
1384 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1385 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1386 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1387 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1388 corresponding value.
1389
1390 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1391 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1392 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1393 on GDB start-up.
1394
1395 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1396 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1397 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1398 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1399
1400 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1401
1402 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1403 "gdb.breakpoints".
1404
1405 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1406 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1407 available in the CLI.
1408
1409 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1410 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1411 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1412 "some_type.items()".
1413
1414 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1415 new object file.
1416
1417 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1418 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1419 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1420 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1421 any anonymous fields.
1422
1423 * MI changes
1424
1425 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1426 "solib-event".
1427
1428 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1429 "=breakpoint-modified".
1430
1431 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1432
1433 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1434 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1435 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1436 lives.
1437
1438 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1439 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1440 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1441 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1442 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1443
1444 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1445 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1446
1447 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1448 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1449 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1450 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1451 use this option to specify where to find it.
1452
1453 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1454 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1455 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1456 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1457 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1458 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1459 section in the user manual for more details.
1460
1461 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1462 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1463 become available after that.
1464
1465 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1466
1467 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1468 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1469 gcc version 4.7.
1470
1471 * New commands
1472
1473 !SHELL COMMAND
1474 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1475 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1476
1477 * Changed commands
1478
1479 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1480 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1481 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1482
1483 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1484 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1485 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1486
1487 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1488 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1489 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1490 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1491 name starts with a hyphen.
1492
1493 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1494 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1495 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1496 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1497 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1498 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1499 number of bytes that will be collected.
1500
1501 tstart [NOTES]
1502 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1503 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1504 setting the variable trace-notes.
1505
1506 tstop [NOTES]
1507 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1508 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1509 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1510 trace-stop-notes.
1511
1512 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1513 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1514 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1515 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1516 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1517 is running.
1518
1519 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1520 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1521 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1522
1523 * New options
1524
1525 set debug dwarf2-read
1526 show debug dwarf2-read
1527 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1528 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1529
1530 set debug symtab-create
1531 show debug symtab-create
1532 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1533 creation. The default is off.
1534
1535 set extended-prompt
1536 show extended-prompt
1537 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1538 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1539 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1540 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1541 prompt is displayed.
1542
1543 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1544 show print entry-values
1545 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1546 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1547 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1548
1549 set debug entry-values
1550 show debug entry-values
1551 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1552 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1553
1554 set basenames-may-differ
1555 show basenames-may-differ
1556 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1557 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1558 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1559 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1560 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1561 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1562 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1563 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1564
1565 set trace-user
1566 show trace-user
1567 set trace-notes
1568 show trace-notes
1569 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1570 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1571 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1572 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1573
1574 set trace-stop-notes
1575 show trace-stop-notes
1576 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1577 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1578 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1579 started by someone else.
1580
1581 * New remote packets
1582
1583 QTEnable
1584
1585 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1586
1587 QTDisable
1588
1589 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1590
1591 QTNotes
1592
1593 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1594
1595 qTP
1596
1597 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1598
1599 qTMinFTPILen
1600
1601 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1602 be placed.
1603
1604 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
1605 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
1606
1607 * New targets
1608
1609 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
1610
1611 * New Simulators
1612
1613 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1614
1615 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
1616
1617 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
1618
1619 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
1620
1621 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
1622 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
1623 matches the given regular expression.
1624
1625 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
1626
1627 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
1628 dumping the instruction opcodes.
1629
1630 * New command line options
1631
1632 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
1633 This is mostly for testing purposes.
1634
1635 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
1636 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
1637
1638 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
1639 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
1640 source path list instead of augmenting it.
1641
1642 * GDB now understands thread names.
1643
1644 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
1645 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
1646
1647 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
1648 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
1649
1650 * OpenCL C
1651 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
1652 has been integrated into GDB.
1653
1654 * Python scripting
1655
1656 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
1657 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
1658 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
1659
1660 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1661 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
1662 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
1663 and allows for more dynamic content.
1664
1665 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
1666 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
1667 have an is_valid method.
1668
1669 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
1670 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
1671 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
1672
1673 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
1674
1675 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
1676 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
1677 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
1678 that function like so:
1679
1680 result = some_value (10,20)
1681
1682 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
1683 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
1684 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
1685
1686 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
1687 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
1688 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
1689 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
1690 New function: register_pretty_printer.
1691
1692 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
1693 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
1694
1695 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
1696
1697 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
1698 selected thread.
1699
1700 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
1701 holds the thread's name.
1702
1703 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
1704 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
1705 occurring in the process being debugged.
1706 The following events are currently supported:
1707 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
1708 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
1709 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
1710
1711 * C++ Improvements:
1712
1713 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
1714 instantiation. For example, if you have:
1715
1716 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
1717
1718 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
1719 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
1720 was added to GCC 4.5.
1721
1722 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
1723 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
1724 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
1725 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
1726 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
1727 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
1728
1729 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
1730 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
1731 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
1732 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
1733 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
1734
1735 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
1736 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
1737 execution to a label.
1738
1739 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
1740 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
1741 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
1742 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
1743
1744 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
1745 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
1746 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
1747 of scope.
1748
1749 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
1750
1751 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
1752 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
1753 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
1754 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
1755 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
1756 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
1757
1758 (gdb) info threads
1759 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
1760
1761 While now you see this:
1762
1763 (gdb) info threads
1764 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
1765
1766 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
1767 dumps.
1768
1769 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
1770 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
1771 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
1772 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
1773
1774 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1775 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
1776 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
1777 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1778 section in the user manual for more details.
1779
1780 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1781
1782 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
1783 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
1784
1785 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
1786
1787 * New native configurations
1788
1789 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1790
1791 * New targets:
1792
1793 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
1794
1795 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
1796 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
1797 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
1798 in the GDB user manual.
1799
1800 * Guile support was removed.
1801
1802 * New features in the GNU simulator
1803
1804 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
1805
1806 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
1807
1808 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
1809
1810 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
1811
1812 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
1813 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
1814 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
1815 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
1816 was always disabled for such configurations.
1817
1818 * C++ Improvements:
1819
1820 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
1821
1822 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
1823 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
1824 For example:
1825 namespace A
1826 {
1827 class B { };
1828 void foo (B) { }
1829 }
1830 ...
1831 A::B b
1832 foo(b)
1833 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
1834 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
1835 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
1836
1837 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
1838
1839 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
1840 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
1841 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
1842 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
1843 entry.
1844 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
1845 mentioned flavors of operators.
1846
1847 ** static const class members
1848
1849 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
1850 class definition has been fixed.
1851
1852 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
1853
1854 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
1855 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
1856 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
1857 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
1858 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
1859 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
1860
1861 * Static tracepoints
1862
1863 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
1864 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
1865 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
1866 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
1867 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
1868 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
1869 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
1870 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
1871 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
1872 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
1873 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
1874 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
1875 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
1876 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
1877 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
1878 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
1879 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
1880 the "New remote packets" section below.
1881
1882 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
1883
1884 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
1885 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
1886 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
1887 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
1888
1889 * Observer mode
1890
1891 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
1892 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
1893 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
1894 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
1895 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
1896 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
1897 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
1898
1899 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
1900 current thread.
1901
1902 * New remote packets
1903
1904 qGetTIBAddr
1905
1906 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
1907
1908 qRelocInsn
1909
1910 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
1911 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
1912 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
1913 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
1914 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
1915 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
1916
1917 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
1918
1919 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
1920
1921 qTSTMat
1922
1923 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
1924 program.
1925
1926 qXfer:statictrace:read
1927
1928 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
1929 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
1930 to gdb's qSupported query.
1931
1932 QAllow
1933
1934 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
1935
1936 QTDPsrc
1937
1938 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
1939 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
1940
1941 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
1942 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
1943 a directory.
1944
1945 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1946
1947 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
1948 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
1949 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
1950 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
1951
1952 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
1953 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
1954 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
1955 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
1956 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
1957 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
1958 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
1959
1960 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
1961 for static tracepoints support.
1962
1963 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
1964
1965 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
1966 it understands register description.
1967
1968 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
1969
1970 * X86 general purpose registers
1971
1972 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
1973 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
1974 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
1975 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
1976 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
1977
1978 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
1979 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
1980 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
1981 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
1982 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
1983 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
1984
1985 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
1986 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
1987 in the specified file.
1988
1989 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
1990 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
1991 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
1992 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
1993 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
1994 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
1995 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
1996 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
1997 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
1998 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
1999
2000 * New commands
2001
2002 eval template, expressions...
2003 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2004 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2005
2006 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2007 show target-file-system-kind
2008 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2009 names.
2010
2011 save breakpoints <filename>
2012 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2013 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2014 definitions, use the `source' command.
2015
2016 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2017 is now deprecated.
2018
2019 info static-tracepoint-markers
2020 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2021
2022 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2023 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2024 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2025
2026 set observer on|off
2027 show observer
2028 Enable and disable observer mode.
2029
2030 set may-write-registers on|off
2031 set may-write-memory on|off
2032 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2033 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2034 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2035 set may-interrupt on|off
2036 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2037 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2038 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2039 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2040 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2041 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2042 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2043
2044 set record memory-query on|off
2045 show record memory-query
2046 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2047 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2048
2049 * Changed commands
2050
2051 disassemble
2052 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2053
2054 * Python scripting
2055
2056 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2057 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2058 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2059 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2060 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2061
2062 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2063 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2064 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2065 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2066
2067 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2068 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2069
2070 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2071
2072 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2073
2074 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2075
2076 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2077 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2078 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2079
2080 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2081 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2082 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2083 regular breakpoints.
2084
2085 * New targets
2086
2087 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2088
2089 * D language support.
2090 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2091 language.
2092
2093 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2094 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2095 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2096 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2097 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2098
2099 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2100 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2101 conditions of the form:
2102
2103 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2104
2105 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2106 interface mentioned above.
2107
2108 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2109
2110 * C++ Improvements
2111
2112 ** Namespace Support
2113
2114 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2115 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2116 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2117 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2118 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2119
2120 ** Bug Fixes
2121
2122 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2123 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2124 qualified name.
2125
2126 ** Cast Operators
2127
2128 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2129 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2130
2131 * New targets
2132
2133 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2134 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2135
2136 * New Simulators
2137
2138 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2139 Renesas RX rx
2140
2141 * Multi-program debugging.
2142
2143 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2144 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2145 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2146 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2147 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2148 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2149 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2150 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2151
2152 * New tracing features
2153
2154 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2155
2156 ** Trace state variables
2157
2158 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2159 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2160 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2161 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2162 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2163 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2164 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2165 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2166 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2167 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2168
2169 ** Fast tracepoints
2170
2171 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2172 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2173 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2174 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2175 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2176 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2177 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2178 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2179 the regular trace command.
2180
2181 ** Disconnected tracing
2182
2183 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2184 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2185 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2186 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2187 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2188
2189 ** Trace files
2190
2191 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2192 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2193 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2194 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2195 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2196 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2197 <name>".
2198
2199 ** Circular trace buffer
2200
2201 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2202 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2203 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2204 not be available for all target agents.
2205
2206 * Changed commands
2207
2208 disassemble
2209 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2210 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2211
2212 info variables
2213 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2214 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2215
2216 source
2217 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2218 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2219 support.
2220
2221 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2222 "set script-extension" (see below).
2223
2224 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2225
2226 record save [<FILENAME>]
2227 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2228 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2229
2230 record restore <FILENAME>
2231 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2232 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2233
2234 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2235 Add a new inferior.
2236
2237 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2238 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2239 inferior has loaded.
2240
2241 remove-inferior ID
2242 Remove an inferior.
2243
2244 maint info program-spaces
2245 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2246
2247 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2248 show remote interrupt-sequence
2249 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2250 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2251 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2252 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2253 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2254
2255 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2256 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2257 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2258 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2259 Linux kernel.
2260
2261 set remotebreak [on | off]
2262 show remotebreak
2263 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2264
2265 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2266 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2267
2268 info tvariables
2269 List trace state variables and their values.
2270
2271 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2272 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2273
2274 teval EXPR, ...
2275 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2276 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2277
2278 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2279 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2280
2281 * New expression syntax
2282
2283 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2284 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2285
2286 * New options
2287
2288 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2289 show follow-exec-mode
2290 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2291 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2292 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2293
2294 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2295 show default-collect
2296 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2297 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2298 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2299
2300 set disconnected-tracing
2301 show disconnected-tracing
2302 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2303 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2304 upon disconnection.
2305
2306 set circular-trace-buffer
2307 show circular-trace-buffer
2308 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2309 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2310 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2311 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2312
2313 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2314 show script-extension
2315 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2316 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2317 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2318 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2319 evaluation failed.
2320 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2321
2322 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2323 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2324 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2325 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2326 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2327 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2328 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2329 is on.
2330
2331 * Python API Improvements
2332
2333 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2334 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2335 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2336
2337 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2338 `is_base_class' attribute.
2339
2340 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2341
2342 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2343 evaluate an expression.
2344
2345 * New remote packets
2346
2347 QTDV
2348 Define a trace state variable.
2349
2350 qTV
2351 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2352
2353 QTDisconnected
2354 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2355
2356 QTBuffer:circular
2357 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2358
2359 qTfP, qTsP
2360 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2361
2362 * Bug fixes
2363
2364 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2365
2366 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2367 much more reliable. In particular:
2368 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2369 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2370 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2371 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2372 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2373 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2374 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2375 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2376 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2377 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2378 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2379 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2380 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2381 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2382 non-threaded programs.
2383
2384 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2385 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2386 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2387 executable program.
2388
2389 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2390
2391 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2392 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2393 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2394 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2395 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2396
2397 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2398 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2399 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2400 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2401 for tracepoint actions.
2402
2403 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2404 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2405 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2406
2407 * Process record and replay
2408
2409 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2410 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2411 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2412 execute commands.
2413
2414 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2415 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2416 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2417 reverse execution.
2418
2419 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2420 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2421 2.6.28 or later.
2422
2423 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2424 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2425 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2426 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2427 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2428 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2429 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2430 the installation instructions for more information.
2431
2432 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2433 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2434 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2435 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2436
2437 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2438 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2439
2440 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2441 now complete on file names.
2442
2443 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2444 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2445 For instance, consider:
2446
2447 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2448 # struct example variable;
2449 (gdb) p variable.
2450
2451 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2452 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2453
2454 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2455 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2456
2457 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2458 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2459 macros.
2460
2461 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2462 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2463 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2464
2465 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2466 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2467 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2468 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2469
2470 * New remote packets
2471
2472 qSearch:memory:
2473 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2474
2475 QStartNoAckMode
2476 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2477 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2478 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2479
2480 vKill
2481 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2482 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2483
2484 qXfer:osdata:read
2485 Obtains additional operating system information
2486
2487 qXfer:siginfo:read
2488 qXfer:siginfo:write
2489 Read or write additional signal information.
2490
2491 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2492
2493 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2494 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2495 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2496
2497 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2498 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2499
2500 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2501 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2502 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2503
2504 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2505 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2506
2507 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2508
2509 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2510
2511 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2512 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2513
2514 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2515 list of section offsets.
2516
2517 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2518 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2519 have also been fixed.
2520
2521 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2522 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2523 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2524
2525 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2526 example, given:
2527
2528 template<typename T> class C { };
2529 C<char const *> c;
2530
2531 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2532
2533 ptype C<char const *>
2534 ptype C<char const*>
2535 ptype C<const char *>
2536 ptype C<const char*>
2537
2538 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2539
2540 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2541 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2542
2543 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2544 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2545 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2546
2547 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2548 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2549
2550 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2551 gdbserver.
2552
2553 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2554 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2555
2556 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2557 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2558 as appropriate.
2559
2560 * Python scripting
2561
2562 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2563 available is determined at configure time.
2564
2565 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2566
2567 * Ada tasking support
2568
2569 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2570 been introduced:
2571
2572 info tasks
2573 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2574 info task N
2575 Print detailed information about task number N.
2576 task
2577 Print the task number of the current task.
2578 task N
2579 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2580
2581 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2582 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2583
2584 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2585
2586 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2587 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2588 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2589 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2590 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2591 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2592 below.
2593
2594 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2595 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2596 information.
2597
2598 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2599 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2600 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2601 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2602 more information.
2603
2604 * Multi-architecture debugging.
2605
2606 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
2607 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
2608 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
2609 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
2610 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
2611
2612 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
2613 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
2614 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
2615 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
2616 --enable-targets configure option.
2617
2618 * Non-stop mode debugging.
2619
2620 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
2621 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
2622 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
2623 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
2624 section in the user manual for more information.
2625
2626 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
2627 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
2628 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
2629 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
2630 extensions on linux targets.
2631
2632 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2633
2634 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
2635 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
2636 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
2637 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
2638 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
2639 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
2640 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
2641 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
2642 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
2643
2644 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
2645 val1 [, val2, ...]
2646 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2647
2648 maint set python print-stack
2649 maint show python print-stack
2650 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
2651
2652 python [CODE]
2653 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
2654
2655 macro define
2656 macro list
2657 macro undef
2658 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
2659 interactively.
2660
2661 info os processes
2662 Show operating system information about processes.
2663
2664 info inferiors
2665 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
2666
2667 inferior NUM
2668 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
2669
2670 detach inferior NUM
2671 Detach from inferior number NUM.
2672
2673 kill inferior NUM
2674 Kill inferior number NUM.
2675
2676 * New options
2677
2678 set spu stop-on-load
2679 show spu stop-on-load
2680 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2681
2682 set spu auto-flush-cache
2683 show spu auto-flush-cache
2684 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
2685 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
2686
2687 set sh calling-convention
2688 show sh calling-convention
2689 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
2690
2691 set debug timestamp
2692 show debug timestamp
2693 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
2694
2695 set disassemble-next-line
2696 show disassemble-next-line
2697 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
2698 the debuggee stops.
2699
2700 set remote noack-packet
2701 show remote noack-packet
2702 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
2703 under "New remote packets."
2704
2705 set remote query-attached-packet
2706 show remote query-attached-packet
2707 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
2708
2709 set remote read-siginfo-object
2710 show remote read-siginfo-object
2711 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
2712 packet.
2713
2714 set remote write-siginfo-object
2715 show remote write-siginfo-object
2716 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
2717 packet.
2718
2719 set remote reverse-continue
2720 show remote reverse-continue
2721 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
2722
2723 set remote reverse-step
2724 show remote reverse-step
2725 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
2726
2727 set displaced-stepping
2728 show displaced-stepping
2729 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
2730 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
2731 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
2732
2733 set debug displaced
2734 show debug displaced
2735 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
2736
2737 maint set internal-error
2738 maint show internal-error
2739 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
2740
2741 maint set internal-warning
2742 maint show internal-warning
2743 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
2744
2745 set exec-wrapper
2746 show exec-wrapper
2747 unset exec-wrapper
2748 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2749
2750 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
2751 show multiple-symbols
2752 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
2753 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
2754 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
2755
2756 set breakpoint always-inserted
2757 show breakpoint always-inserted
2758 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
2759 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
2760 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
2761
2762 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2763 show arm fallback-mode
2764 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
2765 show arm force-mode
2766 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
2767 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
2768 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
2769 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
2770
2771 set disable-randomization
2772 show disable-randomization
2773 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
2774 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
2775 multiple debugging sessions.
2776
2777 set non-stop
2778 show non-stop
2779 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
2780 a breakpoint.
2781
2782 set target-async
2783 show target-async
2784 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
2785 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
2786 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
2787 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
2788
2789 set target-wide-charset
2790 show target-wide-charset
2791 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
2792 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
2793
2794 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
2795 show tcp auto-retry
2796 set tcp connect-timeout
2797 show tcp connect-timeout
2798 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
2799 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
2800 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
2801
2802 set libthread-db-search-path
2803 show libthread-db-search-path
2804 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
2805 libthread_db.
2806
2807 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
2808 show schedule-multiple
2809 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
2810 the current process.
2811
2812 set stack-cache
2813 show stack-cache
2814 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
2815 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
2816 affecting correctness.
2817
2818 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
2819 show interactive-mode
2820 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
2821 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
2822 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
2823 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
2824 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
2825
2826 * Removed commands
2827
2828 info forks
2829 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
2830 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
2831 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
2832 command.
2833
2834 fork NUM
2835 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
2836 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
2837 alias for the `fork' command.
2838
2839 process PID
2840 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
2841 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
2842 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
2843
2844 delete fork NUM
2845 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
2846 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
2847 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
2848 fork' command.
2849
2850 detach fork NUM
2851 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
2852 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
2853 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
2854 fork' command.
2855
2856 * New native configurations
2857
2858 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
2859
2860 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
2861
2862 * New targets
2863
2864 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
2865 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
2866 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
2867 S+core 3 score-*-*
2868
2869 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
2870 (mingw32ce) debugging.
2871
2872 * Removed commands
2873
2874 catch load
2875 catch unload
2876 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
2877
2878 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
2879
2880 * New native configurations
2881
2882 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
2883 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
2884
2885 * New targets
2886
2887 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
2888 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
2889
2890 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
2891
2892 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
2893 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
2894 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
2895 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
2896
2897 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
2898 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
2899
2900 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
2901 is resolved.
2902
2903 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
2904 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
2905 and in inlined functions.
2906
2907 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
2908 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
2909 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
2910
2911 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
2912
2913 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
2914 registers on PowerPC targets.
2915
2916 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
2917 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
2918
2919 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
2920 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
2921
2922 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
2923 extended-remote mode.
2924
2925 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
2926 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
2927 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
2928 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
2929
2930 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
2931 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
2932 target architectures.
2933
2934 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
2935 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
2936 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
2937 stored in two consecutive float registers.
2938
2939 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
2940 breakpoints now.
2941
2942 * Improved support for debugging Ada
2943 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
2944 include:
2945 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
2946 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
2947 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
2948 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
2949 of an assignment
2950 - Improved command completion in Ada
2951 - Several bug fixes
2952
2953 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
2954 process.
2955
2956 * New commands
2957
2958 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
2959 show print frame-arguments
2960 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
2961 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
2962
2963 remote put
2964 remote get
2965 remote delete
2966 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2967
2968 * New MI commands
2969
2970 -target-file-put
2971 -target-file-get
2972 -target-file-delete
2973 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
2974
2975 * New remote packets
2976
2977 vFile:open:
2978 vFile:close:
2979 vFile:pread:
2980 vFile:pwrite:
2981 vFile:unlink:
2982 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
2983
2984 vAttach
2985 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
2986 mode.
2987
2988 vRun
2989 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
2990
2991 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
2992
2993 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
2994 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
2995 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
2996
2997 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
2998 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
2999 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3000
3001 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3002 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3003 is not supported.
3004
3005 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3006 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3007
3008 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3009 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3010
3011 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3012
3013 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3014 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3015 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3016
3017 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3018 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3019
3020 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3021 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3022 as strings.
3023
3024 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3025 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3026 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3027
3028 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3029 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3030
3031 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3032 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3033 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3034
3035 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3036
3037 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3038
3039 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3040 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3041 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3042
3043 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3044 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3045
3046 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3047 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3048 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3049 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3050 Windows and SymbianOS).
3051
3052 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3053 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3054
3055 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3056 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3057
3058 * New commands
3059
3060 set remoteflow
3061 show remoteflow
3062 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3063 when debugging using remote targets.
3064
3065 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3066 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3067 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3068 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3069 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3070 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3071 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3072
3073 set breakpoint auto-hw
3074 show breakpoint auto-hw
3075 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3076 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3077 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3078 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3079 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3080 including "next" and "finish".
3081
3082 catch exception
3083 catch exception unhandled
3084 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3085
3086 catch assert
3087 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3088
3089 set sysroot
3090 show sysroot
3091 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3092 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3093 an alias to "set sysroot".
3094
3095 info spu
3096 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3097 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3098 architecture.
3099
3100 * New native configurations
3101
3102 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3103
3104 set tdesc filename
3105 unset tdesc filename
3106 show tdesc filename
3107 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3108 not query the target for its built-in description.
3109
3110 * New targets
3111
3112 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3113 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3114 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3115
3116 * New remote packets
3117
3118 QPassSignals:
3119 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3120 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3121
3122 qXfer:features:read:
3123 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3124 features.
3125
3126 qXfer:spu:read:
3127 qXfer:spu:write:
3128 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3129 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3130
3131 qXfer:libraries:read:
3132 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3133 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3134 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3135 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3136
3137 * Removed targets
3138
3139 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3140
3141 alpha*-*-osf1*
3142 alpha*-*-osf2*
3143 d10v-*-*
3144 hppa*-*-hiux*
3145 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3146 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3147 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3148 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3149 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3150 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3151 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3152 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3153 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3154 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3155 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3156 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3157 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3158 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3159 m68*-cisco*-*
3160 m68*-tandem-*
3161 mips*-*-pe
3162 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3163 sh*-*-pe
3164
3165 * Other removed features
3166
3167 target abug
3168 target cpu32bug
3169 target est
3170 target rom68k
3171
3172 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3173
3174 target hms
3175 target e7000
3176 target sh3
3177 target sh3e
3178
3179 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3180 H8/300.
3181
3182 target ocd
3183
3184 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3185 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3186 interfaces.
3187
3188 DWARF 1 support
3189
3190 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3191 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3192
3193 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3194
3195 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3196 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3197 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3198 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3199
3200 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3201
3202 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3203 in debugging information.
3204
3205 Scheme support
3206
3207 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3208 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3209
3210 set mips stack-arg-size
3211 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3212
3213 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3214
3215 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3216
3217 * New targets
3218
3219 Xtensa xtensa-elf
3220 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3221
3222 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3223 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3224 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3225
3226 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3227 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3228 supported.
3229
3230 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3231 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3232
3233 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3234 stub provides the required support.
3235
3236 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3237 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3238
3239 * New commands
3240
3241 set substitute-path
3242 unset substitute-path
3243 show substitute-path
3244 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3245 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3246 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3247 between compilation and debugging.
3248
3249 set trace-commands
3250 show trace-commands
3251 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3252 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3253 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3254
3255 * REMOVED features
3256
3257 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3258
3259 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3260 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3261
3262 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3263
3264 * New remote packets
3265
3266 qSupported:
3267 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3268 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3269 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3270 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3271 target.
3272
3273 qXfer:auxv:read:
3274 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3275 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3276
3277 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3278 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3279 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3280
3281 vFlashErase:
3282 vFlashWrite:
3283 vFlashDone:
3284 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3285
3286 * Removed remote packets
3287
3288 qPart:auxv:read:
3289 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3290 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3291
3292 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3293
3294 * New targets
3295
3296 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3297
3298 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3299
3300 * New commands
3301
3302 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3303 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3304
3305 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3306
3307 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3308
3309 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3310 previously saved state.
3311
3312 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3313
3314 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3315
3316 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3317 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3318
3319 info forks List forks of the user program that
3320 are available to be debugged.
3321
3322 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3323 forks of the user program that are
3324 available to be debugged.
3325
3326 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3327 that are available to be debugged (and
3328 kill the forked process).
3329
3330 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3331 that are available to be debugged (and
3332 allow the process to continue).
3333
3334 * New architecture
3335
3336 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3337
3338 * Improved Windows host support
3339
3340 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3341 native console support, and remote communications using either
3342 network sockets or serial ports.
3343
3344 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3345
3346 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3347 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3348 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3349 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3350 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3351 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3352
3353 * REMOVED features
3354
3355 The ARM rdi-share module.
3356
3357 The Netware NLM debug server.
3358
3359 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3360
3361 * New native configurations
3362
3363 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3364 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3365
3366 * New targets
3367
3368 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3369
3370 * New command line options
3371
3372 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3373 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3374 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3375 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3376 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3377 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3378 with the --command (-x) option.
3379
3380 * Deprecated commands removed
3381
3382 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3383 removed:
3384
3385 Command Replacement
3386 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3387 othernames set arm disassembler
3388 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3389 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3390 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3391 regs info registers
3392
3393 * New BSD user-level threads support
3394
3395 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3396 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3397 configurations are:
3398
3399 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3400 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3401 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3402
3403 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3404 are not yet supported.
3405
3406 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3407 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3408
3409 * REMOVED configurations and files
3410
3411 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3412 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3413 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3414
3415 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3416
3417 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3418 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3419 behavior.
3420
3421 * VAX floating point support
3422
3423 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3424
3425 * User-defined command support
3426
3427 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3428 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3429 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3430
3431 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3432
3433 * New command line option
3434
3435 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3436 debugging.
3437
3438 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3439
3440 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3441 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3442 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3443 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3444 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3445
3446 * Internationalization
3447
3448 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3449 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3450 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3451
3452 * Ada
3453
3454 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3455 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3456 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3457
3458 * New native configurations
3459
3460 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3461
3462 * Remote 'p' packet
3463
3464 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3465 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3466
3467 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3468
3469 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3470 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3471 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3472 i386 application).
3473
3474 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3475 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3476 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3477 configurations:
3478
3479 hppa-*-hpux
3480 ia64-*-aix
3481 mips-*-irix*
3482 *-*-lynx
3483 mips-*-linux-gnu
3484 sds protocol
3485 xdr protocol
3486 powerpc bdm protocol
3487
3488 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3489 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3490
3491 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3492
3493 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3494 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3495 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3496 permanently REMOVED.
3497
3498 h8300-*-*
3499 mcore-*-*
3500 mn10300-*-*
3501 ns32k-*-*
3502 sh64-*-*
3503 v850-*-*
3504
3505 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3506
3507 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3508
3509 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3510 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3511 been fixed.
3512
3513 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3514
3515 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3516 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3517 IRIX long double values).
3518
3519 * VAX and "next"
3520
3521 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3522 command. This problem has been fixed.
3523
3524 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3525
3526 * Fix for ``many threads''
3527
3528 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3529 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3530 error message:
3531
3532 ptrace: No such process.
3533 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3534
3535 This problem has been fixed.
3536
3537 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3538
3539 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3540 GDB to dump core).
3541
3542 * New ``start'' command.
3543
3544 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3545
3546 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3547
3548 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3549 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3550 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3551
3552 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3553 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3554 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3555 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3556 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3557 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3558 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3559 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3560 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3561
3562 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3563
3564 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3565 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3566 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3567 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3568 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3569
3570 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3571 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3572 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3573
3574 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3575
3576 * New native configurations
3577
3578 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3579 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3580 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3581 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3582 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3583 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3584 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3585
3586 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3587
3588 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3589 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3590 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3591 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3592 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3593 work, was also included.
3594
3595 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3596 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3597
3598 h8300-*-*
3599 mcore-*-*
3600 mn10300-*-*
3601 ns32k-*-*
3602 sh64-*-*
3603 v850-*-*
3604 xstormy16-*-*
3605
3606 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3607 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
3608
3609 * REMOVED configurations and files
3610
3611 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3612 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3613 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3614 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3615 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3616 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3617 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3618 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3619 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3620 sonymips mips-sony-*
3621 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3622
3623 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
3624
3625 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
3626
3627 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
3628 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
3629 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
3630 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
3631 with GDB".
3632
3633 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
3634
3635 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
3636 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
3637 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
3638 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
3639 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
3640 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
3641 are created.
3642
3643 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
3644
3645 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
3646
3647 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
3648 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
3649 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
3650
3651 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
3652
3653 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
3654 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
3655
3656 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
3657
3658 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
3659 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
3660 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
3661
3662 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
3663
3664 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
3665 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
3666
3667 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
3668
3669 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
3670 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
3671 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
3672
3673 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
3674
3675 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
3676 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
3677 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
3678
3679 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
3680
3681 * Removed --with-mmalloc
3682
3683 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
3684 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
3685
3686 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
3687
3688 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
3689 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
3690 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
3691 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
3692
3693 * Revised SPARC target
3694
3695 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
3696 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
3697 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
3698 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
3699 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
3700
3701 * New C++ demangler
3702
3703 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
3704 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
3705 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
3706 programs.
3707
3708 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3709
3710 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
3711 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
3712 encountered these.
3713
3714 * C++ nested types and namespaces
3715
3716 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
3717 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
3718 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
3719 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
3720 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
3721 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
3722 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
3723 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
3724 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
3725
3726 * New native configurations
3727
3728 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
3729 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3730 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
3731 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3732 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
3733
3734 * New debugging protocols
3735
3736 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
3737
3738 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
3739
3740 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
3741 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
3742 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
3743
3744 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3745
3746 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3747 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3748 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3749 permanently REMOVED.
3750
3751 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
3752 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
3753 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
3754 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
3755 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
3756 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
3757 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
3758 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
3759 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
3760 sonymips mips-sony-*
3761 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
3762
3763 * REMOVED configurations and files
3764
3765 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3766 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3767 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3768 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3769 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3770 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3771 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3772 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3773 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3774 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
3775 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3776 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3777 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3778 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
3779 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
3780 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3781 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3782
3783 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
3784
3785 * Objective-C
3786
3787 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
3788 integrated into GDB.
3789
3790 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
3791
3792 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
3793 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
3794 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
3795 backtraces.
3796
3797 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
3798 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
3799 DWARF 2 CFI support.
3800
3801 * Hosted file I/O.
3802
3803 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
3804 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
3805 remote protocol documentation for details.
3806
3807 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
3808
3809 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
3810 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
3811 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
3812 ppc32 on ppc64).
3813
3814 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
3815
3816 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
3817 per-thread variables.
3818
3819 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
3820
3821 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
3822 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
3823
3824 * Separate debug info.
3825
3826 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
3827 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
3828 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
3829 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
3830 and optional debug files.
3831
3832 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
3833
3834 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
3835 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
3836 debugger.
3837
3838 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
3839 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
3840
3841 * Java
3842
3843 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
3844 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
3845 considered "useable".
3846
3847 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
3848
3849 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
3850 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
3851 kernel.
3852
3853 * GDB supports logging output to a file
3854
3855 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
3856 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
3857
3858 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
3859
3860 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
3861 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
3862 command.
3863
3864 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
3865
3866 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
3867 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
3868
3869 * Profiling support
3870
3871 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
3872 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
3873 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
3874 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
3875 data, for more informative profiling results.
3876
3877 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
3878
3879 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
3880 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
3881 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
3882
3883 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
3884 removed.
3885
3886 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
3887 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
3888 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
3889 in a subsequent -var-update.
3890
3891 * New native configurations.
3892
3893 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3894
3895 * Multi-arched targets.
3896
3897 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
3898 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
3899
3900 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3901
3902 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3903 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3904 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3905 permanently REMOVED.
3906
3907 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
3908 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
3909 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
3910 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
3911 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
3912 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
3913 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
3914 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
3915 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
3916 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
3917 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
3918 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3919
3920 * REMOVED configurations and files
3921
3922 V850EA ISA
3923 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3924 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
3925 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
3926 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
3927 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
3928 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
3929 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
3930 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
3931 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
3932 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
3933 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
3934 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
3935 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
3936
3937 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
3938
3939 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
3940 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
3941 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
3942 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
3943 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
3944
3945 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
3946
3947 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
3948
3949 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
3950 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
3951 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
3952 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
3953 shared libs like mad''.
3954
3955 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
3956
3957 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
3958 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
3959 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
3960 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
3961
3962 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
3963
3964 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
3965 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
3966 they expand.
3967
3968 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
3969 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
3970
3971 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
3972 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
3973
3974 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
3975 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
3976 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
3977 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
3978
3979 * Multi-arched targets.
3980
3981 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
3982 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
3983 NEC V850 v850-*-*
3984 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
3985 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
3986 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3987
3988 * New targets.
3989
3990 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
3991
3992
3993 * New native configurations
3994
3995 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
3996 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
3997 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
3998 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
3999
4000 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4001
4002 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4003 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4004 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4005 permanently REMOVED.
4006
4007 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4008 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4009 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4010 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4011 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4012 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4013 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4014 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4015 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4016 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4017 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4018 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4019 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4020
4021 * OBSOLETE languages
4022
4023 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4024
4025 * REMOVED configurations and files
4026
4027 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4028 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4029 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4030 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4031 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4032
4033 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4034
4035 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4036
4037 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4038 commands. The default is 1024.
4039
4040 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4041
4042 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4043
4044 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4045
4046 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4047 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4048 from a file into memory (restore).
4049
4050 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4051
4052 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4053 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4054 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4055
4056 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4057
4058 * New targets.
4059
4060 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4061
4062 * Bug fixes
4063
4064 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4065 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4066 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4067
4068 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4069 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4070 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4071
4072 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4073 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4074 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4075
4076 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4077 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4078 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4079
4080 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4081
4082 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4083
4084 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4085 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4086 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4087 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4088 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4089 (notably embedded) targets.
4090
4091 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4092
4093 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4094 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4095 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4096 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4097
4098 * New command line option
4099
4100 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4101
4102 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4103
4104 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4105 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4106 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4107 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4108 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4109 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4110 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4111 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4112 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4113 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4114
4115 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4116
4117 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4118 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4119
4120 * New native configurations
4121
4122 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4123 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4124 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4125 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4126
4127 * New targets
4128
4129 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4130
4131 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4132
4133 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4134 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4135 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4136 permanently REMOVED.
4137
4138 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4139 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4140 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4141 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4142 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4143
4144 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4145
4146 * REMOVED configurations and files
4147
4148 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4149 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4150 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4151 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4152 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4153 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4154 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4155 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4156 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4157 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4158 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4159 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4160 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4161
4162 * Changes to command line processing
4163
4164 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4165 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4166
4167 * Changes to key bindings
4168
4169 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4170
4171 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4172
4173 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4174
4175 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4176 corrupted.
4177
4178 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4179
4180 Numerous documentation fixes.
4181
4182 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4183
4184 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4185
4186 * New native configurations
4187
4188 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4189 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4190 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4191 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4192 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4193 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4194
4195 * New targets
4196
4197 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4198 CRIS cris-axis
4199 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4200
4201 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4202
4203 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4204 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4205 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4206 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4207 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4208 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4209 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4210 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4211 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4212 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4213 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4214 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4215 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4216 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4217
4218 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4219 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4220
4221 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4222 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4223 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4224 permanently REMOVED.
4225
4226 * REMOVED configurations and files
4227
4228 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4229 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4230 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4231 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4232 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4233 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4234
4235 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4236
4237 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4238 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4239 present.
4240
4241 * Other news:
4242
4243 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4244
4245 * The MI enabled by default.
4246
4247 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4248 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4249 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4250 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4251 which is now deprecated.
4252
4253 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4254
4255 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4256 main features are supported:
4257
4258 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4259
4260 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4261 extension;
4262
4263 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4264
4265 - a Pascal expression parser.
4266
4267 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4268
4269 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4270
4271 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4272
4273 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4274 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4275
4276 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4277
4278 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4279
4280 * Changes in completion.
4281
4282 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4283 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4284 users expect at the shell prompt.
4285
4286 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4287 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4288 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4289 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4290 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4291 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4292 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4293
4294 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4295
4296 * New platform-independent commands:
4297
4298 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4299 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4300 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4301
4302 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4303
4304 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4305 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4306 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4307
4308 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4309
4310 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4311 multi-threaded programs though.
4312
4313 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4314
4315 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4316
4317 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4318 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4319 supported.)
4320
4321 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4322
4323 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4324 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4325 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4326 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4327 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4328 registers.
4329
4330 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4331 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4332 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4333
4334 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4335
4336 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4337 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4338
4339 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4340 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4341 IDT.
4342
4343 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4344 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4345 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4346 a given linear address.
4347
4348 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4349 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4350 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4351
4352 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4353
4354 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4355
4356 * Changes in documentation.
4357
4358 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4359 Documentation License.
4360
4361 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4362 manual.
4363
4364 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4365
4366 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4367 manual.
4368
4369 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4370 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4371 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4372
4373 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4374
4375 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4376 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4377 contents of this file.
4378
4379 * gdba.el deleted
4380
4381 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4382
4383 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4384
4385 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4386
4387 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4388 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4389 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4390 greater level of detail.
4391
4392 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4393
4394 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4395 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4396 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4397 written.
4398
4399 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4400
4401 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4402 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4403 machines ``out of the box''.
4404
4405 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4406 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4407 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4408 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4409 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4410
4411 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4412 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4413 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4414 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4415 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4416
4417 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4418 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4419 also works.
4420
4421 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4422 GDB.
4423
4424 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4425 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4426 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4427 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4428
4429 * New native configurations
4430
4431 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4432 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4433
4434 * New targets
4435
4436 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4437 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4438 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4439 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4440
4441 * OBSOLETE configurations
4442
4443 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4444 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4445 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4446 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4447 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4448
4449 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4450 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4451 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4452 be permanently REMOVED.
4453
4454 * Gould support removed
4455
4456 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4457
4458 * New features for SVR4
4459
4460 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4461 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4462 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4463
4464 * Many C++ enhancements
4465
4466 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4467 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4468
4469 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4470
4471 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4472 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4473 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4474 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4475
4476 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4477 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4478
4479 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4480
4481 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4482 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4483 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4484
4485 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4486 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4487
4488 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4489
4490 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4491 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4492 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4493
4494 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4495
4496 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4497 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4498 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4499
4500 * ``apropos'' command added.
4501
4502 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4503 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4504 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4505
4506 * New MI interface
4507
4508 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4509 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4510 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4511 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4512 enabled by configuring with:
4513
4514 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4515
4516 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4517
4518 * New native configurations
4519
4520 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4521 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4522 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4523
4524 * New targets
4525
4526 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4527 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4528 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4529
4530 * OBSOLETE configurations
4531
4532 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4533
4534 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4535 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4536 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4537 be permanently REMOVED.
4538
4539 * ANSI/ISO C
4540
4541 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4542 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4543 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4544 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4545 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4546 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4547 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4548 already.
4549
4550 * Readline 2.2
4551
4552 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4553
4554 * set extension-language
4555
4556 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4557 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4558 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4559 set extension-language .c c++
4560 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4561 and their associated languages.
4562
4563 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4564
4565 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4566 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4567 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4568
4569 set processor NAME
4570
4571 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4572 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4573
4574 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4575 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4576 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4577 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4578 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4579 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4580 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4581 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4582 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4583 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4584 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4585
4586 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4587 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4588 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4589 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4590
4591 * HP-UX support
4592
4593 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4594 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4595 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4596 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4597 for xdb and dbx commands.
4598
4599 * Catchpoints
4600
4601 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4602 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
4603 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
4604
4605 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
4606 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
4607 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
4608
4609 * Debugging across forks
4610
4611 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
4612 in the inferior.
4613
4614 * TUI
4615
4616 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
4617 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
4618 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
4619
4620 * GDB remote protocol additions
4621
4622 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
4623 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
4624 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
4625 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
4626
4627 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
4628 full 64-bit address. The command
4629
4630 set remoteaddresssize 32
4631
4632 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
4633 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
4634 will be discarded.
4635
4636 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
4637 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
4638
4639 maint packet heythere
4640
4641 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
4642 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
4643 time.
4644
4645 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
4646 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
4647 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
4648
4649 * Tracing can collect general expressions
4650
4651 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
4652 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
4653 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
4654
4655 * mask-address variable for Mips
4656
4657 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
4658 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
4659 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
4660
4661 * Higher serial baud rates
4662
4663 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
4664 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
4665 to achieve all of these rates.)
4666
4667 * i960 simulator
4668
4669 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
4670 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
4671
4672
4673 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
4674
4675 * New native configurations
4676
4677 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
4678 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
4679 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4680 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4681 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4682 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
4683 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
4684
4685 * New targets
4686
4687 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4688 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
4689 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4690 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
4691 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
4692 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
4693 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
4694 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
4695 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4696 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4697 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
4698
4699 * New debugging protocols
4700
4701 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
4702 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
4703 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
4704 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4705 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4706 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
4707
4708 * DWARF 2
4709
4710 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
4711 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
4712 information.
4713
4714 * Java frontend
4715
4716 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
4717 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
4718
4719 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
4720
4721 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
4722 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
4723 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
4724
4725 * Live range splitting
4726
4727 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
4728 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
4729 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
4730
4731 * Hurd support
4732
4733 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
4734 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
4735
4736 * ARM Thumb support
4737
4738 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
4739 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
4740 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
4741 accordingly.
4742
4743 * MIPS16 support
4744
4745 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
4746 instruction set.
4747
4748 * Overlay support
4749
4750 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
4751 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
4752 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
4753 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
4754 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
4755 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
4756
4757 * info symbol
4758
4759 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
4760 the symbol at the specified address.
4761
4762 * Trace support
4763
4764 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
4765 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
4766 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
4767 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
4768 file tracepoint.c for more details.
4769
4770 * MIPS simulator
4771
4772 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
4773 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
4774 of most MIPS variants.
4775
4776 * Sparc simulator
4777
4778 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
4779 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
4780 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
4781
4782 * set architecture
4783
4784 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
4785 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
4786 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
4787 the possible architectures.
4788
4789 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
4790
4791 * New native configurations
4792
4793 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
4794 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
4795 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
4796 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
4797 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4798 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
4799
4800 * New targets
4801
4802 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
4803 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4804 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
4805 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
4806 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
4807 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
4808 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4809
4810 * PowerPC simulator
4811
4812 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
4813 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
4814 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
4815 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
4816 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
4817
4818 * Solaris 2.5
4819
4820 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
4821
4822 * Windows 95/NT native
4823
4824 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
4825 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
4826 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
4827 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
4828 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
4829
4830 * dont-repeat command
4831
4832 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
4833 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
4834 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
4835 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
4836
4837 * Send break instead of ^C
4838
4839 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
4840 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
4841 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
4842
4843 * Remote protocol timeout
4844
4845 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
4846 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
4847 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
4848
4849 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
4850
4851 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
4852 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
4853 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
4854 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
4855 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
4856
4857 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
4858 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
4859 automatically on hpux10.
4860
4861 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
4862
4863 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
4864
4865 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
4866
4867 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
4868 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
4869 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
4870 every character. The default value is 1050.
4871
4872 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
4873
4874 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
4875 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
4876 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
4877 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
4878 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
4879 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
4880
4881 * Speedups for remote debugging
4882
4883 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
4884 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
4885 and more efficient S-record downloading.
4886
4887 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
4888
4889 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
4890 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
4891
4892 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
4893
4894 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
4895
4896 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
4897 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
4898
4899 * Remote targets use caching
4900
4901 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
4902 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
4903 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
4904 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
4905 off' turns the the data cache off.
4906
4907 * Remote targets may have threads
4908
4909 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
4910 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
4911 gdb/remote.c for details.
4912
4913 * NetROM support
4914
4915 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
4916 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
4917 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
4918 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
4919 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
4920 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
4921 sequence is something like
4922
4923 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
4924 load <prog>
4925 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
4926
4927 * Macintosh host
4928
4929 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
4930 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
4931 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
4932 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
4933 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
4934 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
4935 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
4936 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
4937
4938 * Autoconf
4939
4940 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
4941 but does simplify configuration and building.
4942
4943 * hpux10
4944
4945 GDB now supports hpux10.
4946
4947 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
4948
4949 * New native configurations
4950
4951 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
4952 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
4953 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
4954 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
4955
4956 * New targets
4957
4958 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4959 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
4960 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
4961 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
4962 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4963
4964 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
4965
4966 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
4967 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
4968 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
4969 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
4970 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
4971
4972 * Arguments to user-defined commands
4973
4974 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
4975 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
4976 trivial example:
4977 define adder
4978 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
4979
4980 To execute the command use:
4981 adder 1 2 3
4982
4983 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
4984 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
4985 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
4986
4987 * New `if' and `while' commands
4988
4989 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
4990 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
4991 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
4992 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
4993 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
4994 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
4995 if the expression is zero.
4996
4997 * Fortran source language mode
4998
4999 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5000 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5001 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5002 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5003 Fortran compilers.
5004
5005 * Better HPUX support
5006
5007 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5008 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5009 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5010 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5011 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5012
5013 adb -w a.out
5014 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5015 control-d
5016
5017 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5018 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5019
5020 adb -w a.out
5021 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5022 control-d
5023
5024 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5025 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5026 external linkage.
5027
5028 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5029 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5030
5031 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5032
5033 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5034 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5035 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5036 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5037 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5038 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5039
5040 * New DOS host serial code
5041
5042 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5043 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5044 a PC's serial port.
5045
5046 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5047
5048 * New "complete" command
5049
5050 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5051 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5052
5053 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5054
5055 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5056 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5057
5058 * Breakpoint hit counts
5059
5060 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5061 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5062 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5063 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5064 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5065 that breakpoint.
5066
5067 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5068
5069 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5070 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5071 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5072
5073 * Shared library breakpoints
5074
5075 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5076 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5077
5078 * Hardware watchpoints
5079
5080 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5081 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5082
5083 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5084
5085 * Annotations
5086
5087 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5088 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5089
5090 * Improved Irix 5 support
5091
5092 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5093
5094 * Improved HPPA support
5095
5096 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5097
5098 * New native configurations
5099
5100 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5101 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5102 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5103 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5104
5105 * New targets
5106
5107 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5108 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5109 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5110
5111 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5112
5113 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5114 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5115
5116 * Fixes
5117
5118 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5119 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5120
5121 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5122
5123 * Irix 5 is now supported
5124
5125 * HPPA support
5126
5127 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5128 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5129 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5130 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5131 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5132
5133
5134 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5135
5136 * User visible changes:
5137
5138 * Remote Debugging
5139
5140 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5141 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5142 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5143 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5144 debugging info for the mips target).
5145
5146 * DEC Alpha native support
5147
5148 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5149 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5150 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5151 Alpha-specific notes.
5152
5153 * Preliminary thread implementation
5154
5155 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5156
5157 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5158
5159 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5160 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5161 for details).
5162
5163 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5164
5165 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5166 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5167 call methods, ...etc.
5168
5169 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5170
5171 * User visible changes:
5172
5173 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5174 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5175 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5176 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5177
5178 Filename completion now works.
5179
5180 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5181 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5182 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5183
5184 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5185 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5186 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5187 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5188 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5189
5190 * DEC alpha support
5191
5192 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5193 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5194
5195
5196 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5197
5198 * Testsuite
5199
5200 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5201 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5202 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5203
5204 * C++ demangling
5205
5206 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5207 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5208 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5209 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5210 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5211
5212 * Simulators
5213
5214 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5215 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5216 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5217
5218 * New targets supported
5219
5220 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5221 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5222 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5223 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5224 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5225
5226 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5227 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5228 GO32 memory extender.
5229
5230 * New remote protocols
5231
5232 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5233
5234 * New source languages supported
5235
5236 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5237 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5238 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5239
5240
5241 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5242
5243 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5244
5245 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5246 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5247 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5248 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5249 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5250 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5251
5252 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5253
5254 * Faster and better demangling
5255
5256 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5257 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5258 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5259 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5260 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5261 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5262 symbol lookups.
5263
5264 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5265 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5266 compiler does not actually implement.
5267
5268 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5269
5270 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5271 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5272 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5273 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5274 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5275 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5276 fix.
5277
5278 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5279 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5280
5281 * Improved configure script
5282
5283 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5284 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5285 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5286 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5287
5288 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5289 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5290 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5291 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5292 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5293 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5294
5295 * Documentation improvements
5296
5297 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5298 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5299 before submitting changes.
5300
5301 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5302 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5303 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5304 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5305 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5306
5307 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5308 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5309 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5310 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5311 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5312 around this problem.
5313
5314 * New features
5315
5316 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5317 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5318 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5319 the target program.
5320
5321 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5322 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5323
5324 * New native hosts supported
5325
5326 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5327 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5328
5329 * New targets supported
5330
5331 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5332
5333 * New file formats supported
5334
5335 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5336 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5337
5338 * Major bug fixes
5339
5340 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5341
5342 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5343 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5344
5345 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5346 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5347 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5348
5349 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5350 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5351
5352 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5353 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5354 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5355 libraries.
5356
5357 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5358 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5359 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5360 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5361 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5362
5363 * Internal improvements
5364
5365 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5366 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5367
5368 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5369 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5370 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5371 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5372 shared code that handles any of them.
5373
5374 * New command line options
5375
5376 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5377
5378 * Mmalloc licensing
5379
5380 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5381 General Public License.
5382
5383 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5384
5385 * Host/native/target split
5386
5387 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5388 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5389 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5390 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5391 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5392
5393 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5394 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5395 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5396 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5397 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5398 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5399 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5400
5401 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5402 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5403 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5404
5405 * New hosts supported
5406
5407 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5408 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5409 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5410
5411 * New targets supported
5412
5413 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5414 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5415
5416 * New native hosts supported
5417
5418 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5419 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5420 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5421
5422 * New file formats supported
5423
5424 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5425 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5426 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5427
5428 * New commands
5429
5430 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5431 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5432 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5433
5434 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5435
5436 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5437 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5438 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5439 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5440
5441 * C++ improvements
5442
5443 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5444 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5445 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5446
5447 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5448
5449 * Major bug fixes
5450
5451 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5452 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5453 by the compiler.
5454
5455 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5456 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5457
5458 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5459 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5460 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5461 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5462 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5463 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5464
5465 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5466 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5467 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5468 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5469
5470 * AMD 29k support
5471
5472 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5473 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5474 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5475 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5476 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5477
5478 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5479 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5480 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5481 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5482
5483 * Remote interfaces
5484
5485 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5486 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5487 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5488 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5489 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5490 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5491 each instruction being stepped through.
5492
5493 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5494 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5495
5496 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5497 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5498 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5499 processor with a serial port.
5500
5501 * Configuration
5502
5503 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5504 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5505 supported, and what files each one uses.
5506
5507 * Library changes
5508
5509 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5510 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5511 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5512 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5513
5514 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5515 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5516 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5517 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5518
5519 * Documentation
5520
5521 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5522 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5523 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5524 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5525 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5526 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5527
5528 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5529
5530
5531 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5532
5533 * Better support for C++ function names
5534
5535 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5536 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5537 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5538 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5539 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5540
5541 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5542 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5543 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5544 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5545 for the list of formats.
5546
5547 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5548
5549 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5550 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5551 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5552 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5553 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5554 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5555 this problem.)
5556
5557 * New 'maintenance' command
5558
5559 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5560 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5561 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5562
5563 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5564 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5565 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5566 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5567 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5568 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5569
5570 The following commands are new:
5571
5572 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5573 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5574 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5575
5576 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5577
5578 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5579 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5580 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5581 read after argv processing.
5582
5583 * New hosts supported
5584
5585 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5586
5587 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5588
5589 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5590 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5591 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5592 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5593 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5594 It costs extra.
5595
5596 * New targets supported
5597
5598 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5599
5600 * More smarts about finding #include files
5601
5602 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
5603 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
5604 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
5605 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
5606 the one that contains your sources.
5607
5608 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
5609 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
5610 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
5611
5612 * Interesting infernals change
5613
5614 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
5615 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
5616 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
5617 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
5618
5619 * Bug fixes (of course!)
5620
5621 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
5622 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
5623 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
5624
5625 See the ChangeLog for details.
5626
5627 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
5628
5629 * New machines supported (host and target)
5630
5631 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
5632
5633 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5634
5635 * New malloc package
5636
5637 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
5638 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
5639 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
5640 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
5641 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
5642 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
5643
5644 * info proc
5645
5646 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
5647 'help info proc' for details.
5648
5649 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
5650
5651 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
5652 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
5653 possible.
5654
5655 * File name changes for MS-DOS
5656
5657 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
5658 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
5659 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
5660 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
5661 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
5662 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
5663
5664 * Cross byte order fixes
5665
5666 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
5667 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
5668
5669 * New -mapped and -readnow options
5670
5671 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
5672 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
5673 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
5674 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
5675 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
5676 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
5677 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
5678 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
5679 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
5680 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
5681
5682 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
5683 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
5684 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
5685 slower, but makes future operations faster.
5686
5687 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
5688 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
5689 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
5690 use is:
5691
5692 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
5693
5694 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
5695 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
5696 shared across multiple host platforms.
5697
5698 * longjmp() handling
5699
5700 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
5701 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
5702 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
5703 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
5704
5705 * Solaris 2.0
5706
5707 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
5708 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
5709 reading symbols.
5710
5711 * Bug fixes
5712
5713 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
5714 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
5715 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
5716
5717 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
5718
5719 * New machines supported (host and target)
5720
5721 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5722 (except core files)
5723 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
5724 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
5725
5726 * New machines supported (target)
5727
5728 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5729
5730 * C++ support
5731
5732 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
5733 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
5734 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
5735
5736 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
5737 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
5738 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
5739 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
5740 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
5741 released.
5742
5743 * New features for SVR4
5744
5745 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
5746 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
5747 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
5748
5749 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
5750 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
5751 it prints the address mappings of the process.
5752
5753 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
5754 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
5755
5756 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
5757
5758 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
5759 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
5760 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
5761 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
5762 same code linked statically.
5763
5764 * New Getopt
5765
5766 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
5767 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
5768 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
5769 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
5770 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
5771 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
5772
5773 * Bugs fixed
5774
5775 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5776 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5777 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5778
5779
5780 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
5781
5782 * New machines supported (host and target)
5783
5784 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
5785 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
5786 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5787
5788 * Almost SCO Unix support
5789
5790 We had hoped to support:
5791 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
5792 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
5793 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
5794 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
5795
5796 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
5797
5798 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
5799 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
5800 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
5801 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
5802 reqired (if any).
5803
5804 * New Readline
5805
5806 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
5807 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
5808 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
5809
5810 * Bugs fixed
5811
5812 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
5813 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
5814 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
5815
5816 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
5817
5818 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
5819 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
5820 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
5821
5822 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
5823 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
5824 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
5825 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
5826 version 2.
5827
5828 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
5829 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
5830 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
5831 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
5832 situation somewhat.
5833
5834 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
5835 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
5836 methods.
5837
5838 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
5839 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
5840 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
5841
5842
5843 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
5844
5845 * Improved configuration
5846
5847 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
5848 Porting BFD is simpler.
5849
5850 * Stepping improved
5851
5852 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
5853 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
5854 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
5855 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
5856
5857 * Bug fixing
5858
5859 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
5860
5861 * New host supported (not target)
5862
5863 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
5864
5865
5866 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
5867
5868 * Multiple source language support
5869
5870 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
5871 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
5872 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
5873 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
5874 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
5875 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
5876
5877 * GDB and Modula-2
5878
5879 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
5880 currently under development at the State University of New York at
5881 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
5882 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
5883
5884 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
5885 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
5886 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
5887
5888 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
5889 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
5890
5891 * set write on/off
5892
5893 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
5894 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
5895 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
5896 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
5897 effect immediately.
5898
5899 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
5900
5901 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
5902 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
5903 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
5904 examining core files.
5905
5906 * set listsize
5907
5908 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
5909 The default is 10.
5910
5911 * New machines supported (host and target)
5912
5913 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5914 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
5915 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
5916
5917 * New hosts supported (not targets)
5918
5919 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
5920
5921 * New targets supported (not hosts)
5922
5923 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5924 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5925 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
5926
5927 * New remote interfaces
5928
5929 AMD 29000 Adapt
5930 AMD 29000 Minimon
5931
5932
5933 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
5934
5935 * New Facilities
5936
5937 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
5938
5939 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
5940 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
5941 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
5942 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
5943 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
5944 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
5945 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
5946 stub on the target system.
5947
5948 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
5949
5950 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
5951 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
5952 object file types such as a.out and coff.
5953
5954 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
5955 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
5956
5957
5958 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
5959
5960 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
5961 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
5962
5963 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
5964 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
5965 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
5966
5967 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
5968 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
5969 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
5970 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
5971
5972 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
5973 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
5974 it is already running. Default is ON.
5975
5976 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
5977 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
5978 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
5979 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
5980 Default is ON.
5981
5982 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
5983 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
5984 or the value of the environment variable
5985 GDBHISTFILE.
5986
5987 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
5988 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
5989 HISTSIZE.
5990
5991 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
5992 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
5993 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
5994
5995 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
5996 history expansion will be performed on
5997 command line input. The default is OFF.
5998
5999 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6000 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6001 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6002
6003 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6004 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6005 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6006 variable TERM.
6007
6008 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6009 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6010 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6011 variable TERM.
6012
6013 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6014 ``set width'' instead.
6015
6016 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6017 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6018 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6019 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6020
6021 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6022 is OFF.
6023
6024 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6025 "raw" form if off.
6026
6027 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6028 like instructions.
6029
6030 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6031
6032
6033 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6034
6035 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6036 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6037 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6038 window.
6039
6040
6041 * Support for Shared Libraries
6042
6043 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6044 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6045 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6046 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6047 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6048 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6049 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6050 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6051
6052 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6053 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6054 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6055
6056 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6057
6058
6059 * Watchpoints
6060
6061 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6062 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6063 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6064 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6065 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6066 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6067
6068 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6069
6070 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6071
6072 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6073 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6074 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6075
6076
6077 * C++ multiple inheritance
6078
6079 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6080 for C++ programs.
6081
6082 * C++ exception handling
6083
6084 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6085 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6086 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6087 handler's context).
6088
6089 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6090 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6091 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6092
6093 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6094 current stack frame.
6095
6096
6097 * Minor command changes
6098
6099 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6100 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6101 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6102
6103 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6104 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6105 frames without printing.
6106
6107 * New directory command
6108
6109 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6110 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6111 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6112 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6113 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6114
6115 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6116
6117 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6118 for more details.
6119
6120 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6121 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6122 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6123 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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