Always run async signal handlers in the main UI
[deliverable/binutils-gdb.git] / gdb / NEWS
1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
3
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.11
5
6 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
7 memory backward from the given address. For example:
8
9 (gdb) bt
10 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
11 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
12 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
13 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
14 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
15 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
16 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
17 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
18 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
19
20 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
21 arrays of dynamic types.
22
23 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
24 descriptions.
25
26 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
27 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
28 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
29
30 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
31
32 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
33 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
34 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
35 signal received and code location.
36
37 For example:
38
39 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
40 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
41 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
42 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
43
44 * Rust language support.
45 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
46 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
47 Rust.
48
49 * New commands
50
51 skip -file file
52 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
53 skip -function function
54 skip -rfunction regular-expression
55 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
56 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
57 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
58
59 maint info line-table REGEXP
60 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
61
62 maint selftest
63 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
64
65 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
66 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
67 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
68
69 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
70 been removed:
71
72 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
73 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
74 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
75 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
76 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
77 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
78
79 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
80 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
81 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
82 bytecode into native code.
83
84 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
85 recording. For example:
86
87 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
88
89 * New targets
90
91 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
92
93 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
94
95 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
96
97 * Per-inferior thread numbers
98
99 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
100 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
101 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
102
103 (gdb) info threads
104 Id Target Id Frame
105 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
106 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
107 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
108 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
109
110 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
111 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
112 are no longer unique between inferiors.
113
114 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
115 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
116 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
117
118 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
119 IDs.
120
121 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
122 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
123
124 (gdb) thread 2.1
125 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
126 (gdb)
127
128 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
129 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
130 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
131 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
132 threads 2.*".
133
134 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
135 all threads.
136
137 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
138 the current thread.
139
140 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
141 current inferior.
142
143 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
144 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
145 example:
146
147 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
148 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
149
150 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
151
152 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
153
154 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
155 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
156
157 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
158 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
159 clients.
160
161 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
162 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
163 at the same time.
164
165 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
166 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
167 into native code.
168
169 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
170
171 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
172 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
173 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
174
175 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
176 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
177
178 * New commands
179
180 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
181 maint show target-non-stop
182 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
183 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
184 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
185
186 maint set bfd-sharing
187 maint show bfd-sharing
188 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
189
190 set debug bfd-cache
191 show debug bfd-cache
192 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
193
194 set debug fbsd-lwp
195 show debug fbsd-lwp
196 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
197
198 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
199 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
200 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
201
202 set remote thread-events
203 show remote thread-events
204 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
205
206 set ada print-signatures on|off
207 show ada print-signatures"
208 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
209 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
210
211 set max-value-size
212 show max-value-size
213 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
214 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
215 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
216
217 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
218 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
219 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
220 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
221 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
222 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
223
224 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
225 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
226
227 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
228 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
229
230 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
231
232 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
233 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
234 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
235 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
236 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
237 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
238
239 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
240 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
241
242 * New remote packets
243
244 exec stop reason
245 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
246
247 exec-events feature in qSupported
248 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
249 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
250 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
251 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
252
253 vCtrlC
254 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
255 non-stop mode.
256
257 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
258 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
259
260 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
261 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
262
263 QThreadEvents
264 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
265 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
266 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
267 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
268 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
269 stop for that same thread.
270
271 N stop reply
272 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
273 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
274 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
275
276 QCatchSyscalls
277 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
278 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
279
280 syscall_entry stop reason
281 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
282
283 syscall_return stop reason
284 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
285
286 * Extended-remote exec events
287
288 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
289 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
290 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
291
292 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
293 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
294 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
295
296 * Thread names in remote protocol
297
298 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
299 thread.
300
301 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
302
303 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
304 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
305 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
306 fork and exec catchpoints.
307
308 * Remote syscall events
309
310 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
311 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
312
313 set remote catch-syscall-packet
314 show remote catch-syscall-packet
315 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
316
317 * MI changes
318
319 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
320 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
321 left.
322
323 * Python Scripting
324
325 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
326 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
327 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
328 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
329 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
330 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
331
332 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
333
334 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
335 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
336 including advance SIMD instructions.
337
338 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
339
340 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
341 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
342 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
343 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
344 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
345 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
346 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
347
348 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
349 cpu information :
350 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
351
352 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
353 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
354 remote serial I/O.
355
356 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
357 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
358 and may include things like its command line arguments.
359
360 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
361 is now available on all platforms.
362
363 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
364 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
365 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
366 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
367 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
368 backward compatibility.
369
370 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
371 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
372 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
373 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
374
375 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
376 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
377 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
378 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
379 packets" below.
380
381 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
382
383 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
384
385 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
386 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
387 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
388 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
389 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
390 See "New remote packets" below.
391
392 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
393 available register groups, including target specific groups.
394
395 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
396 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
397 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
398 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
399 are ignored.
400
401 * Guile Scripting
402
403 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
404
405 * Python Scripting
406
407 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
408 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
409 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
410 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
411 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
412 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
413 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
414 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
415 "const" version of the value respectively.
416
417 * New commands
418
419 maint print symbol-cache
420 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
421
422 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
423 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
424
425 maint flush-symbol-cache
426 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
427
428 record btrace bts
429 record bts
430 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
431
432 compile print
433 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
434
435 tui enable
436 tui disable
437 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
438
439 show mpx bound
440 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
441 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
442
443 record btrace pt
444 record pt
445 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
446
447 maint info btrace
448 Print information about branch tracing internals.
449
450 maint btrace packet-history
451 Print the raw branch tracing data.
452
453 maint btrace clear-packet-history
454 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
455
456 maint btrace clear
457 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
458 anew by the next "record" command.
459
460 * New options
461
462 set debug dwarf-die
463 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
464 show debug dwarf-die
465 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
466
467 set debug dwarf-read
468 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
469 show debug dwarf-read
470 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
471
472 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
473 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
474 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
475 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
476
477 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
478 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
479 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
480 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
481
482 set debug dwarf-line
483 show debug dwarf-line
484 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
485
486 set max-completions
487 show max-completions
488 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
489 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
490 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
491 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
492
493 set history remove-duplicates
494 show history remove-duplicates
495 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
496
497 maint set symbol-cache-size
498 maint show symbol-cache-size
499 Control the size of the symbol cache.
500
501 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
502 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
503 BTS format.
504 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
505 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
506
507 set debug linux-namespaces
508 show debug linux-namespaces
509 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
510
511 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
512 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
513 Intel Processor Trace format.
514 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
515 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
516
517 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
518 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
519 packet history.
520
521 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
522 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
523
524 * Python/Guile scripting
525
526 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
527 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
528
529 * New remote packets
530
531 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
532 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
533
534 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
535 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
536
537 Qbtrace:pt
538 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
539 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
540 qSupported query.
541
542 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
543 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
544 Trace format.
545
546 swbreak stop reason
547 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
548 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
549 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
550 mode operation.
551
552 hwbreak stop reason
553 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
554 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
555
556 vFile:fstat:
557 Return information about files on the remote system.
558
559 qXfer:exec-file:read
560 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
561 create a process running on the remote system.
562
563 vFile:setfs:
564 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
565 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
566 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
567 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
568
569 fork stop reason
570 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
571
572 vfork stop reason
573 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
574
575 vforkdone stop reason
576 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
577 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
578
579 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
580 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
581 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
582 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
583 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
584 whether these features are enabled.
585
586 * Extended-remote fork events
587
588 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
589 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
590 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
591 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
592
593 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
594 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
595 the btrace record target.
596 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
597
598 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
599 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
600
601 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
602 targets.
603
604 * Removed command line options
605
606 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
607
608 * Removed targets and native configurations
609
610 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
611 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
612
613 * New configure options
614
615 --with-intel-pt
616 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
617 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
618
619 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
620 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
621 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
622 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
623
624 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
625
626 * Python Scripting
627
628 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
629
630 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
631
632 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
633
634 * Python Scripting
635
636 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
637 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
638 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
639 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
640 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
641 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
642 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
643 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
644 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
645 selecting a new file to debug.
646 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
647 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
648
649 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
650 inferior.
651
652 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
653 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
654 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
655 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
656
657 * New Python-based convenience functions:
658
659 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
660 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
661 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
662 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
663
664 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
665 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
666 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
667 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
668 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
669 interface with this new feature are:
670
671 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
672 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
673
674 * New commands
675
676 demangle [-l language] [--] name
677 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
678 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
679 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
680 as "maint demangler-warning".
681
682 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
683 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
684
685 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
686 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
687 scripts.
688
689 maint print user-registers
690 List all currently available "user" registers.
691
692 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
693 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
694 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
695
696 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
697 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
698 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
699 provided.
700
701 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
702 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
703 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
704 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
705 at resume time.
706
707 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
708 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
709 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
710 switched threads meanwhile.
711
712 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
713
714 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
715 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
716 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
717 is now the default mode.
718
719 * New options
720
721 set debug symbol-lookup
722 show debug symbol-lookup
723 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
724
725 * MI changes
726
727 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
728 inferiors that have exited.
729
730 * New targets
731
732 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
733
734 * Removed targets
735
736 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
737
738 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
739 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
740 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
741 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
742 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
743
744 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
745 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
746 its alias "share", instead.
747
748 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
749
750 * New command line options
751
752 -D data-directory
753 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
754
755 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
756 as specified in ISO C99.
757
758 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
759 with or without disassembly.
760
761 * Guile scripting
762
763 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
764 available is determined at configure time.
765 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
766 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
767
768 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
769
770 guile [code]
771 gu [code]
772 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
773
774 guile-repl
775 gr
776 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
777
778 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
779 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
780
781 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
782 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
783
784 * New options
785
786 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
787 show print symbol-loading
788 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
789 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
790 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
791 becomes less useful.
792
793 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
794 show guile print-stack
795 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
796
797 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
798 show auto-load guile-scripts
799 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
800
801 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
802 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
803 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
804 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
805 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
806 usage of this option.
807
808 set auto-connect-native-target
809
810 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
811 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
812 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
813
814 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
815 show record btrace replay-memory-access
816 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
817
818 maint set target-async (on|off)
819 maint show target-async
820 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
821 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
822 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
823 occurring only in synchronous mode.
824
825 set mi-async (on|off)
826 show mi-async
827 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
828 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
829
830 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
831 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
832
833 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
834 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
835 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
836 "set target-async on" command.
837
838 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
839
840 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
841 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
842 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
843 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
844 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
845
846 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
847 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
848 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
849
850 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
851 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
852 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
853 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
854 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
855 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
856 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
857
858 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
859 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
860
861 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
862 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
863 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
864
865 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
866 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
867 memory or registers.
868
869 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
870
871 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
872 remote. It now works with all targets.
873
874 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
875 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
876 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
877 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
878 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
879 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
880 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
881 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
882 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
883 target-stack".
884
885 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
886 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
887 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
888
889 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
890
891 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
892 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
893 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
894
895 * New remote packets
896
897 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
898 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
899 branch trace incrementally.
900
901 * Python Scripting
902
903 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
904 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
905 available.
906 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
907 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
908 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
909 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
910 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
911
912 * New targets
913 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
914
915 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
916 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
917 its alias "share", instead.
918
919 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
920 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
921 instead.
922
923 * MI changes
924
925 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
926 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
927 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
928 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
929 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
930 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
931 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
932 commands and CLI execution commands.
933
934 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
935
936 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
937 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
938 recording has been added.
939
940 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
941
942 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
943 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
944
945 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
946 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
947 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
948 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
949 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
950 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
951 "void".
952
953 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
954
955 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
956
957 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
958 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
959 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
960 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
961
962 (gdb) p $rax
963 $1 = <not saved>
964
965 (gdb) info registers rax
966 rax <not saved>
967
968 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
969 "*value not available*".
970
971 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
972 to binaries.
973
974 * Python scripting
975
976 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
977 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
978 ** Line tables representation has been added.
979 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
980 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
981 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
982
983 * New targets
984
985 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
986 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
987 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
988
989 * Removed native configurations
990
991 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
992 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
993
994 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
995 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
996 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
997 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
998 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
999 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1000 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1001
1002 * New commands:
1003 catch rethrow
1004 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1005 maint check-psymtabs
1006 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1007 maint check-symtabs
1008 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1009 maint expand-symtabs
1010 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1011
1012 show configuration
1013 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1014
1015 maint set|show per-command
1016 maint set|show per-command space
1017 maint set|show per-command time
1018 maint set|show per-command symtab
1019 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1020
1021 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1022 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1023 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1024 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1025 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1026
1027 info exceptions
1028 info exceptions REGEXP
1029 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1030 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1031 are listed.
1032
1033 * New options
1034
1035 set debug symfile off|on
1036 show debug symfile
1037 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1038 symbol tables within those files
1039
1040 set print raw frame-arguments
1041 show print raw frame-arguments
1042 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1043 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1044
1045 set remote trace-status-packet
1046 show remote trace-status-packet
1047 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1048
1049 set debug nios2
1050 show debug nios2
1051 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1052
1053 set range-stepping
1054 show range-stepping
1055 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1056
1057 set startup-with-shell
1058 show startup-with-shell
1059 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1060 directly.
1061
1062 set code-cache
1063 show code-cache
1064 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1065 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1066
1067 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1068 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1069 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1070 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1071 "set height 0".
1072
1073 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1074 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1075 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1076
1077 * New command-line options
1078 --configuration
1079 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1080
1081 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1082 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1083
1084 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1085 GDB command gcore.
1086
1087 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1088
1089 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1090 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1091
1092 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1093 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1094
1095 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1096 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1097 due to an uncaught signal.
1098
1099 * MI changes
1100
1101 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1102 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1103 command, which should contain "language-option".
1104
1105 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1106 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1107
1108 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1109 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1110 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1111 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1112 "undefined-command-error-code".
1113
1114 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1115 Trace Format now.
1116
1117 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1118
1119 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1120 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1121 are displayed.
1122
1123 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1124 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1125
1126 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1127 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1128 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1129
1130 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1131 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1132 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1133 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1134 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1135 "exec-run-start-option".
1136
1137 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1138 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1139
1140 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1141 the new "info exceptions" command.
1142
1143 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1144 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1145 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1146 ** ElinOS
1147 ** Wind River Linux
1148
1149 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1150 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1151 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1152 below.
1153
1154 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1155 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1156
1157 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1158 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1159 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1160
1161 * New remote packets
1162
1163 vCont;r
1164
1165 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1166 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1167 involvemement at each single-step.
1168
1169 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1170 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1171 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1172 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1173 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1174 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1175 speedup.
1176
1177 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1178
1179 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1180 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1181
1182 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1183 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1184 trace state variables.
1185
1186 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1187 target.
1188
1189 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1190 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1191
1192 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1193
1194 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1195 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1196 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1197 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1198
1199 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1200
1201 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1202 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1203 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1204 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1205
1206 set|show record full insn-number-max
1207 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1208 set|show record full memory-query
1209
1210 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1211 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1212 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1213 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1214 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1215
1216 record btrace
1217
1218 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1219 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1220
1221 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1222 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1223 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1224
1225 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1226 instruction granularity
1227
1228 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1229 function granularity
1230
1231 * New native configurations
1232
1233 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1234 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1235 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1236 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1237
1238 * New targets
1239
1240 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1241 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1242 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1243 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1244 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1245
1246 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1247 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1248 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1249 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1250 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1251 --data-directory command-line option.
1252
1253 * New command line options:
1254
1255 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1256 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1257
1258 * Removed command line options
1259
1260 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1261 Emacs.
1262
1263 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1264 type formatting.
1265
1266 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1267
1268 * Python scripting
1269
1270 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1271
1272 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1273
1274 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1275
1276 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1277
1278 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1279 of architecture in the Python API.
1280
1281 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1282 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1283
1284 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1285
1286 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1287 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1288 ** $_strlen(str)
1289 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1290
1291 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1292 given an argument.
1293
1294 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1295 default for GCC since November 2000.
1296
1297 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1298
1299 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1300 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1301
1302 * New configure options
1303
1304 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1305 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1306 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1307 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1308 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1309 options allow the user to override that default.
1310 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1311 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1312 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1313
1314 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1315
1316 catch signal
1317 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1318 conditions to be attached.
1319
1320 maint info bfds
1321 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1322
1323 python-interactive [command]
1324 pi [command]
1325 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1326 and print the result of expressions.
1327
1328 py [command]
1329 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1330
1331 enable type-printer [name]...
1332 disable type-printer [name]...
1333 Enable or disable type printers.
1334
1335 * Removed commands
1336
1337 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1338 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1339 instead.
1340
1341 * New options
1342
1343 set print type methods (on|off)
1344 show print type methods
1345 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1346 The default is to show them.
1347
1348 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1349 show print type typedefs
1350 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1351 The default is to show them.
1352
1353 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1354 show filename-display
1355 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1356 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1357
1358 set trace-buffer-size
1359 show trace-buffer-size
1360 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1361
1362 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1363 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1364 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1365
1366 set debug aarch64
1367 show debug aarch64
1368 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1369 The default is off.
1370
1371 set debug coff-pe-read
1372 show debug coff-pe-read
1373 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1374 exported symbols.
1375
1376 set debug mach-o
1377 show debug mach-o
1378 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1379 processing.
1380
1381 set debug notification
1382 show debug notification
1383 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1384
1385 * MI changes
1386
1387 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1388 "=cmd-param-changed".
1389 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1390 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1391 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1392 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1393 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1394 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1395 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1396 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1397 "=memory-changed".
1398 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1399 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1400 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1401 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1402 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1403 library load/unload events.
1404 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1405 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1406 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1407 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1408 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1409 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1410 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1411 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1412
1413 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1414 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1415 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1416 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1417
1418 * New remote packets
1419
1420 QTBuffer:size
1421 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1422 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1423
1424 Qbtrace:bts
1425 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1426 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1427 qSupported query.
1428
1429 Qbtrace:off
1430 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1431 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1432
1433 qXfer:btrace:read
1434 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1435 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1436
1437 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1438
1439 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1440 for more x32 ABI info.
1441
1442 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1443
1444 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1445
1446 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1447 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1448 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1449 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1450 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1451 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1452 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1453 "info os msg" lists message queues
1454 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1455
1456 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1457 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1458 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1459 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1460 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1461 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1462
1463 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1464 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1465 record/replay support.
1466
1467 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1468
1469 * Python scripting
1470
1471 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1472 "gdb.COMMAND_USER".
1473
1474 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1475
1476 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1477 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1478
1479 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1480
1481 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1482 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1483
1484 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1485 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1486 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1487 symbol's value.
1488
1489 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1490 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1491
1492 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1493 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1494 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1495
1496 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1497 object associated with a PC value.
1498
1499 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1500 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1501
1502 * Go language support.
1503 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1504 language.
1505
1506 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1507 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1508
1509 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1510 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1511
1512 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1513 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1514 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1515 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1516 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1517 $1 = (ONE | TWO)
1518
1519 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1520 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1521 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1522 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1523
1524 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1525 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1526
1527 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1528 since December 2007.
1529
1530 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1531 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1532 command does. For instance:
1533
1534 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1535
1536 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1537 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1538 created, using the "condition" command.
1539
1540 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1541 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1542
1543 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1544
1545 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1546 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1547 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1548 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1549 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1550 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1551 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1552 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1553
1554 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1555 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1556 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1557 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1558 the .gdb_index section.
1559
1560 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1561
1562 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1563 target.
1564
1565 * MI changes
1566
1567 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1568
1569 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1570
1571 * New commands
1572
1573 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1574 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1575 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1576
1577 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1578 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1579
1580 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1581 several hits.
1582
1583 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1584 C++ and Java objects.
1585
1586 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1587 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1588 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1589 configured with '--with-python'.
1590
1591 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1592 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1593 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1594 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1595 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1596 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1597 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1598
1599 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1600 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1601 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1602 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1603
1604 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1605 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1606 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1607 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1608
1609 ** "set print symbol"
1610 "show print symbol"
1611 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1612 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1613 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1614
1615 * Deprecated commands
1616
1617 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1618 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1619
1620 * New targets
1621
1622 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1623 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1624
1625 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1626 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1627 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1628 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1629 evaluates to true.
1630
1631 * New options
1632
1633 set mips compression
1634 show mips compression
1635 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1636 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1637 mips16
1638 micromips
1639 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1640
1641 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1642 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1643 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1644 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1645 available mode.
1646 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1647 target.
1648
1649 set auto-load off
1650 Disable auto-loading globally.
1651
1652 show auto-load
1653 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1654
1655 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1656 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1657 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1658
1659 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1660 show auto-load python-scripts
1661 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1662
1663 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1664 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1665 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1666
1667 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1668 show auto-load libthread-db
1669 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1670
1671 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1672 show auto-load scripts-directory
1673 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1674 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1675 of the directories listed by this option.
1676 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1677
1678 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1679 show auto-load safe-path
1680 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1681 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1682
1683 set debug auto-load on|off
1684 show debug auto-load
1685 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1686
1687 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1688 show dprintf-style
1689 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1690 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1691 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1692 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1693
1694 set dprintf-function <expr>
1695 show dprintf-function
1696 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1697 show dprintf-channel
1698 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1699 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1700
1701 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1702 show disconnected-dprintf
1703 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1704 after GDB disconnects.
1705
1706 * New configure options
1707
1708 --with-auto-load-dir
1709 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1710 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1711 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1712 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1713 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1714
1715 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1716 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1717 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1718
1719 --without-auto-load-safe-path
1720 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
1721 security feature.
1722
1723 * New remote packets
1724
1725 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
1726
1727 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
1728 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
1729 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
1730 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
1731
1732 QProgramSignals:
1733
1734 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
1735 program without GDB involvement.
1736
1737 * New command line options
1738
1739 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
1740 before loading inferior.
1741 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
1742 execute it before loading inferior.
1743
1744 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
1745
1746 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
1747 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
1748 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
1749 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
1750 inferior changes.
1751
1752 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
1753 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
1754
1755 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
1756 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
1757 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
1758 target hardware watchpoint.
1759
1760 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
1761 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
1762 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
1763 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
1764
1765 * Python scripting
1766
1767 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
1768 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
1769 existing one.
1770
1771 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
1772 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
1773 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
1774 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
1775 now "message", which just prints the error message without
1776 the stack trace.
1777
1778 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
1779 Python API.
1780
1781 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
1782 modules library. This module provides functionality for
1783 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
1784 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
1785 corresponding value.
1786
1787 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
1788 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
1789 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
1790 on GDB start-up.
1791
1792 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
1793 static_block will return the global and static blocks
1794 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
1795 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
1796
1797 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
1798
1799 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
1800 "gdb.breakpoints".
1801
1802 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
1803 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
1804 available in the CLI.
1805
1806 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
1807 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
1808 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
1809 "some_type.items()".
1810
1811 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
1812 new object file.
1813
1814 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
1815 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
1816 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
1817 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
1818 any anonymous fields.
1819
1820 * MI changes
1821
1822 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
1823 "solib-event".
1824
1825 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
1826 "=breakpoint-modified".
1827
1828 ** New command -ada-task-info.
1829
1830 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
1831 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
1832 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
1833 lives.
1834
1835 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
1836 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
1837 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
1838 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
1839 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
1840
1841 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
1842 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
1843
1844 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
1845 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
1846 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
1847 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
1848 use this option to specify where to find it.
1849
1850 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
1851 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
1852 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
1853 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
1854 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
1855 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
1856 section in the user manual for more details.
1857
1858 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
1859 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
1860 become available after that.
1861
1862 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
1863
1864 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
1865 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
1866 gcc version 4.7.
1867
1868 * New commands
1869
1870 !SHELL COMMAND
1871 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
1872 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
1873
1874 * Changed commands
1875
1876 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
1877 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
1878 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
1879
1880 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
1881 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
1882 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
1883
1884 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
1885 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
1886 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
1887 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
1888 name starts with a hyphen.
1889
1890 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
1891 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
1892 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
1893 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
1894 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
1895 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
1896 number of bytes that will be collected.
1897
1898 tstart [NOTES]
1899 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
1900 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
1901 setting the variable trace-notes.
1902
1903 tstop [NOTES]
1904 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
1905 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
1906 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
1907 trace-stop-notes.
1908
1909 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
1910 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
1911 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
1912 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
1913 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
1914 is running.
1915
1916 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
1917 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
1918 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
1919
1920 * New options
1921
1922 set debug dwarf2-read
1923 show debug dwarf2-read
1924 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
1925 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
1926
1927 set debug symtab-create
1928 show debug symtab-create
1929 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
1930 creation. The default is off.
1931
1932 set extended-prompt
1933 show extended-prompt
1934 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
1935 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
1936 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
1937 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
1938 prompt is displayed.
1939
1940 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
1941 show print entry-values
1942 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
1943 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
1944 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
1945
1946 set debug entry-values
1947 show debug entry-values
1948 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
1949 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
1950
1951 set basenames-may-differ
1952 show basenames-may-differ
1953 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
1954 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
1955 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
1956 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
1957 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
1958 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
1959 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
1960 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
1961
1962 set trace-user
1963 show trace-user
1964 set trace-notes
1965 show trace-notes
1966 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
1967 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
1968 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
1969 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
1970
1971 set trace-stop-notes
1972 show trace-stop-notes
1973 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
1974 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
1975 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
1976 started by someone else.
1977
1978 * New remote packets
1979
1980 QTEnable
1981
1982 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1983
1984 QTDisable
1985
1986 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
1987
1988 QTNotes
1989
1990 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
1991
1992 qTP
1993
1994 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
1995
1996 qTMinFTPILen
1997
1998 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
1999 be placed.
2000
2001 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2002 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2003
2004 * New targets
2005
2006 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2007
2008 * New Simulators
2009
2010 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2011
2012 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2013
2014 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2015
2016 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2017
2018 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2019 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2020 matches the given regular expression.
2021
2022 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2023
2024 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2025 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2026
2027 * New command line options
2028
2029 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2030 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2031
2032 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2033 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2034
2035 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2036 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2037 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2038
2039 * GDB now understands thread names.
2040
2041 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2042 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2043
2044 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2045 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2046
2047 * OpenCL C
2048 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2049 has been integrated into GDB.
2050
2051 * Python scripting
2052
2053 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2054 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2055 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2056
2057 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2058 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2059 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2060 and allows for more dynamic content.
2061
2062 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2063 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2064 have an is_valid method.
2065
2066 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2067 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2068 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2069
2070 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2071
2072 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2073 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2074 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2075 that function like so:
2076
2077 result = some_value (10,20)
2078
2079 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2080 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2081 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2082
2083 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2084 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2085 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2086 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2087 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2088
2089 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2090 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2091
2092 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2093
2094 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2095 selected thread.
2096
2097 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2098 holds the thread's name.
2099
2100 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2101 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2102 occurring in the process being debugged.
2103 The following events are currently supported:
2104 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2105 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2106 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2107
2108 * C++ Improvements:
2109
2110 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2111 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2112
2113 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2114
2115 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2116 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2117 was added to GCC 4.5.
2118
2119 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2120 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2121 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2122 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2123 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2124 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2125
2126 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2127 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2128 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2129 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2130 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2131
2132 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2133 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2134 execution to a label.
2135
2136 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2137 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2138 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2139 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2140
2141 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2142 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2143 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2144 of scope.
2145
2146 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2147
2148 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2149 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2150 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2151 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2152 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2153 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2154
2155 (gdb) info threads
2156 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2157
2158 While now you see this:
2159
2160 (gdb) info threads
2161 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2162
2163 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2164 dumps.
2165
2166 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2167 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2168 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2169 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2170
2171 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2172 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2173 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2174 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2175 section in the user manual for more details.
2176
2177 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2178
2179 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2180 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2181
2182 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2183
2184 * New native configurations
2185
2186 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2187
2188 * New targets:
2189
2190 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2191
2192 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2193 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2194 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2195 in the GDB user manual.
2196
2197 * Guile support was removed.
2198
2199 * New features in the GNU simulator
2200
2201 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2202
2203 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2204
2205 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2206
2207 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2208
2209 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2210 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2211 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2212 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2213 was always disabled for such configurations.
2214
2215 * C++ Improvements:
2216
2217 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2218
2219 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2220 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2221 For example:
2222 namespace A
2223 {
2224 class B { };
2225 void foo (B) { }
2226 }
2227 ...
2228 A::B b
2229 foo(b)
2230 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2231 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2232 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2233
2234 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2235
2236 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2237 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2238 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2239 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2240 entry.
2241 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2242 mentioned flavors of operators.
2243
2244 ** static const class members
2245
2246 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2247 class definition has been fixed.
2248
2249 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2250
2251 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2252 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2253 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2254 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2255 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2256 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2257
2258 * Static tracepoints
2259
2260 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2261 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2262 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2263 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2264 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2265 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2266 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2267 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2268 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2269 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2270 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2271 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2272 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2273 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2274 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2275 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2276 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2277 the "New remote packets" section below.
2278
2279 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2280
2281 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2282 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2283 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2284 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2285
2286 * Observer mode
2287
2288 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2289 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2290 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2291 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2292 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2293 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2294 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2295
2296 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2297 current thread.
2298
2299 * New remote packets
2300
2301 qGetTIBAddr
2302
2303 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2304
2305 qRelocInsn
2306
2307 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2308 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2309 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2310 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2311 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2312 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2313
2314 qTfSTM, qTsSTM
2315
2316 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2317
2318 qTSTMat
2319
2320 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2321 program.
2322
2323 qXfer:statictrace:read
2324
2325 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2326 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2327 to gdb's qSupported query.
2328
2329 QAllow
2330
2331 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2332
2333 QTDPsrc
2334
2335 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2336 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2337
2338 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2339 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2340 a directory.
2341
2342 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2343
2344 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2345 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2346 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2347 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2348
2349 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2350 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2351 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2352 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2353 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2354 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2355 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2356
2357 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2358 for static tracepoints support.
2359
2360 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2361
2362 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2363 it understands register description.
2364
2365 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2366
2367 * X86 general purpose registers
2368
2369 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2370 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2371 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2372 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2373 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2374
2375 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2376 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2377 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2378 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2379 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2380 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2381
2382 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2383 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2384 in the specified file.
2385
2386 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2387 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2388 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2389 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2390 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2391 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2392 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2393 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2394 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2395 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2396
2397 * New commands
2398
2399 eval template, expressions...
2400 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2401 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2402
2403 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2404 show target-file-system-kind
2405 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2406 names.
2407
2408 save breakpoints <filename>
2409 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2410 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2411 definitions, use the `source' command.
2412
2413 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2414 is now deprecated.
2415
2416 info static-tracepoint-markers
2417 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2418
2419 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2420 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2421 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2422
2423 set observer on|off
2424 show observer
2425 Enable and disable observer mode.
2426
2427 set may-write-registers on|off
2428 set may-write-memory on|off
2429 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2430 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2431 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2432 set may-interrupt on|off
2433 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2434 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2435 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2436 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2437 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2438 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2439 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2440
2441 set record memory-query on|off
2442 show record memory-query
2443 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2444 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2445
2446 * Changed commands
2447
2448 disassemble
2449 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2450
2451 * Python scripting
2452
2453 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2454 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2455 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2456 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2457 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2458
2459 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2460 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2461 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2462 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2463
2464 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2465 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2466
2467 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2468
2469 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2470
2471 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2472
2473 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2474 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2475 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2476
2477 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2478 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2479 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2480 regular breakpoints.
2481
2482 * New targets
2483
2484 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2485
2486 * D language support.
2487 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2488 language.
2489
2490 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2491 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2492 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2493 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2494 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2495
2496 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2497 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2498 conditions of the form:
2499
2500 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2501
2502 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2503 interface mentioned above.
2504
2505 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2506
2507 * C++ Improvements
2508
2509 ** Namespace Support
2510
2511 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2512 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2513 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2514 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2515 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2516
2517 ** Bug Fixes
2518
2519 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2520 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2521 qualified name.
2522
2523 ** Cast Operators
2524
2525 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2526 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2527
2528 * New targets
2529
2530 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2531 Renesas RX rx-*-elf
2532
2533 * New Simulators
2534
2535 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2536 Renesas RX rx
2537
2538 * Multi-program debugging.
2539
2540 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2541 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2542 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2543 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2544 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2545 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2546 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2547 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2548
2549 * New tracing features
2550
2551 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2552
2553 ** Trace state variables
2554
2555 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2556 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2557 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2558 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2559 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2560 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2561 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2562 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2563 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2564 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2565
2566 ** Fast tracepoints
2567
2568 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2569 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2570 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2571 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2572 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2573 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2574 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2575 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2576 the regular trace command.
2577
2578 ** Disconnected tracing
2579
2580 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2581 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2582 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2583 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2584 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2585
2586 ** Trace files
2587
2588 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2589 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2590 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2591 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2592 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2593 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2594 <name>".
2595
2596 ** Circular trace buffer
2597
2598 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2599 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2600 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2601 not be available for all target agents.
2602
2603 * Changed commands
2604
2605 disassemble
2606 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2607 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2608
2609 info variables
2610 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2611 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2612
2613 source
2614 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2615 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2616 support.
2617
2618 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2619 "set script-extension" (see below).
2620
2621 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2622
2623 record save [<FILENAME>]
2624 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2625 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2626
2627 record restore <FILENAME>
2628 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2629 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2630
2631 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2632 Add a new inferior.
2633
2634 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2635 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2636 inferior has loaded.
2637
2638 remove-inferior ID
2639 Remove an inferior.
2640
2641 maint info program-spaces
2642 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2643
2644 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2645 show remote interrupt-sequence
2646 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2647 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2648 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2649 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2650 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2651
2652 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2653 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2654 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2655 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2656 Linux kernel.
2657
2658 set remotebreak [on | off]
2659 show remotebreak
2660 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2661
2662 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2663 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2664
2665 info tvariables
2666 List trace state variables and their values.
2667
2668 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2669 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2670
2671 teval EXPR, ...
2672 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2673 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2674
2675 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2676 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2677
2678 * New expression syntax
2679
2680 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2681 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2682
2683 * New options
2684
2685 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2686 show follow-exec-mode
2687 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2688 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2689 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2690
2691 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2692 show default-collect
2693 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2694 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2695 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2696
2697 set disconnected-tracing
2698 show disconnected-tracing
2699 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2700 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2701 upon disconnection.
2702
2703 set circular-trace-buffer
2704 show circular-trace-buffer
2705 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2706 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2707 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2708 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2709
2710 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2711 show script-extension
2712 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2713 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2714 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2715 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2716 evaluation failed.
2717 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2718
2719 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
2720 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
2721 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
2722 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
2723 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
2724 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
2725 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
2726 is on.
2727
2728 * Python API Improvements
2729
2730 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
2731 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
2732 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
2733
2734 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
2735 `is_base_class' attribute.
2736
2737 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
2738
2739 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
2740 evaluate an expression.
2741
2742 * New remote packets
2743
2744 QTDV
2745 Define a trace state variable.
2746
2747 qTV
2748 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
2749
2750 QTDisconnected
2751 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
2752
2753 QTBuffer:circular
2754 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
2755
2756 qTfP, qTsP
2757 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
2758
2759 * Bug fixes
2760
2761 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
2762
2763 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
2764 much more reliable. In particular:
2765 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
2766 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
2767 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
2768 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
2769 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
2770 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
2771 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
2772 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
2773 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
2774 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
2775 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
2776 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
2777 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
2778 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
2779 non-threaded programs.
2780
2781 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
2782 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
2783 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
2784 executable program.
2785
2786 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
2787
2788 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
2789 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
2790 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
2791 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
2792 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
2793
2794 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
2795 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
2796 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
2797 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
2798 for tracepoint actions.
2799
2800 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
2801 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
2802 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
2803
2804 * Process record and replay
2805
2806 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
2807 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
2808 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
2809 execute commands.
2810
2811 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
2812 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
2813 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
2814 reverse execution.
2815
2816 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
2817 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
2818 2.6.28 or later.
2819
2820 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
2821 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
2822 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
2823 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
2824 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
2825 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
2826 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
2827 the installation instructions for more information.
2828
2829 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
2830 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
2831 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
2832 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
2833
2834 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
2835 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
2836
2837 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
2838 now complete on file names.
2839
2840 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
2841 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
2842 For instance, consider:
2843
2844 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
2845 # struct example variable;
2846 (gdb) p variable.
2847
2848 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
2849 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
2850
2851 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
2852 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
2853
2854 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
2855 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
2856 macros.
2857
2858 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
2859 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
2860 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
2861
2862 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
2863 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
2864 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
2865 and simulator targets may also provide them.
2866
2867 * New remote packets
2868
2869 qSearch:memory:
2870 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
2871
2872 QStartNoAckMode
2873 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
2874 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
2875 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
2876
2877 vKill
2878 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
2879 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
2880
2881 qXfer:osdata:read
2882 Obtains additional operating system information
2883
2884 qXfer:siginfo:read
2885 qXfer:siginfo:write
2886 Read or write additional signal information.
2887
2888 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
2889
2890 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
2891 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
2892 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
2893
2894 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
2895 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
2896
2897 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
2898 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
2899 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
2900
2901 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
2902 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
2903
2904 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
2905
2906 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
2907
2908 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
2909 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
2910
2911 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
2912 list of section offsets.
2913
2914 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
2915 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
2916 have also been fixed.
2917
2918 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
2919 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
2920 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
2921
2922 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
2923 example, given:
2924
2925 template<typename T> class C { };
2926 C<char const *> c;
2927
2928 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
2929
2930 ptype C<char const *>
2931 ptype C<char const*>
2932 ptype C<const char *>
2933 ptype C<const char*>
2934
2935 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
2936
2937 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
2938 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
2939
2940 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
2941 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2942 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
2943
2944 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
2945 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
2946
2947 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
2948 gdbserver.
2949
2950 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
2951 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
2952
2953 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
2954 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
2955 as appropriate.
2956
2957 * Python scripting
2958
2959 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
2960 available is determined at configure time.
2961
2962 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
2963
2964 * Ada tasking support
2965
2966 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
2967 been introduced:
2968
2969 info tasks
2970 Print the list of Ada tasks.
2971 info task N
2972 Print detailed information about task number N.
2973 task
2974 Print the task number of the current task.
2975 task N
2976 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
2977
2978 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
2979 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
2980
2981 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
2982
2983 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
2984 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
2985 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
2986 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
2987 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
2988 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
2989 below.
2990
2991 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
2992 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
2993 information.
2994
2995 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
2996 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
2997 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
2998 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
2999 more information.
3000
3001 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3002
3003 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3004 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3005 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3006 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3007 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3008
3009 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3010 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3011 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3012 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3013 --enable-targets configure option.
3014
3015 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3016
3017 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3018 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3019 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3020 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3021 section in the user manual for more information.
3022
3023 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3024 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3025 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3026 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3027 extensions on linux targets.
3028
3029 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3030
3031 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3032 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3033 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3034 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3035 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3036 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3037 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3038 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3039 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3040
3041 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3042 val1 [, val2, ...]
3043 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3044
3045 maint set python print-stack
3046 maint show python print-stack
3047 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3048
3049 python [CODE]
3050 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3051
3052 macro define
3053 macro list
3054 macro undef
3055 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3056 interactively.
3057
3058 info os processes
3059 Show operating system information about processes.
3060
3061 info inferiors
3062 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3063
3064 inferior NUM
3065 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3066
3067 detach inferior NUM
3068 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3069
3070 kill inferior NUM
3071 Kill inferior number NUM.
3072
3073 * New options
3074
3075 set spu stop-on-load
3076 show spu stop-on-load
3077 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3078
3079 set spu auto-flush-cache
3080 show spu auto-flush-cache
3081 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3082 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3083
3084 set sh calling-convention
3085 show sh calling-convention
3086 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3087
3088 set debug timestamp
3089 show debug timestamp
3090 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3091
3092 set disassemble-next-line
3093 show disassemble-next-line
3094 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3095 the debuggee stops.
3096
3097 set remote noack-packet
3098 show remote noack-packet
3099 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3100 under "New remote packets."
3101
3102 set remote query-attached-packet
3103 show remote query-attached-packet
3104 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3105
3106 set remote read-siginfo-object
3107 show remote read-siginfo-object
3108 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3109 packet.
3110
3111 set remote write-siginfo-object
3112 show remote write-siginfo-object
3113 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3114 packet.
3115
3116 set remote reverse-continue
3117 show remote reverse-continue
3118 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3119
3120 set remote reverse-step
3121 show remote reverse-step
3122 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3123
3124 set displaced-stepping
3125 show displaced-stepping
3126 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3127 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3128 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3129
3130 set debug displaced
3131 show debug displaced
3132 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3133
3134 maint set internal-error
3135 maint show internal-error
3136 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3137
3138 maint set internal-warning
3139 maint show internal-warning
3140 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3141
3142 set exec-wrapper
3143 show exec-wrapper
3144 unset exec-wrapper
3145 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3146
3147 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3148 show multiple-symbols
3149 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3150 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3151 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3152
3153 set breakpoint always-inserted
3154 show breakpoint always-inserted
3155 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3156 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3157 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3158
3159 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3160 show arm fallback-mode
3161 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3162 show arm force-mode
3163 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3164 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3165 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3166 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3167
3168 set disable-randomization
3169 show disable-randomization
3170 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3171 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3172 multiple debugging sessions.
3173
3174 set non-stop
3175 show non-stop
3176 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3177 a breakpoint.
3178
3179 set target-async
3180 show target-async
3181 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3182 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3183 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3184 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3185
3186 set target-wide-charset
3187 show target-wide-charset
3188 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3189 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3190
3191 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3192 show tcp auto-retry
3193 set tcp connect-timeout
3194 show tcp connect-timeout
3195 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3196 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3197 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3198
3199 set libthread-db-search-path
3200 show libthread-db-search-path
3201 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3202 libthread_db.
3203
3204 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3205 show schedule-multiple
3206 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3207 the current process.
3208
3209 set stack-cache
3210 show stack-cache
3211 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3212 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3213 affecting correctness.
3214
3215 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3216 show interactive-mode
3217 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3218 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3219 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3220 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3221 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3222
3223 * Removed commands
3224
3225 info forks
3226 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3227 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3228 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3229 command.
3230
3231 fork NUM
3232 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3233 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3234 alias for the `fork' command.
3235
3236 process PID
3237 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3238 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3239 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3240
3241 delete fork NUM
3242 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3243 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3244 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3245 fork' command.
3246
3247 detach fork NUM
3248 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3249 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3250 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3251 fork' command.
3252
3253 * New native configurations
3254
3255 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3256
3257 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3258
3259 * New targets
3260
3261 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3262 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3263 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3264 S+core 3 score-*-*
3265
3266 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3267 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3268
3269 * Removed commands
3270
3271 catch load
3272 catch unload
3273 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3274
3275 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3276
3277 * New native configurations
3278
3279 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3280 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3281
3282 * New targets
3283
3284 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3285 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3286
3287 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3288
3289 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3290 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3291 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3292 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3293
3294 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3295 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3296
3297 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3298 is resolved.
3299
3300 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3301 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3302 and in inlined functions.
3303
3304 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3305 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3306 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3307
3308 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3309
3310 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3311 registers on PowerPC targets.
3312
3313 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3314 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3315
3316 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3317 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3318
3319 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3320 extended-remote mode.
3321
3322 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3323 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3324 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3325 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3326
3327 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3328 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3329 target architectures.
3330
3331 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3332 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3333 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3334 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3335
3336 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3337 breakpoints now.
3338
3339 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3340 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3341 include:
3342 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3343 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3344 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3345 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3346 of an assignment
3347 - Improved command completion in Ada
3348 - Several bug fixes
3349
3350 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3351 process.
3352
3353 * New commands
3354
3355 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3356 show print frame-arguments
3357 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3358 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3359
3360 remote put
3361 remote get
3362 remote delete
3363 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3364
3365 * New MI commands
3366
3367 -target-file-put
3368 -target-file-get
3369 -target-file-delete
3370 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3371
3372 * New remote packets
3373
3374 vFile:open:
3375 vFile:close:
3376 vFile:pread:
3377 vFile:pwrite:
3378 vFile:unlink:
3379 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3380
3381 vAttach
3382 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3383 mode.
3384
3385 vRun
3386 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3387
3388 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3389
3390 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3391 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3392 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3393
3394 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3395 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3396 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3397
3398 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3399 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3400 is not supported.
3401
3402 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3403 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3404
3405 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3406 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3407
3408 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3409
3410 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3411 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3412 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3413
3414 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3415 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3416
3417 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3418 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3419 as strings.
3420
3421 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3422 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3423 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3424
3425 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3426 iWMMXt coprocessor.
3427
3428 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3429 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3430 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3431
3432 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3433
3434 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3435
3436 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3437 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3438 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3439
3440 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3441 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3442
3443 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3444 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3445 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3446 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3447 Windows and SymbianOS).
3448
3449 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3450 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3451
3452 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3453 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3454
3455 * New commands
3456
3457 set remoteflow
3458 show remoteflow
3459 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3460 when debugging using remote targets.
3461
3462 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3463 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3464 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3465 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3466 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3467 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3468 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3469
3470 set breakpoint auto-hw
3471 show breakpoint auto-hw
3472 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3473 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3474 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3475 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3476 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3477 including "next" and "finish".
3478
3479 catch exception
3480 catch exception unhandled
3481 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3482
3483 catch assert
3484 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3485
3486 set sysroot
3487 show sysroot
3488 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3489 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3490 an alias to "set sysroot".
3491
3492 info spu
3493 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3494 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3495 architecture.
3496
3497 * New native configurations
3498
3499 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3500
3501 set tdesc filename
3502 unset tdesc filename
3503 show tdesc filename
3504 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3505 not query the target for its built-in description.
3506
3507 * New targets
3508
3509 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3510 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3511 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3512
3513 * New remote packets
3514
3515 QPassSignals:
3516 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3517 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3518
3519 qXfer:features:read:
3520 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3521 features.
3522
3523 qXfer:spu:read:
3524 qXfer:spu:write:
3525 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3526 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3527
3528 qXfer:libraries:read:
3529 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3530 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3531 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3532 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3533
3534 * Removed targets
3535
3536 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3537
3538 alpha*-*-osf1*
3539 alpha*-*-osf2*
3540 d10v-*-*
3541 hppa*-*-hiux*
3542 i[34567]86-ncr-*
3543 i[34567]86-*-dgux*
3544 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3545 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3546 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3547 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3548 i[34567]86-*-sco*
3549 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3550 i[34567]86-*-sysv4*
3551 i[34567]86-*-sysv5*
3552 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3553 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3554 i[34567]86-*-sysv*
3555 i[34567]86-*-isc*
3556 m68*-cisco*-*
3557 m68*-tandem-*
3558 mips*-*-pe
3559 rs6000-*-lynxos*
3560 sh*-*-pe
3561
3562 * Other removed features
3563
3564 target abug
3565 target cpu32bug
3566 target est
3567 target rom68k
3568
3569 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3570
3571 target hms
3572 target e7000
3573 target sh3
3574 target sh3e
3575
3576 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3577 H8/300.
3578
3579 target ocd
3580
3581 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3582 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3583 interfaces.
3584
3585 DWARF 1 support
3586
3587 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3588 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3589
3590 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3591
3592 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3593 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3594 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3595 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3596
3597 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3598
3599 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3600 in debugging information.
3601
3602 Scheme support
3603
3604 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3605 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3606
3607 set mips stack-arg-size
3608 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3609
3610 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3611
3612 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3613
3614 * New targets
3615
3616 Xtensa xtensa-elf
3617 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3618
3619 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3620 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3621 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3622
3623 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3624 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3625 supported.
3626
3627 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3628 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3629
3630 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3631 stub provides the required support.
3632
3633 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3634 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3635
3636 * New commands
3637
3638 set substitute-path
3639 unset substitute-path
3640 show substitute-path
3641 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3642 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3643 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3644 between compilation and debugging.
3645
3646 set trace-commands
3647 show trace-commands
3648 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3649 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3650 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3651
3652 * REMOVED features
3653
3654 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3655
3656 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3657 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3658
3659 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3660
3661 * New remote packets
3662
3663 qSupported:
3664 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3665 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3666 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3667 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3668 target.
3669
3670 qXfer:auxv:read:
3671 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3672 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3673
3674 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3675 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3676 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3677
3678 vFlashErase:
3679 vFlashWrite:
3680 vFlashDone:
3681 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3682
3683 * Removed remote packets
3684
3685 qPart:auxv:read:
3686 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3687 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3688
3689 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3690
3691 * New targets
3692
3693 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3694
3695 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3696
3697 * New commands
3698
3699 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3700 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3701
3702 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3703
3704 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3705
3706 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3707 previously saved state.
3708
3709 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3710
3711 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3712
3713 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3714 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3715
3716 info forks List forks of the user program that
3717 are available to be debugged.
3718
3719 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
3720 forks of the user program that are
3721 available to be debugged.
3722
3723 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3724 that are available to be debugged (and
3725 kill the forked process).
3726
3727 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
3728 that are available to be debugged (and
3729 allow the process to continue).
3730
3731 * New architecture
3732
3733 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
3734
3735 * Improved Windows host support
3736
3737 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
3738 native console support, and remote communications using either
3739 network sockets or serial ports.
3740
3741 * Improved Modula-2 language support
3742
3743 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
3744 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
3745 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
3746 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
3747 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
3748 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
3749
3750 * REMOVED features
3751
3752 The ARM rdi-share module.
3753
3754 The Netware NLM debug server.
3755
3756 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
3757
3758 * New native configurations
3759
3760 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
3761 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
3762
3763 * New targets
3764
3765 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3766
3767 * New command line options
3768
3769 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
3770 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
3771 the child (debugged) program exited with.
3772 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
3773 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
3774 specified multiple times and in conjunction
3775 with the --command (-x) option.
3776
3777 * Deprecated commands removed
3778
3779 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
3780 removed:
3781
3782 Command Replacement
3783 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
3784 othernames set arm disassembler
3785 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
3786 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
3787 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
3788 regs info registers
3789
3790 * New BSD user-level threads support
3791
3792 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
3793 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
3794 configurations are:
3795
3796 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3797 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
3798 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
3799
3800 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
3801 are not yet supported.
3802
3803 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
3804 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
3805
3806 * REMOVED configurations and files
3807
3808 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
3809 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
3810 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
3811
3812 * New "set print array-indexes" command
3813
3814 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
3815 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
3816 behavior.
3817
3818 * VAX floating point support
3819
3820 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
3821
3822 * User-defined command support
3823
3824 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
3825 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
3826 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
3827
3828 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
3829
3830 * New command line option
3831
3832 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
3833 debugging.
3834
3835 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
3836
3837 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
3838 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
3839 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
3840 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
3841 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
3842
3843 * Internationalization
3844
3845 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
3846 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
3847 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
3848
3849 * Ada
3850
3851 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
3852 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
3853 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
3854
3855 * New native configurations
3856
3857 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
3858
3859 * Remote 'p' packet
3860
3861 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
3862 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
3863
3864 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
3865
3866 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3867 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
3868 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
3869 i386 application).
3870
3871 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
3872 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
3873 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
3874 configurations:
3875
3876 hppa-*-hpux
3877 ia64-*-aix
3878 mips-*-irix*
3879 *-*-lynx
3880 mips-*-linux-gnu
3881 sds protocol
3882 xdr protocol
3883 powerpc bdm protocol
3884
3885 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
3886 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
3887
3888 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
3889
3890 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
3891 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
3892 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
3893 permanently REMOVED.
3894
3895 h8300-*-*
3896 mcore-*-*
3897 mn10300-*-*
3898 ns32k-*-*
3899 sh64-*-*
3900 v850-*-*
3901
3902 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
3903
3904 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
3905
3906 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
3907 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
3908 been fixed.
3909
3910 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
3911
3912 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
3913 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
3914 IRIX long double values).
3915
3916 * VAX and "next"
3917
3918 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
3919 command. This problem has been fixed.
3920
3921 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
3922
3923 * Fix for ``many threads''
3924
3925 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
3926 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
3927 error message:
3928
3929 ptrace: No such process.
3930 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
3931
3932 This problem has been fixed.
3933
3934 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
3935
3936 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
3937 GDB to dump core).
3938
3939 * New ``start'' command.
3940
3941 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
3942
3943 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
3944
3945 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
3946 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
3947 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
3948
3949 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
3950 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
3951 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
3952 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
3953 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
3954 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
3955 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
3956 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
3957 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
3958
3959 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
3960
3961 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
3962 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
3963 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
3964 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
3965 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
3966
3967 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
3968 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
3969 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
3970
3971 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
3972
3973 * New native configurations
3974
3975 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
3976 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
3977 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
3978 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
3979 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
3980 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
3981 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
3982
3983 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
3984
3985 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
3986 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
3987 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
3988 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
3989 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
3990 work, was also included.
3991
3992 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
3993 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
3994
3995 h8300-*-*
3996 mcore-*-*
3997 mn10300-*-*
3998 ns32k-*-*
3999 sh64-*-*
4000 v850-*-*
4001 xstormy16-*-*
4002
4003 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4004 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4005
4006 * REMOVED configurations and files
4007
4008 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4009 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4010 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4011 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4012 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4013 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4014 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4015 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4016 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4017 sonymips mips-sony-*
4018 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4019
4020 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4021
4022 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4023
4024 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4025 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4026 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4027 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4028 with GDB".
4029
4030 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4031
4032 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4033 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4034 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4035 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4036 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4037 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4038 are created.
4039
4040 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4041
4042 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4043
4044 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4045 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4046 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4047
4048 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4049
4050 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4051 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4052
4053 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4054
4055 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4056 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4057 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4058
4059 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4060
4061 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4062 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4063
4064 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4065
4066 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4067 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4068 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4069
4070 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4071
4072 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4073 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4074 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4075
4076 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4077
4078 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4079
4080 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4081 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4082
4083 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4084
4085 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4086 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4087 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4088 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4089
4090 * Revised SPARC target
4091
4092 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4093 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4094 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4095 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4096 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4097
4098 * New C++ demangler
4099
4100 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4101 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4102 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4103 programs.
4104
4105 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4106
4107 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4108 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4109 encountered these.
4110
4111 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4112
4113 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4114 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4115 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4116 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4117 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4118 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4119 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4120 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4121 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4122
4123 * New native configurations
4124
4125 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4126 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4127 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4128 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4129 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4130
4131 * New debugging protocols
4132
4133 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4134
4135 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4136
4137 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4138 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4139 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4140
4141 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4142
4143 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4144 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4145 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4146 permanently REMOVED.
4147
4148 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4149 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4150 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4151 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4152 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4153 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4154 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4155 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4156 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4157 sonymips mips-sony-*
4158 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4159
4160 * REMOVED configurations and files
4161
4162 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4163 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4164 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4165 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4166 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4167 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4168 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4169 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4170 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4171 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4172 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4173 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4174 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4175 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4176 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4177 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4178 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4179
4180 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4181
4182 * Objective-C
4183
4184 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4185 integrated into GDB.
4186
4187 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4188
4189 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4190 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4191 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4192 backtraces.
4193
4194 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4195 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4196 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4197
4198 * Hosted file I/O.
4199
4200 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4201 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4202 remote protocol documentation for details.
4203
4204 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4205
4206 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4207 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4208 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4209 ppc32 on ppc64).
4210
4211 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4212
4213 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4214 per-thread variables.
4215
4216 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4217
4218 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4219 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4220
4221 * Separate debug info.
4222
4223 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4224 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4225 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4226 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4227 and optional debug files.
4228
4229 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4230
4231 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4232 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4233 debugger.
4234
4235 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4236 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4237
4238 * Java
4239
4240 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4241 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4242 considered "useable".
4243
4244 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4245
4246 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4247 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4248 kernel.
4249
4250 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4251
4252 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4253 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4254
4255 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4256
4257 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4258 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4259 command.
4260
4261 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4262
4263 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4264 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4265
4266 * Profiling support
4267
4268 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4269 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4270 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4271 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4272 data, for more informative profiling results.
4273
4274 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4275
4276 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4277 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4278 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4279
4280 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4281 removed.
4282
4283 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4284 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4285 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4286 in a subsequent -var-update.
4287
4288 * New native configurations.
4289
4290 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4291
4292 * Multi-arched targets.
4293
4294 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4295 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4296
4297 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4298
4299 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4300 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4301 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4302 permanently REMOVED.
4303
4304 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4305 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4306 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4307 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4308 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4309 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4310 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4311 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4312 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4313 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4314 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4315 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4316
4317 * REMOVED configurations and files
4318
4319 V850EA ISA
4320 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4321 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4322 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4323 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4324 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4325 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4326 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4327 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4328 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4329 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4330 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4331 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4332 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4333
4334 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4335
4336 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4337 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4338 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4339 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4340 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4341
4342 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4343
4344 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4345
4346 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4347 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4348 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4349 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4350 shared libs like mad''.
4351
4352 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4353
4354 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4355 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4356 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4357 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4358
4359 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4360
4361 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4362 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4363 they expand.
4364
4365 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4366 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4367
4368 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4369 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4370
4371 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4372 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4373 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4374 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4375
4376 * Multi-arched targets.
4377
4378 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4379 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4380 NEC V850 v850-*-*
4381 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4382 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4383 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4384
4385 * New targets.
4386
4387 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4388
4389
4390 * New native configurations
4391
4392 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4393 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4394 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4395 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4396
4397 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4398
4399 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4400 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4401 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4402 permanently REMOVED.
4403
4404 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4405 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4406 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4407 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4408 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4409 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4410 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4411 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4412 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4413 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4414 m68*-apollo*-bsd*,
4415 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4416 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4417
4418 * OBSOLETE languages
4419
4420 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4421
4422 * REMOVED configurations and files
4423
4424 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4425 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4426 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4427 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4428 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4429
4430 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4431
4432 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4433
4434 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4435 commands. The default is 1024.
4436
4437 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4438
4439 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4440
4441 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4442
4443 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4444 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4445 from a file into memory (restore).
4446
4447 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4448
4449 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4450 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4451 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4452
4453 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4454
4455 * New targets.
4456
4457 Atmel AVR avr*-*-*
4458
4459 * Bug fixes
4460
4461 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4462 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4463 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4464
4465 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4466 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4467 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4468
4469 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4470 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4471 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4472
4473 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4474 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4475 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4476
4477 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4478
4479 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4480
4481 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4482 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4483 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4484 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4485 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4486 (notably embedded) targets.
4487
4488 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4489
4490 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4491 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4492 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4493 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4494
4495 * New command line option
4496
4497 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4498
4499 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4500
4501 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4502 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4503 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4504 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4505 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4506 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4507 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4508 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4509 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4510 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4511
4512 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4513
4514 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4515 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4516
4517 * New native configurations
4518
4519 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4520 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4521 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4522 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4523
4524 * New targets
4525
4526 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4527
4528 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4529
4530 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4531 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4532 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4533 permanently REMOVED.
4534
4535 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4536 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4537 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4538 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4539 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4540
4541 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4542
4543 * REMOVED configurations and files
4544
4545 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4546 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4547 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4548 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4549 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4550 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4551 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4552 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4553 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4554 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4555 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4556 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4557 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4558
4559 * Changes to command line processing
4560
4561 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4562 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4563
4564 * Changes to key bindings
4565
4566 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4567
4568 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4569
4570 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4571
4572 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4573 corrupted.
4574
4575 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4576
4577 Numerous documentation fixes.
4578
4579 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4580
4581 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4582
4583 * New native configurations
4584
4585 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4586 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4587 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4588 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4589 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4590 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4591
4592 * New targets
4593
4594 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4595 CRIS cris-axis
4596 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4597
4598 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4599
4600 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4601 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4602 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4603 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4604 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4605 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
4606 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4607 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4608 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4609 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4610 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4611 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4612 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4613 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4614
4615 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4616 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4617
4618 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4619 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4620 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4621 permanently REMOVED.
4622
4623 * REMOVED configurations and files
4624
4625 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4626 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4627 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4628 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4629 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4630 ser-ocd.c *-*-*
4631
4632 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4633
4634 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4635 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4636 present.
4637
4638 * Other news:
4639
4640 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4641
4642 * The MI enabled by default.
4643
4644 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4645 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4646 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4647 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4648 which is now deprecated.
4649
4650 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4651
4652 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4653 main features are supported:
4654
4655 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4656
4657 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4658 extension;
4659
4660 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4661
4662 - a Pascal expression parser.
4663
4664 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4665
4666 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4667
4668 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4669
4670 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4671 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4672
4673 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4674
4675 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4676
4677 * Changes in completion.
4678
4679 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4680 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4681 users expect at the shell prompt.
4682
4683 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4684 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4685 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4686 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4687 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4688 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4689 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4690
4691 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4692
4693 * New platform-independent commands:
4694
4695 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4696 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4697 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4698
4699 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4700
4701 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4702 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4703 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4704
4705 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4706
4707 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4708 multi-threaded programs though.
4709
4710 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4711
4712 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4713
4714 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4715 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4716 supported.)
4717
4718 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
4719
4720 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
4721 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
4722 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
4723 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
4724 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
4725 registers.
4726
4727 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
4728 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
4729 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
4730
4731 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
4732
4733 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
4734 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
4735
4736 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
4737 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
4738 IDT.
4739
4740 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
4741 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
4742 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
4743 a given linear address.
4744
4745 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
4746 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
4747 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
4748
4749 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
4750
4751 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
4752
4753 * Changes in documentation.
4754
4755 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
4756 Documentation License.
4757
4758 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4759 manual.
4760
4761 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
4762
4763 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
4764 manual.
4765
4766 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
4767 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
4768 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
4769
4770 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
4771
4772 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
4773 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
4774 contents of this file.
4775
4776 * gdba.el deleted
4777
4778 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
4779
4780 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
4781
4782 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
4783
4784 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
4785 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
4786 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
4787 greater level of detail.
4788
4789 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
4790
4791 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
4792 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
4793 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
4794 written.
4795
4796 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
4797
4798 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
4799 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
4800 machines ``out of the box''.
4801
4802 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
4803 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
4804 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
4805 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
4806 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
4807
4808 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
4809 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
4810 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
4811 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
4812 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
4813
4814 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
4815 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
4816 also works.
4817
4818 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
4819 GDB.
4820
4821 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
4822 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
4823 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
4824 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
4825
4826 * New native configurations
4827
4828 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
4829 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
4830
4831 * New targets
4832
4833 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
4834 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
4835 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
4836 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4837
4838 * OBSOLETE configurations
4839
4840 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4841 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4842 Pyramid pyramid-*-*
4843 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4844 Tahoe tahoe-*-*
4845
4846 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4847 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4848 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4849 be permanently REMOVED.
4850
4851 * Gould support removed
4852
4853 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
4854
4855 * New features for SVR4
4856
4857 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
4858 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
4859 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
4860
4861 * Many C++ enhancements
4862
4863 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
4864 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
4865
4866 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
4867
4868 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
4869 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
4870 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
4871 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
4872
4873 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
4874 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
4875
4876 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
4877
4878 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
4879 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
4880 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
4881
4882 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
4883 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
4884
4885 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
4886
4887 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
4888 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
4889 include ``set remote P-packet''.
4890
4891 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
4892
4893 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
4894 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
4895 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
4896
4897 * ``apropos'' command added.
4898
4899 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
4900 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
4901 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
4902
4903 * New MI interface
4904
4905 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
4906 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
4907 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
4908 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
4909 enabled by configuring with:
4910
4911 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
4912
4913 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
4914
4915 * New native configurations
4916
4917 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
4918 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
4919 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
4920
4921 * New targets
4922
4923 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4924 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
4925 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4926
4927 * OBSOLETE configurations
4928
4929 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
4930
4931 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
4932 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
4933 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
4934 be permanently REMOVED.
4935
4936 * ANSI/ISO C
4937
4938 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
4939 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
4940 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
4941 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
4942 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
4943 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
4944 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
4945 already.
4946
4947 * Readline 2.2
4948
4949 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
4950
4951 * set extension-language
4952
4953 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
4954 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
4955 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
4956 set extension-language .c c++
4957 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
4958 and their associated languages.
4959
4960 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
4961
4962 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
4963 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
4964 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
4965
4966 set processor NAME
4967
4968 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
4969 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
4970
4971 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
4972 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
4973 403 IBM PowerPC 403
4974 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
4975 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
4976 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
4977 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
4978 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
4979 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
4980 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
4981 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
4982
4983 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
4984 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
4985 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
4986 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
4987
4988 * HP-UX support
4989
4990 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
4991 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
4992 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
4993 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
4994 for xdb and dbx commands.
4995
4996 * Catchpoints
4997
4998 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
4999 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5000 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5001
5002 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5003 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5004 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5005
5006 * Debugging across forks
5007
5008 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5009 in the inferior.
5010
5011 * TUI
5012
5013 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5014 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5015 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5016
5017 * GDB remote protocol additions
5018
5019 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5020 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5021 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5022 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5023
5024 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5025 full 64-bit address. The command
5026
5027 set remoteaddresssize 32
5028
5029 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5030 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5031 will be discarded.
5032
5033 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5034 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5035
5036 maint packet heythere
5037
5038 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5039 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5040 time.
5041
5042 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5043 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5044 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5045
5046 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5047
5048 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5049 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5050 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5051
5052 * mask-address variable for Mips
5053
5054 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5055 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5056 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5057
5058 * Higher serial baud rates
5059
5060 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5061 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5062 to achieve all of these rates.)
5063
5064 * i960 simulator
5065
5066 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5067 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5068
5069
5070 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5071
5072 * New native configurations
5073
5074 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5075 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5076 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5077 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5078 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5079 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5080 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5081
5082 * New targets
5083
5084 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5085 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5086 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5087 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5088 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5089 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5090 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5091 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5092 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5093 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5094 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5095
5096 * New debugging protocols
5097
5098 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5099 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5100 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5101 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5102 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5103 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5104
5105 * DWARF 2
5106
5107 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5108 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5109 information.
5110
5111 * Java frontend
5112
5113 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5114 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5115
5116 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5117
5118 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5119 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5120 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5121
5122 * Live range splitting
5123
5124 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5125 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5126 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5127
5128 * Hurd support
5129
5130 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5131 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5132
5133 * ARM Thumb support
5134
5135 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5136 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5137 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5138 accordingly.
5139
5140 * MIPS16 support
5141
5142 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5143 instruction set.
5144
5145 * Overlay support
5146
5147 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5148 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5149 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5150 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5151 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5152 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5153
5154 * info symbol
5155
5156 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5157 the symbol at the specified address.
5158
5159 * Trace support
5160
5161 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5162 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5163 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5164 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5165 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5166
5167 * MIPS simulator
5168
5169 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5170 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5171 of most MIPS variants.
5172
5173 * Sparc simulator
5174
5175 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5176 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5177 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5178
5179 * set architecture
5180
5181 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5182 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5183 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5184 the possible architectures.
5185
5186 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5187
5188 * New native configurations
5189
5190 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5191 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5192 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5193 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5194 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5195 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5196
5197 * New targets
5198
5199 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5200 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5201 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5202 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5203 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5204 Hitachi SH3 sh-*-*
5205 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5206
5207 * PowerPC simulator
5208
5209 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5210 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5211 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5212 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5213 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5214
5215 * Solaris 2.5
5216
5217 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5218
5219 * Windows 95/NT native
5220
5221 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5222 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5223 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5224 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5225 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5226
5227 * dont-repeat command
5228
5229 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5230 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5231 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5232 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5233
5234 * Send break instead of ^C
5235
5236 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5237 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5238 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5239
5240 * Remote protocol timeout
5241
5242 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5243 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5244 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5245
5246 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5247
5248 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5249 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5250 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5251 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5252 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5253
5254 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5255 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5256 automatically on hpux10.
5257
5258 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5259
5260 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5261
5262 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5263
5264 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5265 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5266 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5267 every character. The default value is 1050.
5268
5269 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5270
5271 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5272 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5273 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5274 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5275 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5276 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5277
5278 * Speedups for remote debugging
5279
5280 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5281 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5282 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5283
5284 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5285
5286 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5287 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5288
5289 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5290
5291 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5292
5293 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5294 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5295
5296 * Remote targets use caching
5297
5298 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5299 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5300 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5301 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5302 off' turns the the data cache off.
5303
5304 * Remote targets may have threads
5305
5306 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5307 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5308 gdb/remote.c for details.
5309
5310 * NetROM support
5311
5312 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5313 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5314 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5315 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5316 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5317 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5318 sequence is something like
5319
5320 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5321 load <prog>
5322 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5323
5324 * Macintosh host
5325
5326 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5327 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5328 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5329 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5330 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5331 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5332 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5333 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5334
5335 * Autoconf
5336
5337 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5338 but does simplify configuration and building.
5339
5340 * hpux10
5341
5342 GDB now supports hpux10.
5343
5344 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5345
5346 * New native configurations
5347
5348 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5349 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5350 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5351 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5352
5353 * New targets
5354
5355 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5356 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5357 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5358 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5359 WDC 65816 w65-*-*
5360
5361 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5362
5363 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5364 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5365 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5366 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5367 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5368
5369 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5370
5371 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5372 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5373 trivial example:
5374 define adder
5375 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5376
5377 To execute the command use:
5378 adder 1 2 3
5379
5380 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5381 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5382 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5383
5384 * New `if' and `while' commands
5385
5386 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5387 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5388 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5389 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5390 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5391 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5392 if the expression is zero.
5393
5394 * Fortran source language mode
5395
5396 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5397 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5398 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5399 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5400 Fortran compilers.
5401
5402 * Better HPUX support
5403
5404 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5405 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5406 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5407 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5408 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5409
5410 adb -w a.out
5411 __dld_flags?W 0x5
5412 control-d
5413
5414 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5415 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5416
5417 adb -w a.out
5418 __dld_flags?W 0x4
5419 control-d
5420
5421 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5422 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5423 external linkage.
5424
5425 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5426 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5427
5428 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5429
5430 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5431 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5432 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5433 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5434 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5435 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5436
5437 * New DOS host serial code
5438
5439 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5440 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5441 a PC's serial port.
5442
5443 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5444
5445 * New "complete" command
5446
5447 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5448 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5449
5450 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5451
5452 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5453 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5454
5455 * Breakpoint hit counts
5456
5457 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5458 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5459 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5460 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5461 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5462 that breakpoint.
5463
5464 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5465
5466 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5467 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5468 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5469
5470 * Shared library breakpoints
5471
5472 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5473 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5474
5475 * Hardware watchpoints
5476
5477 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5478 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5479
5480 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5481
5482 * Annotations
5483
5484 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5485 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5486
5487 * Improved Irix 5 support
5488
5489 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5490
5491 * Improved HPPA support
5492
5493 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5494
5495 * New native configurations
5496
5497 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5498 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5499 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5500 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5501
5502 * New targets
5503
5504 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5505 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5506 Sparc64 sparc64-*-*
5507
5508 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5509
5510 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5511 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5512
5513 * Fixes
5514
5515 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5516 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5517
5518 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5519
5520 * Irix 5 is now supported
5521
5522 * HPPA support
5523
5524 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5525 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5526 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5527 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5528 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5529
5530
5531 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5532
5533 * User visible changes:
5534
5535 * Remote Debugging
5536
5537 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5538 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5539 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5540 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5541 debugging info for the mips target).
5542
5543 * DEC Alpha native support
5544
5545 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5546 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5547 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5548 Alpha-specific notes.
5549
5550 * Preliminary thread implementation
5551
5552 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5553
5554 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5555
5556 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5557 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5558 for details).
5559
5560 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5561
5562 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5563 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5564 call methods, ...etc.
5565
5566 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5567
5568 * User visible changes:
5569
5570 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5571 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5572 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5573 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5574
5575 Filename completion now works.
5576
5577 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5578 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5579 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5580
5581 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5582 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5583 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5584 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5585 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5586
5587 * DEC alpha support
5588
5589 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5590 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5591
5592
5593 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5594
5595 * Testsuite
5596
5597 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5598 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5599 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5600
5601 * C++ demangling
5602
5603 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5604 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5605 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5606 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5607 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5608
5609 * Simulators
5610
5611 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5612 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5613 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5614
5615 * New targets supported
5616
5617 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5618 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5619 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5620 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5621 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5622
5623 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5624 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5625 GO32 memory extender.
5626
5627 * New remote protocols
5628
5629 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5630
5631 * New source languages supported
5632
5633 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5634 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5635 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5636
5637
5638 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5639
5640 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5641
5642 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5643 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5644 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5645 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5646 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5647 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5648
5649 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5650
5651 * Faster and better demangling
5652
5653 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5654 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5655 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5656 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5657 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5658 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5659 symbol lookups.
5660
5661 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5662 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5663 compiler does not actually implement.
5664
5665 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5666
5667 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5668 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5669 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5670 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5671 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5672 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5673 fix.
5674
5675 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5676 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5677
5678 * Improved configure script
5679
5680 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5681 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5682 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5683 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5684
5685 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5686 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5687 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5688 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5689 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5690 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5691
5692 * Documentation improvements
5693
5694 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5695 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5696 before submitting changes.
5697
5698 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5699 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5700 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5701 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5702 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5703
5704 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5705 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5706 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5707 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5708 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5709 around this problem.
5710
5711 * New features
5712
5713 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5714 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5715 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5716 the target program.
5717
5718 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5719 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
5720
5721 * New native hosts supported
5722
5723 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
5724 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
5725
5726 * New targets supported
5727
5728 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
5729
5730 * New file formats supported
5731
5732 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
5733 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
5734
5735 * Major bug fixes
5736
5737 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
5738
5739 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
5740 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
5741
5742 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
5743 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
5744 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
5745
5746 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
5747 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
5748
5749 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
5750 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
5751 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
5752 libraries.
5753
5754 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
5755 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
5756 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
5757 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
5758 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
5759
5760 * Internal improvements
5761
5762 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
5763 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
5764
5765 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
5766 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
5767 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
5768 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
5769 shared code that handles any of them.
5770
5771 * New command line options
5772
5773 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
5774
5775 * Mmalloc licensing
5776
5777 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
5778 General Public License.
5779
5780 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
5781
5782 * Host/native/target split
5783
5784 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
5785 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
5786 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
5787 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
5788 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
5789
5790 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
5791 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
5792 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
5793 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
5794 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
5795 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
5796 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
5797
5798 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
5799 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
5800 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
5801
5802 * New hosts supported
5803
5804 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
5805 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5806 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
5807
5808 * New targets supported
5809
5810 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5811 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
5812
5813 * New native hosts supported
5814
5815 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
5816 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
5817 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
5818
5819 * New file formats supported
5820
5821 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
5822 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
5823 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
5824
5825 * New commands
5826
5827 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
5828 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
5829 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
5830
5831 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
5832
5833 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
5834 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
5835 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
5836 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
5837
5838 * C++ improvements
5839
5840 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
5841 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
5842 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
5843
5844 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
5845
5846 * Major bug fixes
5847
5848 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
5849 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
5850 by the compiler.
5851
5852 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
5853 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
5854
5855 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
5856 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
5857 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
5858 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
5859 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
5860 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
5861
5862 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
5863 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
5864 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
5865 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
5866
5867 * AMD 29k support
5868
5869 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
5870 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
5871 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
5872 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
5873 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
5874
5875 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
5876 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
5877 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
5878 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
5879
5880 * Remote interfaces
5881
5882 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
5883 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
5884 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
5885 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
5886 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
5887 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
5888 each instruction being stepped through.
5889
5890 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
5891 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
5892
5893 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
5894 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
5895 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
5896 processor with a serial port.
5897
5898 * Configuration
5899
5900 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
5901 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
5902 supported, and what files each one uses.
5903
5904 * Library changes
5905
5906 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
5907 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
5908 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
5909 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
5910
5911 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
5912 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
5913 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
5914 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
5915
5916 * Documentation
5917
5918 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
5919 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
5920 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
5921 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
5922 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
5923 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
5924
5925 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
5926
5927
5928 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
5929
5930 * Better support for C++ function names
5931
5932 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
5933 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
5934 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
5935 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
5936 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
5937
5938 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
5939 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
5940 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
5941 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
5942 for the list of formats.
5943
5944 * G++ symbol mangling problem
5945
5946 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
5947 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
5948 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
5949 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
5950 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
5951 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
5952 this problem.)
5953
5954 * New 'maintenance' command
5955
5956 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
5957 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
5958 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
5959
5960 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
5961 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
5962 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
5963 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
5964 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
5965 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
5966
5967 The following commands are new:
5968
5969 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
5970 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
5971 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
5972
5973 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
5974
5975 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
5976 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
5977 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
5978 read after argv processing.
5979
5980 * New hosts supported
5981
5982 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
5983
5984 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
5985
5986 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
5987 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
5988 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
5989 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
5990 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
5991 It costs extra.
5992
5993 * New targets supported
5994
5995 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5996
5997 * More smarts about finding #include files
5998
5999 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6000 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6001 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6002 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6003 the one that contains your sources.
6004
6005 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6006 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6007 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6008
6009 * Interesting infernals change
6010
6011 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6012 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6013 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6014 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6015
6016 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6017
6018 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6019 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6020 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6021
6022 See the ChangeLog for details.
6023
6024 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6025
6026 * New machines supported (host and target)
6027
6028 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6029
6030 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6031
6032 * New malloc package
6033
6034 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6035 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6036 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6037 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6038 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6039 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6040
6041 * info proc
6042
6043 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6044 'help info proc' for details.
6045
6046 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6047
6048 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6049 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6050 possible.
6051
6052 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6053
6054 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6055 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6056 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6057 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6058 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6059 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6060
6061 * Cross byte order fixes
6062
6063 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6064 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6065
6066 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6067
6068 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6069 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6070 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6071 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6072 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6073 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6074 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6075 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6076 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6077 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6078
6079 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6080 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6081 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6082 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6083
6084 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6085 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6086 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6087 use is:
6088
6089 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6090
6091 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6092 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6093 shared across multiple host platforms.
6094
6095 * longjmp() handling
6096
6097 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6098 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6099 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6100 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6101
6102 * Solaris 2.0
6103
6104 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6105 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6106 reading symbols.
6107
6108 * Bug fixes
6109
6110 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6111 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6112 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6113
6114 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6115
6116 * New machines supported (host and target)
6117
6118 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6119 (except core files)
6120 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6121 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6122
6123 * New machines supported (target)
6124
6125 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6126
6127 * C++ support
6128
6129 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6130 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6131 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6132
6133 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6134 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6135 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6136 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6137 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6138 released.
6139
6140 * New features for SVR4
6141
6142 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6143 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6144 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6145
6146 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6147 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6148 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6149
6150 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6151 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6152
6153 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6154
6155 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6156 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6157 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6158 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6159 same code linked statically.
6160
6161 * New Getopt
6162
6163 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6164 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6165 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6166 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6167 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6168 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6169
6170 * Bugs fixed
6171
6172 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6173 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6174 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6175
6176
6177 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6178
6179 * New machines supported (host and target)
6180
6181 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6182 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6183 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6184
6185 * Almost SCO Unix support
6186
6187 We had hoped to support:
6188 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6189 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6190 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6191 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6192
6193 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6194
6195 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6196 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6197 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6198 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6199 reqired (if any).
6200
6201 * New Readline
6202
6203 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6204 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6205 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6206
6207 * Bugs fixed
6208
6209 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6210 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6211 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6212
6213 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6214
6215 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6216 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6217 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6218
6219 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6220 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6221 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6222 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6223 version 2.
6224
6225 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6226 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6227 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6228 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6229 situation somewhat.
6230
6231 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6232 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6233 methods.
6234
6235 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6236 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6237 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6238
6239
6240 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6241
6242 * Improved configuration
6243
6244 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6245 Porting BFD is simpler.
6246
6247 * Stepping improved
6248
6249 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6250 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6251 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6252 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6253
6254 * Bug fixing
6255
6256 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6257
6258 * New host supported (not target)
6259
6260 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6261
6262
6263 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6264
6265 * Multiple source language support
6266
6267 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6268 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6269 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6270 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6271 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6272 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6273
6274 * GDB and Modula-2
6275
6276 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6277 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6278 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6279 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6280
6281 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6282 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6283 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6284
6285 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6286 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6287
6288 * set write on/off
6289
6290 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6291 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6292 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6293 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6294 effect immediately.
6295
6296 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6297
6298 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6299 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6300 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6301 examining core files.
6302
6303 * set listsize
6304
6305 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6306 The default is 10.
6307
6308 * New machines supported (host and target)
6309
6310 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6311 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6312 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6313
6314 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6315
6316 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6317
6318 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6319
6320 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6321 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6322 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6323
6324 * New remote interfaces
6325
6326 AMD 29000 Adapt
6327 AMD 29000 Minimon
6328
6329
6330 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6331
6332 * New Facilities
6333
6334 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6335
6336 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6337 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6338 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6339 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6340 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6341 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6342 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6343 stub on the target system.
6344
6345 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6346
6347 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6348 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6349 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6350
6351 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6352 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6353
6354
6355 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6356
6357 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6358 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6359
6360 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6361 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6362 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6363
6364 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6365 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6366 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6367 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6368
6369 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6370 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6371 it is already running. Default is ON.
6372
6373 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6374 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6375 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6376 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6377 Default is ON.
6378
6379 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6380 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6381 or the value of the environment variable
6382 GDBHISTFILE.
6383
6384 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6385 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6386 HISTSIZE.
6387
6388 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6389 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6390 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6391
6392 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6393 history expansion will be performed on
6394 command line input. The default is OFF.
6395
6396 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6397 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6398 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6399
6400 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6401 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6402 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6403 variable TERM.
6404
6405 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6406 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6407 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6408 variable TERM.
6409
6410 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6411 ``set width'' instead.
6412
6413 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6414 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6415 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6416 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6417
6418 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6419 is OFF.
6420
6421 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6422 "raw" form if off.
6423
6424 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6425 like instructions.
6426
6427 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6428
6429
6430 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6431
6432 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6433 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6434 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6435 window.
6436
6437
6438 * Support for Shared Libraries
6439
6440 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6441 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6442 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6443 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6444 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6445 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6446 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6447 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6448
6449 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6450 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6451 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6452
6453 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6454
6455
6456 * Watchpoints
6457
6458 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6459 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6460 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6461 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6462 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6463 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6464
6465 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6466
6467 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6468
6469 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6470 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6471 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6472
6473
6474 * C++ multiple inheritance
6475
6476 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6477 for C++ programs.
6478
6479 * C++ exception handling
6480
6481 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6482 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6483 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6484 handler's context).
6485
6486 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6487 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6488 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6489
6490 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6491 current stack frame.
6492
6493
6494 * Minor command changes
6495
6496 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6497 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6498 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6499
6500 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6501 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6502 frames without printing.
6503
6504 * New directory command
6505
6506 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6507 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6508 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6509 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6510 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6511
6512 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6513
6514 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6515 for more details.
6516
6517 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6518 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6519 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6520 where the program that you are debugging will run.
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