1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.0
6 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
7 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
9 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
10 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
11 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
12 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
13 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
15 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
16 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
17 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
18 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
20 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
21 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
23 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
24 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
25 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
27 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
28 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
29 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
31 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
32 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
35 * Completion improvements
37 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
38 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
39 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
40 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
43 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
46 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
47 C++ anonymous namespaces:
50 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
51 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
52 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
54 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
55 completion support, that better understands what you're
56 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
57 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
60 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
62 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
64 * New command line options (gcore)
67 Dump all memory mappings.
69 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
71 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
72 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
73 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
75 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
80 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
83 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
84 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
85 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
86 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
87 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
88 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
89 a breakpoint from Python.
91 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
93 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
94 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
95 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
97 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
99 function[abi:cxx11](int)
102 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
105 (gdb) b function(int)
107 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
109 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
111 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
115 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
116 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
117 description of these.
119 ** A new command, "rbreak" has been added to the Python API. This
120 command allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints via a
121 regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
123 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
124 manual for a further description of this feature.
127 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
129 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
130 specified initial working directory.
132 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
133 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
135 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
136 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
138 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
139 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
141 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
142 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
143 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
144 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
145 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
147 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
148 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
149 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
151 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
152 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
153 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
154 in the *stopped notification.
156 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
157 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
161 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
162 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
163 the inferior when starting it.
166 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
167 before starting the remote inferior.
170 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
171 user-set environment variables should be unset).
174 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
177 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
180 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
181 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
183 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
184 filter the tests to be run.
186 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
187 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
192 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
195 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
196 with the 'compile' commands.
198 set debug separate-debug-file
199 show debug separate-debug-file
200 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
202 set dump-excluded-mappings
203 show dump-excluded-mappings
204 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
205 dumped when generating a core file.
208 List the registered selftests.
211 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
213 set|show print type nested-type-limit
214 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
215 type printer will show.
217 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
220 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
222 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
225 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
226 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
227 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
228 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
230 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
231 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
232 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
233 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
234 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
235 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
237 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
238 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
239 unless you tell it the variable's type:
242 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
246 * New native configurations
248 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
249 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
253 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
254 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
256 * Removed targets and native configurations
258 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
260 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
262 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
263 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
264 available in future Intel CPUs.
266 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
270 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
271 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
273 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
276 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
278 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
280 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
281 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
284 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
286 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
287 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
289 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
291 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
292 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
293 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
294 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
297 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
299 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
300 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
303 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
305 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
306 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
308 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
310 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
315 eval "print $arg%d", $i
320 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
322 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
323 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
325 * New native configurations
327 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
331 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
332 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
334 * Removed targets and native configurations
336 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
337 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
342 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
344 maint print arc arc-instruction address
345 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
349 set disassembler-options
350 show disassembler-options
351 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
352 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
353 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
354 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
355 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
360 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
361 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
363 -file-list-shared-libraries
364 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
365 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
367 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
369 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
371 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
372 default. One must now explicitly configure with
373 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
374 option will be removed in a future release.
376 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
379 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
380 memory backward from the given address. For example:
383 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
384 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
385 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
386 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
387 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
388 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
389 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
390 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
391 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
393 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
394 arrays of dynamic types.
396 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
397 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
398 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
399 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
400 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
401 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
403 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
406 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
407 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
408 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
410 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
412 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
413 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
414 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
415 signal received and code location.
419 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
420 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
421 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
422 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
424 * Rust language support.
425 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
426 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
429 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
431 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
432 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
433 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
434 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
435 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
436 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
437 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
438 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
439 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
440 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
443 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
445 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
446 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
451 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
452 skip -function function
453 skip -rfunction regular-expression
454 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
455 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
456 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
458 maint info line-table REGEXP
459 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
462 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
465 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
466 using the TTY file for input/output.
470 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
471 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
472 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
473 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
474 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
477 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
478 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
479 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
480 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
483 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
484 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
485 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
487 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
490 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
491 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
492 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
493 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
494 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
495 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
497 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
498 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
499 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
500 bytecode into native code.
502 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
503 recording. For example:
505 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
507 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
509 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
513 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
515 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
517 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
519 * Per-inferior thread numbers
521 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
522 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
523 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
527 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
528 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
529 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
530 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
532 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
533 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
534 are no longer unique between inferiors.
536 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
537 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
538 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
540 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
543 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
544 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
547 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
550 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
551 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
552 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
553 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
556 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
559 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
562 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
565 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
566 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
569 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
570 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
572 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
574 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
576 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
577 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
579 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
580 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
583 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
584 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
587 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
588 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
591 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
593 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
594 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
595 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
597 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
598 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
602 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
603 maint show target-non-stop
604 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
605 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
606 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
608 maint set bfd-sharing
609 maint show bfd-sharing
610 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
614 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
618 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
620 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
621 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
622 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
624 set remote thread-events
625 show remote thread-events
626 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
628 set ada print-signatures on|off
629 show ada print-signatures"
630 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
631 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
635 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
636 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
637 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
639 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
640 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
641 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
642 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
643 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
644 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
646 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
647 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
649 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
650 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
652 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
654 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
655 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
656 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
657 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
658 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
659 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
661 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
662 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
667 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
669 exec-events feature in qSupported
670 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
671 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
672 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
673 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
676 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
679 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
680 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
682 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
683 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
686 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
687 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
688 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
689 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
690 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
691 stop for that same thread.
694 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
695 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
696 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
699 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
700 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
702 syscall_entry stop reason
703 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
705 syscall_return stop reason
706 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
708 * Extended-remote exec events
710 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
711 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
712 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
714 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
715 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
716 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
718 * Thread names in remote protocol
720 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
723 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
725 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
726 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
727 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
728 fork and exec catchpoints.
730 * Remote syscall events
732 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
733 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
735 set remote catch-syscall-packet
736 show remote catch-syscall-packet
737 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
741 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
742 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
747 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
748 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
749 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
750 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
751 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
752 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
754 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
756 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
757 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
758 including advance SIMD instructions.
760 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
762 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
763 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
764 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
765 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
766 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
767 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
768 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
770 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
772 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
774 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
775 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
778 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
779 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
780 and may include things like its command line arguments.
782 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
783 is now available on all platforms.
785 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
786 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
787 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
788 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
789 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
790 backward compatibility.
792 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
793 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
794 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
795 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
797 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
798 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
799 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
800 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
803 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
805 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
807 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
808 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
809 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
810 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
811 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
812 See "New remote packets" below.
814 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
815 available register groups, including target specific groups.
817 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
818 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
819 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
820 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
825 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
829 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
830 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
831 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
832 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
833 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
834 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
835 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
836 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
837 "const" version of the value respectively.
841 maint print symbol-cache
842 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
844 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
845 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
847 maint flush-symbol-cache
848 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
852 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
855 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
859 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
862 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
863 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
867 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
870 Print information about branch tracing internals.
872 maint btrace packet-history
873 Print the raw branch tracing data.
875 maint btrace clear-packet-history
876 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
879 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
880 anew by the next "record" command.
885 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
887 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
890 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
891 show debug dwarf-read
892 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
894 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
895 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
896 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
897 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
899 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
900 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
901 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
902 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
905 show debug dwarf-line
906 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
910 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
911 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
912 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
913 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
915 set history remove-duplicates
916 show history remove-duplicates
917 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
919 maint set symbol-cache-size
920 maint show symbol-cache-size
921 Control the size of the symbol cache.
923 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
924 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
926 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
927 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
929 set debug linux-namespaces
930 show debug linux-namespaces
931 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
933 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
934 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
935 Intel Processor Trace format.
936 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
937 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
939 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
940 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
943 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
944 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
946 * Python/Guile scripting
948 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
949 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
953 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
954 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
956 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
957 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
960 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
961 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
965 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
969 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
970 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
971 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
975 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
976 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
979 Return information about files on the remote system.
982 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
983 create a process running on the remote system.
986 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
987 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
988 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
989 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
992 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
995 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
997 vforkdone stop reason
998 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
999 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1001 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1002 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1003 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1004 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1005 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1006 whether these features are enabled.
1008 * Extended-remote fork events
1010 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1011 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1012 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1013 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1015 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1016 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1017 the btrace record target.
1018 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1020 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1021 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1023 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1026 * Removed command line options
1028 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1030 * Removed targets and native configurations
1032 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1033 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1035 * New configure options
1038 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1039 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1041 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1042 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1043 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1044 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1046 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1050 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1052 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1054 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1058 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1059 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1060 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1061 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1062 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1063 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1064 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1065 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1066 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1067 selecting a new file to debug.
1068 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1069 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1071 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1074 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1075 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1076 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1077 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1079 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1081 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1082 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1083 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1084 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1086 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1087 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1088 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1089 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1090 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1091 interface with this new feature are:
1093 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1094 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1098 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1099 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1100 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1101 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1102 as "maint demangler-warning".
1104 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1105 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1107 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1108 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1111 maint print user-registers
1112 List all currently available "user" registers.
1114 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1115 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1116 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1118 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1119 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1120 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1123 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1124 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1125 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1126 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1129 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1130 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1131 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1132 switched threads meanwhile.
1134 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1136 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1137 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1138 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1139 is now the default mode.
1143 set debug symbol-lookup
1144 show debug symbol-lookup
1145 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1149 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1150 inferiors that have exited.
1154 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1158 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1160 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1161 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1162 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1163 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1164 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1166 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1167 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1168 its alias "share", instead.
1170 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1172 * New command line options
1175 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1177 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1178 as specified in ISO C99.
1180 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1181 with or without disassembly.
1185 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1186 available is determined at configure time.
1187 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1188 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1190 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1194 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1198 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1200 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1201 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1203 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1204 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1208 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1209 show print symbol-loading
1210 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1211 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1212 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1213 becomes less useful.
1215 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1216 show guile print-stack
1217 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1219 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1220 show auto-load guile-scripts
1221 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1223 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1224 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1225 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1226 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1227 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1228 usage of this option.
1230 set auto-connect-native-target
1232 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1233 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1234 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1236 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1237 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1238 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1240 maint set target-async (on|off)
1241 maint show target-async
1242 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1243 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1244 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1245 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1247 set mi-async (on|off)
1249 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1250 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1252 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1253 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1255 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1256 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1257 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1258 "set target-async on" command.
1260 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1262 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1263 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1264 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1265 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1266 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1268 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1269 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1270 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1272 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1273 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1274 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1275 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1276 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1277 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1278 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1280 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1281 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1283 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1284 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1285 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1287 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1288 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1289 memory or registers.
1291 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1293 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1294 remote. It now works with all targets.
1296 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1297 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1298 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1299 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1300 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1301 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1302 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1303 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1304 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1307 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1308 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1309 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1311 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1313 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1314 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1315 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1317 * New remote packets
1319 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1320 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1321 branch trace incrementally.
1325 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1326 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1328 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1329 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1330 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1331 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1332 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1335 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1337 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1338 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1339 its alias "share", instead.
1341 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1342 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1347 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1348 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1349 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1350 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1351 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1352 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1353 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1354 commands and CLI execution commands.
1356 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1358 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1359 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1360 recording has been added.
1362 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1364 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1365 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1367 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1368 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1369 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1370 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1371 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1372 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1375 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1377 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1379 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1380 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1381 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1382 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1387 (gdb) info registers rax
1390 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1391 "*value not available*".
1393 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1398 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1399 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1400 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1401 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1402 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1403 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1407 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1408 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1409 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1411 * Removed native configurations
1413 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1414 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1416 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1417 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1418 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1419 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1420 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1421 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1422 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1426 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1427 maint check-psymtabs
1428 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1430 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1431 maint expand-symtabs
1432 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1435 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1437 maint set|show per-command
1438 maint set|show per-command space
1439 maint set|show per-command time
1440 maint set|show per-command symtab
1441 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1443 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1444 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1445 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1446 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1447 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1450 info exceptions REGEXP
1451 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1452 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1457 set debug symfile off|on
1459 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1460 symbol tables within those files
1462 set print raw frame-arguments
1463 show print raw frame-arguments
1464 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1465 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1467 set remote trace-status-packet
1468 show remote trace-status-packet
1469 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1473 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1477 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1479 set startup-with-shell
1480 show startup-with-shell
1481 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1486 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1487 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1489 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1490 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1491 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1492 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1495 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1496 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1497 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1499 * New command-line options
1501 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1503 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1504 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1506 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1509 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1511 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1512 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1514 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1515 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1517 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1518 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1519 due to an uncaught signal.
1523 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1524 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1525 command, which should contain "language-option".
1527 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1528 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1530 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1531 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1532 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1533 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1534 "undefined-command-error-code".
1536 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1539 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1541 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1542 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1545 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1546 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1548 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1549 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1550 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1552 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1553 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1554 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1555 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1556 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1557 "exec-run-start-option".
1559 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1560 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1562 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1563 the new "info exceptions" command.
1565 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1566 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1567 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1571 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1572 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1573 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1576 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1577 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1579 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1580 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1581 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1583 * New remote packets
1587 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1588 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1589 involvemement at each single-step.
1591 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1592 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1593 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1594 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1595 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1596 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1599 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1601 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1602 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1604 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1605 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1606 trace state variables.
1608 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1611 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1612 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1614 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1616 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1617 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1618 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1619 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1621 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1623 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1624 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1625 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1626 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1628 set|show record full insn-number-max
1629 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1630 set|show record full memory-query
1632 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1633 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1634 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1635 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1636 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1640 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1641 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1643 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1644 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1645 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1647 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1648 instruction granularity
1650 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1651 function granularity
1653 * New native configurations
1655 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1656 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1657 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1658 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1662 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1663 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1664 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1665 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1666 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1668 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1669 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1670 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1671 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1672 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1673 --data-directory command-line option.
1675 * New command line options:
1677 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1678 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1680 * Removed command line options
1682 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1685 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1688 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1692 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1694 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1696 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1698 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1700 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1701 of architecture in the Python API.
1703 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1704 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1706 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1708 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1709 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1711 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1713 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1716 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1717 default for GCC since November 2000.
1719 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1721 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1722 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1724 * New configure options
1726 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1727 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1728 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1729 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1730 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1731 options allow the user to override that default.
1732 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1733 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1734 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1736 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1739 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1740 conditions to be attached.
1743 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1745 python-interactive [command]
1747 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1748 and print the result of expressions.
1751 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1753 enable type-printer [name]...
1754 disable type-printer [name]...
1755 Enable or disable type printers.
1759 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1760 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1765 set print type methods (on|off)
1766 show print type methods
1767 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1768 The default is to show them.
1770 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1771 show print type typedefs
1772 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1773 The default is to show them.
1775 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1776 show filename-display
1777 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1778 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1780 set trace-buffer-size
1781 show trace-buffer-size
1782 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1784 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1785 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1786 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1790 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1793 set debug coff-pe-read
1794 show debug coff-pe-read
1795 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1800 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1803 set debug notification
1804 show debug notification
1805 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1809 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1810 "=cmd-param-changed".
1811 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1812 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1813 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1814 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1815 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1816 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1817 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1818 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1820 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1821 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1822 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1823 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1824 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1825 library load/unload events.
1826 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1827 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1828 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1829 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1830 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1831 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1832 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1833 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1835 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1836 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1837 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1838 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1840 * New remote packets
1843 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1844 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1847 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1848 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1852 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1853 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1856 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1857 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1859 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1861 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1862 for more x32 ABI info.
1864 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1866 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1868 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1869 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1870 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1871 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1872 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1873 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1874 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1875 "info os msg" lists message queues
1876 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1878 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1879 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1880 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1881 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1882 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1883 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1885 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1886 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1887 record/replay support.
1889 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1893 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1896 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1898 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1899 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1901 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1903 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1904 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1906 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1907 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1908 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1911 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1912 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1914 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1915 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1916 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1918 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1919 object associated with a PC value.
1921 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1922 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1924 * Go language support.
1925 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1928 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1929 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1931 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1932 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1934 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1935 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1936 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1937 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1938 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1941 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1942 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1943 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1944 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1946 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1947 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1949 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1950 since December 2007.
1952 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1953 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1954 command does. For instance:
1956 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1958 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1959 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1960 created, using the "condition" command.
1962 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1963 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1965 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1967 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1968 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1969 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1970 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1971 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1972 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1973 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1974 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1976 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1977 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1978 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1979 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1980 the .gdb_index section.
1982 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1984 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1989 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1991 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1995 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1996 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1997 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1999 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2000 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2002 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2005 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2006 C++ and Java objects.
2008 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2009 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2010 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2011 configured with '--with-python'.
2013 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2014 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2015 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2016 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2017 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2018 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2019 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2021 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2022 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2023 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2024 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2026 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2027 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2028 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2029 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2031 ** "set print symbol"
2033 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2034 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2035 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2037 * Deprecated commands
2039 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2040 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2044 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2045 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2047 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2048 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2049 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2050 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2055 set mips compression
2056 show mips compression
2057 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2058 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2061 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2063 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2064 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2065 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2066 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2068 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2072 Disable auto-loading globally.
2075 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2077 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2078 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2079 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2081 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2082 show auto-load python-scripts
2083 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2085 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2086 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2087 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2089 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2090 show auto-load libthread-db
2091 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2093 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2094 show auto-load scripts-directory
2095 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2096 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2097 of the directories listed by this option.
2098 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2100 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2101 show auto-load safe-path
2102 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2103 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2105 set debug auto-load on|off
2106 show debug auto-load
2107 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2109 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2111 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2112 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2113 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2114 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2116 set dprintf-function <expr>
2117 show dprintf-function
2118 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2119 show dprintf-channel
2120 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2121 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2123 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2124 show disconnected-dprintf
2125 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2126 after GDB disconnects.
2128 * New configure options
2130 --with-auto-load-dir
2131 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2132 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2133 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2134 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2135 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2137 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2138 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2139 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2141 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2142 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2145 * New remote packets
2147 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2149 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2150 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2151 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2152 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2156 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2157 program without GDB involvement.
2159 * New command line options
2161 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2162 before loading inferior.
2163 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2164 execute it before loading inferior.
2166 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2168 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2169 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2170 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2171 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2174 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2175 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2177 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2178 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2179 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2180 target hardware watchpoint.
2182 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2183 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2184 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2185 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2189 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2190 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2193 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2194 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2195 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2196 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2197 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2200 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2203 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2204 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2205 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2206 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2207 corresponding value.
2209 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2210 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2211 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2214 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2215 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2216 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2217 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2219 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2221 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2224 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2225 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2226 available in the CLI.
2228 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2229 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2230 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2231 "some_type.items()".
2233 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2236 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2237 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2238 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2239 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2240 any anonymous fields.
2244 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2247 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2248 "=breakpoint-modified".
2250 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2252 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2253 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2254 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2257 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2258 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2259 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2260 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2261 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2263 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2264 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2266 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2267 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2268 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2269 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2270 use this option to specify where to find it.
2272 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2273 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2274 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2275 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2276 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2277 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2278 section in the user manual for more details.
2280 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2281 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2282 become available after that.
2284 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2286 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2287 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2293 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2294 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2298 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2299 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2300 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2302 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2303 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2304 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2306 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2307 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2308 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2309 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2310 name starts with a hyphen.
2312 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2313 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2314 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2315 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2316 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2317 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2318 number of bytes that will be collected.
2321 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2322 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2323 setting the variable trace-notes.
2326 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2327 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2328 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2331 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2332 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2333 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2334 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2335 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2338 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2339 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2340 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2344 set debug dwarf2-read
2345 show debug dwarf2-read
2346 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2347 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2349 set debug symtab-create
2350 show debug symtab-create
2351 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2352 creation. The default is off.
2355 show extended-prompt
2356 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2357 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2358 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2359 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2360 prompt is displayed.
2362 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2363 show print entry-values
2364 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2365 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2366 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2368 set debug entry-values
2369 show debug entry-values
2370 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2371 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2373 set basenames-may-differ
2374 show basenames-may-differ
2375 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2376 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2377 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2378 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2379 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2380 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2381 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2382 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2388 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2389 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2390 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2391 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2393 set trace-stop-notes
2394 show trace-stop-notes
2395 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2396 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2397 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2398 started by someone else.
2400 * New remote packets
2404 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2408 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2412 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2416 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2420 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2423 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2424 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2428 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2432 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2434 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2436 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2438 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2440 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2441 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2442 matches the given regular expression.
2444 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2446 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2447 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2449 * New command line options
2451 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2452 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2454 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2455 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2457 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2458 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2459 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2461 * GDB now understands thread names.
2463 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2464 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2466 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2467 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2470 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2471 has been integrated into GDB.
2475 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2476 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2477 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2479 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2480 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2481 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2482 and allows for more dynamic content.
2484 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2485 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2486 have an is_valid method.
2488 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2489 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2490 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2492 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2494 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2495 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2496 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2497 that function like so:
2499 result = some_value (10,20)
2501 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2502 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2503 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2505 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2506 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2507 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2508 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2509 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2511 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2512 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2514 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2516 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2519 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2520 holds the thread's name.
2522 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2523 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2524 occurring in the process being debugged.
2525 The following events are currently supported:
2526 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2527 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2528 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2532 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2533 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2535 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2537 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2538 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2539 was added to GCC 4.5.
2541 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2542 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2543 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2544 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2545 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2546 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2548 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2549 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2550 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2551 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2552 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2554 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2555 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2556 execution to a label.
2558 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2559 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2560 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2561 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2563 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2564 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2565 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2568 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2570 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2571 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2572 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2573 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2574 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2575 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2578 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2580 While now you see this:
2583 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2585 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2588 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2589 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2590 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2591 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2593 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2594 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2595 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2596 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2597 section in the user manual for more details.
2599 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2601 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2602 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2604 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2606 * New native configurations
2608 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2612 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2614 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2615 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2616 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2617 in the GDB user manual.
2619 * Guile support was removed.
2621 * New features in the GNU simulator
2623 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2625 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2627 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2629 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2631 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2632 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2633 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2634 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2635 was always disabled for such configurations.
2639 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2641 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2642 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2652 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2653 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2654 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2656 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2658 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2659 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2660 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2661 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2663 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2664 mentioned flavors of operators.
2666 ** static const class members
2668 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2669 class definition has been fixed.
2671 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2673 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2674 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2675 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2676 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2677 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2678 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2680 * Static tracepoints
2682 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2683 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2684 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2685 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2686 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2687 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2688 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2689 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2690 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2691 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2692 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2693 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2694 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2695 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2696 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2697 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2698 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2699 the "New remote packets" section below.
2701 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2703 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2704 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2705 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2706 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2710 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2711 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2712 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2713 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2714 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2715 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2716 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2718 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2721 * New remote packets
2725 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2729 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2730 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2731 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2732 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2733 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2734 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2738 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2742 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2745 qXfer:statictrace:read
2747 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2748 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2749 to gdb's qSupported query.
2753 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2757 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2758 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2760 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2761 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2764 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2766 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2767 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2768 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2769 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2771 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2772 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2773 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2774 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2775 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2776 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2777 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2779 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2780 for static tracepoints support.
2782 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2784 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2785 it understands register description.
2787 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2789 * X86 general purpose registers
2791 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2792 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2793 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2794 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2795 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2797 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2798 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2799 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2800 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2801 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2802 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2804 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2805 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2806 in the specified file.
2808 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2809 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2810 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2811 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2812 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2813 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2814 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2815 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2816 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2817 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2821 eval template, expressions...
2822 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2823 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2825 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2826 show target-file-system-kind
2827 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2830 save breakpoints <filename>
2831 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2832 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2833 definitions, use the `source' command.
2835 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2838 info static-tracepoint-markers
2839 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2841 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2842 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2843 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2847 Enable and disable observer mode.
2849 set may-write-registers on|off
2850 set may-write-memory on|off
2851 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2852 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2853 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2854 set may-interrupt on|off
2855 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2856 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2857 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2858 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2859 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2860 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2861 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2863 set record memory-query on|off
2864 show record memory-query
2865 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2866 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2871 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2875 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2876 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2877 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2878 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2879 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2881 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2882 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2883 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2884 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2886 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2887 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2889 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2891 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2893 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2895 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2896 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2897 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2899 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2900 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2901 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2902 regular breakpoints.
2906 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2908 * D language support.
2909 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2912 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2913 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2914 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2915 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2916 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2918 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2919 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2920 conditions of the form:
2922 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2924 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2925 interface mentioned above.
2927 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2931 ** Namespace Support
2933 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2934 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2935 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2936 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2937 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2941 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2942 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2947 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2948 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2952 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2957 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2960 * Multi-program debugging.
2962 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2963 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2964 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2965 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2966 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2967 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2968 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2969 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2971 * New tracing features
2973 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2975 ** Trace state variables
2977 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2978 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2979 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2980 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2981 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2982 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2983 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2984 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2985 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2986 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2990 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2991 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2992 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2993 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2994 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2995 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2996 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2997 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2998 the regular trace command.
3000 ** Disconnected tracing
3002 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3003 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3004 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3005 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3006 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3010 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3011 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3012 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3013 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3014 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3015 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3018 ** Circular trace buffer
3020 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3021 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3022 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3023 not be available for all target agents.
3028 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3029 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3032 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3033 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3036 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3037 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3040 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3041 "set script-extension" (see below).
3043 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3045 record save [<FILENAME>]
3046 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3047 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3049 record restore <FILENAME>
3050 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3051 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3053 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3056 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3057 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3058 inferior has loaded.
3063 maint info program-spaces
3064 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3066 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3067 show remote interrupt-sequence
3068 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3069 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3070 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3071 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3072 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3074 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3075 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3076 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3077 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3080 set remotebreak [on | off]
3082 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3084 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3085 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3088 List trace state variables and their values.
3090 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3091 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3094 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3095 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3097 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3098 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3100 * New expression syntax
3102 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3103 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3107 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3108 show follow-exec-mode
3109 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3110 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3111 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3113 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3114 show default-collect
3115 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3116 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3117 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3119 set disconnected-tracing
3120 show disconnected-tracing
3121 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3122 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3125 set circular-trace-buffer
3126 show circular-trace-buffer
3127 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3128 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3129 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3130 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3132 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3133 show script-extension
3134 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3135 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3136 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3137 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3139 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3141 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3142 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3143 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3144 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3145 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3146 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3147 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3150 * Python API Improvements
3152 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3153 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3154 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3156 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3157 `is_base_class' attribute.
3159 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3161 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3162 evaluate an expression.
3164 * New remote packets
3167 Define a trace state variable.
3170 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3173 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3176 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3179 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3183 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3185 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3186 much more reliable. In particular:
3187 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3188 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3189 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3190 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3191 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3192 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3193 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3194 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3195 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3196 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3197 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3198 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3199 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3200 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3201 non-threaded programs.
3203 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3204 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3205 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3208 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3210 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3211 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3212 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3213 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3214 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3216 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3217 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3218 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3219 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3220 for tracepoint actions.
3222 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3223 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3224 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3226 * Process record and replay
3228 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3229 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3230 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3233 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3234 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3235 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3238 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3239 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3242 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3243 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3244 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3245 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3246 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3247 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3248 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3249 the installation instructions for more information.
3251 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3252 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3253 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3254 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3256 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3257 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3259 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3260 now complete on file names.
3262 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3263 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3264 For instance, consider:
3266 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3267 # struct example variable;
3270 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3271 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3273 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3274 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3276 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3277 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3280 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3281 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3282 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3284 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3285 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3286 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3287 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3289 * New remote packets
3292 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3295 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3296 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3297 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3300 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3301 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3304 Obtains additional operating system information
3308 Read or write additional signal information.
3310 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3312 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3313 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3314 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3316 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3317 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3319 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3320 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3321 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3323 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3324 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3326 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3328 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3330 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3331 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3333 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3334 list of section offsets.
3336 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3337 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3338 have also been fixed.
3340 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3341 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3342 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3344 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3347 template<typename T> class C { };
3350 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3352 ptype C<char const *>
3353 ptype C<char const*>
3354 ptype C<const char *>
3355 ptype C<const char*>
3357 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3359 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3360 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3362 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3363 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3364 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3366 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3367 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3369 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3372 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3373 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3375 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3376 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3381 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3382 available is determined at configure time.
3384 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3386 * Ada tasking support
3388 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3392 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3394 Print detailed information about task number N.
3396 Print the task number of the current task.
3398 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3400 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3401 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3403 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3405 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3406 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3407 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3408 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3409 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3410 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3413 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3414 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3417 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3418 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3419 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3420 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3423 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3425 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3426 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3427 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3428 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3429 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3431 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3432 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3433 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3434 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3435 --enable-targets configure option.
3437 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3439 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3440 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3441 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3442 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3443 section in the user manual for more information.
3445 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3446 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3447 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3448 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3449 extensions on linux targets.
3451 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3453 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3454 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3455 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3456 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3457 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3458 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3459 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3460 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3461 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3463 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3465 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3467 maint set python print-stack
3468 maint show python print-stack
3469 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3472 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3477 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3481 Show operating system information about processes.
3484 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3487 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3490 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3493 Kill inferior number NUM.
3497 set spu stop-on-load
3498 show spu stop-on-load
3499 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3501 set spu auto-flush-cache
3502 show spu auto-flush-cache
3503 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3504 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3506 set sh calling-convention
3507 show sh calling-convention
3508 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3511 show debug timestamp
3512 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3514 set disassemble-next-line
3515 show disassemble-next-line
3516 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3519 set remote noack-packet
3520 show remote noack-packet
3521 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3522 under "New remote packets."
3524 set remote query-attached-packet
3525 show remote query-attached-packet
3526 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3528 set remote read-siginfo-object
3529 show remote read-siginfo-object
3530 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3533 set remote write-siginfo-object
3534 show remote write-siginfo-object
3535 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3538 set remote reverse-continue
3539 show remote reverse-continue
3540 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3542 set remote reverse-step
3543 show remote reverse-step
3544 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3546 set displaced-stepping
3547 show displaced-stepping
3548 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3549 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3550 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3553 show debug displaced
3554 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3556 maint set internal-error
3557 maint show internal-error
3558 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3560 maint set internal-warning
3561 maint show internal-warning
3562 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3567 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3569 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3570 show multiple-symbols
3571 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3572 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3573 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3575 set breakpoint always-inserted
3576 show breakpoint always-inserted
3577 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3578 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3579 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3581 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3582 show arm fallback-mode
3583 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3585 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3586 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3587 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3588 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3590 set disable-randomization
3591 show disable-randomization
3592 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3593 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3594 multiple debugging sessions.
3598 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3603 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3604 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3605 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3606 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3608 set target-wide-charset
3609 show target-wide-charset
3610 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3611 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3613 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3615 set tcp connect-timeout
3616 show tcp connect-timeout
3617 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3618 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3619 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3621 set libthread-db-search-path
3622 show libthread-db-search-path
3623 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3626 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3627 show schedule-multiple
3628 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3629 the current process.
3633 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3634 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3635 affecting correctness.
3637 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3638 show interactive-mode
3639 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3640 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3641 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3642 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3643 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3648 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3649 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3650 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3654 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3655 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3656 alias for the `fork' command.
3659 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3660 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3661 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3664 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3665 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3666 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3670 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3671 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3672 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3675 * New native configurations
3677 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3679 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3683 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3684 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3685 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3688 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3689 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3695 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3697 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3699 * New native configurations
3701 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3702 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3706 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3707 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3709 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3711 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3712 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3713 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3714 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3716 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3717 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3719 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3722 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3723 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3724 and in inlined functions.
3726 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3727 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3728 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3730 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3732 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3733 registers on PowerPC targets.
3735 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3736 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3738 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3739 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3741 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3742 extended-remote mode.
3744 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3745 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3746 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3747 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3749 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3750 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3751 target architectures.
3753 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3754 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3755 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3756 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3758 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3761 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3762 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3764 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3765 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3766 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3767 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3769 - Improved command completion in Ada
3772 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3777 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3778 show print frame-arguments
3779 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3780 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3785 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3792 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3794 * New remote packets
3801 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3804 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3808 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3810 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3812 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3813 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3814 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3816 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3817 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3818 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3820 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3821 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3824 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3825 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3827 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3828 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3830 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3832 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3833 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3834 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3836 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3837 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3839 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3840 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3843 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3844 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3845 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3847 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3850 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3851 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3852 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3854 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3856 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3858 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3859 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3860 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3862 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3863 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3865 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3866 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3867 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3868 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3869 Windows and SymbianOS).
3871 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3872 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3874 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3875 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3881 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3882 when debugging using remote targets.
3884 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3885 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3886 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3887 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3888 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3889 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3890 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3892 set breakpoint auto-hw
3893 show breakpoint auto-hw
3894 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3895 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3896 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3897 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3898 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3899 including "next" and "finish".
3902 catch exception unhandled
3903 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3906 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3910 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3911 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3912 an alias to "set sysroot".
3915 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3916 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3919 * New native configurations
3921 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3924 unset tdesc filename
3926 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3927 not query the target for its built-in description.
3931 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3932 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3933 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3935 * New remote packets
3938 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3939 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3941 qXfer:features:read:
3942 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3947 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3948 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3950 qXfer:libraries:read:
3951 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3952 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3953 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3954 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3958 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3966 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3967 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3968 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3969 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3971 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3974 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3975 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3984 * Other removed features
3991 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3998 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4003 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4004 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4009 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4010 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4012 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4014 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4015 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4016 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4017 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4019 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4021 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4022 in debugging information.
4026 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4027 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4029 set mips stack-arg-size
4030 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4032 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4034 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4039 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4041 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4042 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4043 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4045 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4046 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4049 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4050 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4052 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4053 stub provides the required support.
4055 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4056 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4061 unset substitute-path
4062 show substitute-path
4063 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4064 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4065 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4066 between compilation and debugging.
4070 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4071 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4072 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4076 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4078 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4079 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4081 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4083 * New remote packets
4086 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4087 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4088 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4089 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4093 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4094 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4096 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4097 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4098 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4103 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4105 * Removed remote packets
4108 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4109 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4111 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4115 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4117 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4121 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4122 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4124 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4126 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4128 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4129 previously saved state.
4131 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4133 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4135 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4136 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4138 info forks List forks of the user program that
4139 are available to be debugged.
4141 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4142 forks of the user program that are
4143 available to be debugged.
4145 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4146 that are available to be debugged (and
4147 kill the forked process).
4149 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4150 that are available to be debugged (and
4151 allow the process to continue).
4155 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4157 * Improved Windows host support
4159 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4160 native console support, and remote communications using either
4161 network sockets or serial ports.
4163 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4165 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4166 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4167 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4168 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4169 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4170 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4174 The ARM rdi-share module.
4176 The Netware NLM debug server.
4178 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4180 * New native configurations
4182 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4183 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4187 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4189 * New command line options
4191 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4192 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4193 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4194 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4195 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4196 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4197 with the --command (-x) option.
4199 * Deprecated commands removed
4201 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4205 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4206 othernames set arm disassembler
4207 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4208 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4209 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4212 * New BSD user-level threads support
4214 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4215 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4218 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4219 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4220 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4222 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4223 are not yet supported.
4225 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4226 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4228 * REMOVED configurations and files
4230 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4231 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4232 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4234 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4236 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4237 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4240 * VAX floating point support
4242 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4244 * User-defined command support
4246 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4247 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4248 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4250 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4252 * New command line option
4254 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4257 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4259 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4260 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4261 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4262 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4263 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4265 * Internationalization
4267 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4268 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4269 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4273 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4274 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4275 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4277 * New native configurations
4279 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4283 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4284 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4286 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4288 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4289 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4290 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4293 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4294 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4295 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4305 powerpc bdm protocol
4307 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4308 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4310 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4312 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4313 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4314 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4315 permanently REMOVED.
4324 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4326 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4328 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4329 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4332 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4334 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4335 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4336 IRIX long double values).
4340 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4341 command. This problem has been fixed.
4343 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4345 * Fix for ``many threads''
4347 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4348 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4351 ptrace: No such process.
4352 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4354 This problem has been fixed.
4356 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4358 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4361 * New ``start'' command.
4363 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4365 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4367 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4368 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4369 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4371 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4372 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4373 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4374 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4375 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4376 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4377 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4378 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4379 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4381 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4383 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4384 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4385 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4386 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4387 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4389 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4390 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4391 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4393 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4395 * New native configurations
4397 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4398 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4399 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4400 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4401 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4402 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4403 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4405 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4407 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4408 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4409 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4410 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4411 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4412 work, was also included.
4414 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4415 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4425 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4426 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4428 * REMOVED configurations and files
4430 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4431 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4432 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4433 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4434 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4435 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4436 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4437 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4438 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4439 sonymips mips-sony-*
4440 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4442 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4444 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4446 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4447 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4448 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4449 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4452 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4454 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4455 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4456 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4457 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4458 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4459 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4462 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4464 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4466 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4467 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4468 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4470 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4472 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4473 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4475 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4477 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4478 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4479 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4481 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4483 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4484 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4486 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4488 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4489 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4490 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4492 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4494 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4495 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4496 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4498 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4500 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4502 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4503 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4505 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4507 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4508 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4509 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4510 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4512 * Revised SPARC target
4514 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4515 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4516 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4517 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4518 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4522 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4523 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4524 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4527 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4529 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4530 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4533 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4535 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4536 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4537 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4538 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4539 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4540 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4541 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4542 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4543 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4545 * New native configurations
4547 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4548 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4549 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4550 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4551 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4553 * New debugging protocols
4555 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4557 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4559 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4560 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4561 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4563 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4565 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4566 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4567 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4568 permanently REMOVED.
4570 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4571 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4572 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4573 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4574 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4575 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4576 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4577 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4578 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4579 sonymips mips-sony-*
4580 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4582 * REMOVED configurations and files
4584 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4585 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4586 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4587 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4588 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4589 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4590 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4591 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4592 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4593 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4594 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4595 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4596 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4597 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4598 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4599 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4600 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4602 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4606 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4607 integrated into GDB.
4609 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4611 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4612 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4613 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4616 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4617 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4618 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4622 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4623 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4624 remote protocol documentation for details.
4626 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4628 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4629 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4630 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4633 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4635 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4636 per-thread variables.
4638 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4640 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4641 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4643 * Separate debug info.
4645 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4646 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4647 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4648 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4649 and optional debug files.
4651 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4653 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4654 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4657 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4658 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4662 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4663 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4664 considered "useable".
4666 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4668 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4669 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4672 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4674 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4675 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4677 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4679 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4680 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4683 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4685 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4686 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4690 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4691 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4692 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4693 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4694 data, for more informative profiling results.
4696 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4698 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4699 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4700 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4702 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4705 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4706 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4707 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4708 in a subsequent -var-update.
4710 * New native configurations.
4712 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4714 * Multi-arched targets.
4716 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4717 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4719 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4721 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4722 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4723 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4724 permanently REMOVED.
4726 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4727 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4728 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4729 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4730 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4731 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4732 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4733 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4734 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4735 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4736 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4737 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4739 * REMOVED configurations and files
4742 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4743 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4744 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4745 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4746 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4747 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4749 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4750 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4751 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4752 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4753 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4754 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4756 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4758 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4759 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4760 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4761 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4762 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4764 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4766 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4768 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4769 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4770 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4771 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4772 shared libs like mad''.
4774 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4776 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4777 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4778 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4779 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4781 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4783 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4784 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4787 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4788 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4790 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4791 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4793 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4794 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4795 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4796 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4798 * Multi-arched targets.
4800 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4801 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4803 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4804 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4805 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4809 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4812 * New native configurations
4814 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4815 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4816 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4817 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4819 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4821 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4822 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4823 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4824 permanently REMOVED.
4826 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4827 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4828 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4829 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4830 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4831 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4832 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4833 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4834 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4835 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4837 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4838 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4840 * OBSOLETE languages
4842 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4844 * REMOVED configurations and files
4846 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4847 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4848 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4849 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4850 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4852 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4854 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4856 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4857 commands. The default is 1024.
4859 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4861 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4863 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4865 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4866 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4867 from a file into memory (restore).
4869 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4871 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4872 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4873 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4875 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4883 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4884 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4885 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4887 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4888 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4889 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4891 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4892 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4893 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4895 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4896 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4897 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4899 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4901 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4903 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4904 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4905 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4906 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4907 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4908 (notably embedded) targets.
4910 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4912 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4913 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4914 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4915 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4917 * New command line option
4919 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4921 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4923 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4924 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4925 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4926 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4927 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4928 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4929 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4930 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4931 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4932 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4934 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4936 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4937 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4939 * New native configurations
4941 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4942 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4943 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4944 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4948 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4950 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4952 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4953 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4954 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4955 permanently REMOVED.
4957 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4958 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4959 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4960 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4961 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4963 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4965 * REMOVED configurations and files
4967 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4969 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4970 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4971 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4972 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4973 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4974 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4975 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4976 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4977 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4978 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4979 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4981 * Changes to command line processing
4983 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4984 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4986 * Changes to key bindings
4988 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4990 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4992 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4994 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4997 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4999 Numerous documentation fixes.
5001 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5003 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5005 * New native configurations
5007 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5008 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5009 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5010 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5011 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5012 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5016 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5018 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5020 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5022 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5023 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5024 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5025 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5026 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5028 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5029 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5030 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5031 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5032 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5033 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5034 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5035 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5037 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5038 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5040 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5041 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5042 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5043 permanently REMOVED.
5045 * REMOVED configurations and files
5047 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5048 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5050 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5054 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5056 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5057 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5062 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5064 * The MI enabled by default.
5066 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5067 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5068 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5069 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5070 which is now deprecated.
5072 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5074 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5075 main features are supported:
5077 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5079 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5082 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5084 - a Pascal expression parser.
5086 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5088 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5090 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5092 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5093 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5095 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5097 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5099 * Changes in completion.
5101 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5102 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5103 users expect at the shell prompt.
5105 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5106 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5107 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5108 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5109 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5110 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5111 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5113 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5115 * New platform-independent commands:
5117 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5118 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5119 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5121 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5123 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5124 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5125 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5127 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5129 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5130 multi-threaded programs though.
5132 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5134 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5136 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5137 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5140 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5142 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5143 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5144 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5145 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5146 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5149 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5150 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5151 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5153 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5155 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5156 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5158 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5159 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5162 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5163 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5164 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5165 a given linear address.
5167 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5168 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5169 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5171 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5173 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5175 * Changes in documentation.
5177 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5178 Documentation License.
5180 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5183 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5185 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5188 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5189 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5190 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5192 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5194 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5195 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5196 contents of this file.
5200 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5202 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5204 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5206 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5207 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5208 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5209 greater level of detail.
5211 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5213 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5214 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5215 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5218 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5220 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5221 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5222 machines ``out of the box''.
5224 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5225 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5226 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5227 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5228 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5230 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5231 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5232 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5233 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5234 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5236 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5237 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5240 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5243 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5244 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5245 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5246 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5248 * New native configurations
5250 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5251 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5255 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5256 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5257 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5258 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5260 * OBSOLETE configurations
5262 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5263 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5265 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5268 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5269 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5270 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5271 be permanently REMOVED.
5273 * Gould support removed
5275 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5277 * New features for SVR4
5279 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5280 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5281 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5283 * Many C++ enhancements
5285 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5286 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5288 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5290 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5291 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5292 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5293 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5295 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5296 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5298 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5300 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5301 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5302 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5304 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5305 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5307 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5309 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5310 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5311 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5313 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5315 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5316 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5317 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5319 * ``apropos'' command added.
5321 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5322 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5323 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5327 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5328 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5329 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5330 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5331 enabled by configuring with:
5333 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5335 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5337 * New native configurations
5339 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5340 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5341 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5345 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5346 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5347 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5349 * OBSOLETE configurations
5351 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5353 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5354 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5355 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5356 be permanently REMOVED.
5360 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5361 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5362 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5363 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5364 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5365 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5366 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5371 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5373 * set extension-language
5375 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5376 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5377 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5378 set extension-language .c c++
5379 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5380 and their associated languages.
5382 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5384 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5385 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5386 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5390 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5391 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5393 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5394 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5396 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5397 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5398 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5399 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5400 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5401 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5402 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5403 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5405 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5406 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5407 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5408 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5412 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5413 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5414 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5415 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5416 for xdb and dbx commands.
5420 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5421 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5422 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5424 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5425 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5426 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5428 * Debugging across forks
5430 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5435 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5436 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5437 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5439 * GDB remote protocol additions
5441 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5442 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5443 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5444 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5446 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5447 full 64-bit address. The command
5449 set remoteaddresssize 32
5451 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5452 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5455 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5456 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5458 maint packet heythere
5460 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5461 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5464 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5465 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5466 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5468 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5470 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5471 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5472 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5474 * mask-address variable for Mips
5476 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5477 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5478 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5480 * Higher serial baud rates
5482 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5483 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5484 to achieve all of these rates.)
5488 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5489 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5492 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5494 * New native configurations
5496 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5497 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5498 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5499 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5500 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5501 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5502 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5506 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5507 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5508 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5509 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5510 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5511 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5512 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5513 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5514 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5515 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5516 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5518 * New debugging protocols
5520 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5521 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5522 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5523 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5524 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5525 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5529 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5530 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5535 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5536 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5538 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5540 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5541 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5542 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5544 * Live range splitting
5546 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5547 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5548 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5552 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5553 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5557 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5558 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5559 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5564 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5569 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5570 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5571 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5572 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5573 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5574 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5578 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5579 the symbol at the specified address.
5583 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5584 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5585 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5586 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5587 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5591 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5592 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5593 of most MIPS variants.
5597 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5598 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5599 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5603 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5604 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5605 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5606 the possible architectures.
5608 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5610 * New native configurations
5612 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5613 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5614 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5615 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5616 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5617 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5621 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5622 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5623 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5624 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5625 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5627 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5631 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5632 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5633 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5634 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5635 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5639 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5641 * Windows 95/NT native
5643 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5644 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5645 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5646 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5647 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5649 * dont-repeat command
5651 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5652 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5653 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5654 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5656 * Send break instead of ^C
5658 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5659 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5660 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5662 * Remote protocol timeout
5664 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5665 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5666 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5668 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5670 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5671 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5672 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5673 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5674 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5676 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5677 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5678 automatically on hpux10.
5680 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5682 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5684 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5686 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5687 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5688 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5689 every character. The default value is 1050.
5691 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5693 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5694 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5695 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5696 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5697 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5698 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5700 * Speedups for remote debugging
5702 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5703 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5704 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5706 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5708 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5709 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5711 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5713 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5715 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5716 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5718 * Remote targets use caching
5720 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5721 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5722 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5723 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5724 off' turns the the data cache off.
5726 * Remote targets may have threads
5728 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5729 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5730 gdb/remote.c for details.
5734 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5735 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5736 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5737 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5738 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5739 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5740 sequence is something like
5742 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5744 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5748 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5749 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5750 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5751 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5752 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5753 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5754 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5755 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5759 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5760 but does simplify configuration and building.
5764 GDB now supports hpux10.
5766 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5768 * New native configurations
5770 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5771 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5772 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5773 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5777 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5778 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5779 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5780 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5783 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5785 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5786 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5787 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5788 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5789 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5791 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5793 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5794 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5797 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5799 To execute the command use:
5802 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5803 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5804 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5806 * New `if' and `while' commands
5808 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5809 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5810 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5811 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5812 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5813 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5814 if the expression is zero.
5816 * Fortran source language mode
5818 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5819 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5820 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5821 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5824 * Better HPUX support
5826 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5827 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5828 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5829 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5830 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5836 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5837 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5843 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5844 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5847 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5848 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5850 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5852 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5853 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5854 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5855 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5856 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5857 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5859 * New DOS host serial code
5861 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5862 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5865 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5867 * New "complete" command
5869 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5870 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5872 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5874 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5875 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5877 * Breakpoint hit counts
5879 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5880 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5881 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5882 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5883 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5886 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5888 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5889 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5890 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5892 * Shared library breakpoints
5894 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5895 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5897 * Hardware watchpoints
5899 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5900 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5902 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5906 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5907 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5909 * Improved Irix 5 support
5911 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5913 * Improved HPPA support
5915 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5917 * New native configurations
5919 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5920 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5921 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5922 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5926 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5927 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5930 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5932 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5933 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5937 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5938 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5940 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5942 * Irix 5 is now supported
5946 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5947 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5948 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5949 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5950 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5953 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5955 * User visible changes:
5959 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5960 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5961 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5962 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5963 debugging info for the mips target).
5965 * DEC Alpha native support
5967 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5968 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5969 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5970 Alpha-specific notes.
5972 * Preliminary thread implementation
5974 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5976 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5978 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5979 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5982 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5984 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5985 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5986 call methods, ...etc.
5988 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5990 * User visible changes:
5992 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5993 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5994 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5995 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5997 Filename completion now works.
5999 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6000 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6001 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6003 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6004 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6005 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6006 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6007 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6011 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6012 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6015 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6019 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6020 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6021 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6025 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6026 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6027 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6028 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6029 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6033 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6034 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6035 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6037 * New targets supported
6039 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6040 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6041 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6042 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6043 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6045 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6046 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6047 GO32 memory extender.
6049 * New remote protocols
6051 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6053 * New source languages supported
6055 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6056 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6057 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6060 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6062 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6064 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6065 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6066 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6067 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6068 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6069 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6071 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6073 * Faster and better demangling
6075 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6076 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6077 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6078 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6079 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6080 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6083 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6084 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6085 compiler does not actually implement.
6087 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6089 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6090 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6091 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6092 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6093 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6094 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6097 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6098 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6100 * Improved configure script
6102 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6103 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6104 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6105 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6107 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6108 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6109 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6110 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6111 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6112 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6114 * Documentation improvements
6116 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6117 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6118 before submitting changes.
6120 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6121 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6122 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6123 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6124 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6126 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6127 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6128 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6129 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6130 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6131 around this problem.
6135 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6136 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6137 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6140 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6141 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6143 * New native hosts supported
6145 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6146 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6148 * New targets supported
6150 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6152 * New file formats supported
6154 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6155 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6159 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6161 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6162 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6164 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6165 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6166 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6168 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6169 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6171 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6172 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6173 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6176 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6177 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6178 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6179 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6180 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6182 * Internal improvements
6184 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6185 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6187 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6188 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6189 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6190 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6191 shared code that handles any of them.
6193 * New command line options
6195 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6199 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6200 General Public License.
6202 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6204 * Host/native/target split
6206 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6207 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6208 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6209 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6210 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6212 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6213 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6214 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6215 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6216 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6217 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6218 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6220 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6221 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6222 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6224 * New hosts supported
6226 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6227 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6228 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6230 * New targets supported
6232 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6233 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6235 * New native hosts supported
6237 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6238 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6239 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6241 * New file formats supported
6243 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6244 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6245 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6249 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6250 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6251 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6253 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6255 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6256 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6257 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6258 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6262 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6263 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6264 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6266 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6270 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6271 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6274 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6275 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6277 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6278 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6279 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6280 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6281 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6282 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6284 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6285 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6286 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6287 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6291 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6292 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6293 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6294 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6295 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6297 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6298 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6299 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6300 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6304 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6305 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6306 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6307 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6308 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6309 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6310 each instruction being stepped through.
6312 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6313 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6315 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6316 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6317 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6318 processor with a serial port.
6322 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6323 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6324 supported, and what files each one uses.
6328 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6329 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6330 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6331 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6333 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6334 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6335 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6336 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6340 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6341 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6342 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6343 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6344 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6345 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6347 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6350 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6352 * Better support for C++ function names
6354 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6355 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6356 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6357 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6358 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6360 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6361 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6362 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6363 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6364 for the list of formats.
6366 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6368 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6369 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6370 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6371 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6372 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6373 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6376 * New 'maintenance' command
6378 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6379 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6380 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6382 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6383 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6384 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6385 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6386 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6387 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6389 The following commands are new:
6391 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6392 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6393 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6395 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6397 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6398 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6399 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6400 read after argv processing.
6402 * New hosts supported
6404 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6406 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6408 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6409 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6410 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6411 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6412 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6415 * New targets supported
6417 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6419 * More smarts about finding #include files
6421 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6422 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6423 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6424 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6425 the one that contains your sources.
6427 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6428 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6429 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6431 * Interesting infernals change
6433 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6434 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6435 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6436 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6438 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6440 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6441 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6442 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6444 See the ChangeLog for details.
6446 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6448 * New machines supported (host and target)
6450 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6452 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6454 * New malloc package
6456 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6457 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6458 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6459 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6460 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6461 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6465 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6466 'help info proc' for details.
6468 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6470 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6471 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6474 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6476 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6477 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6478 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6479 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6480 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6481 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6483 * Cross byte order fixes
6485 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6486 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6488 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6490 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6491 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6492 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6493 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6494 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6495 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6496 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6497 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6498 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6499 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6501 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6502 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6503 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6504 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6506 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6507 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6508 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6511 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6513 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6514 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6515 shared across multiple host platforms.
6517 * longjmp() handling
6519 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6520 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6521 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6522 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6526 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6527 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6532 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6533 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6534 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6536 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6538 * New machines supported (host and target)
6540 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6542 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6543 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6545 * New machines supported (target)
6547 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6551 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6552 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6553 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6555 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6556 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6557 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6558 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6559 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6562 * New features for SVR4
6564 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6565 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6566 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6568 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6569 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6570 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6572 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6573 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6575 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6577 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6578 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6579 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6580 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6581 same code linked statically.
6585 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6586 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6587 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6588 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6589 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6590 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6594 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6595 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6596 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6599 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6601 * New machines supported (host and target)
6603 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6604 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6605 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6607 * Almost SCO Unix support
6609 We had hoped to support:
6610 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6611 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6612 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6613 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6615 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6617 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6618 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6619 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6620 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6625 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6626 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6627 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6631 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6632 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6633 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6635 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6637 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6638 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6639 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6641 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6642 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6643 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6644 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6647 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6648 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6649 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6650 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6653 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6654 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6657 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6658 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6659 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6662 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6664 * Improved configuration
6666 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6667 Porting BFD is simpler.
6671 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6672 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6673 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6674 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6678 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6680 * New host supported (not target)
6682 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6685 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6687 * Multiple source language support
6689 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6690 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6691 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6692 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6693 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6694 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6698 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6699 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6700 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6701 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6703 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6704 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6705 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6707 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6708 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6712 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6713 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6714 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6715 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6718 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6720 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6721 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6722 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6723 examining core files.
6727 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6730 * New machines supported (host and target)
6732 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6733 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6734 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6736 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6738 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6740 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6742 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6743 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6744 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6746 * New remote interfaces
6752 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6756 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6758 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6759 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6760 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6761 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6762 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6763 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6764 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6765 stub on the target system.
6767 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6769 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6770 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6771 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6773 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6774 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6777 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6779 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6780 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6782 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6783 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6784 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6786 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6787 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6788 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6789 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6791 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6792 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6793 it is already running. Default is ON.
6795 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6796 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6797 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6798 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6801 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6802 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6803 or the value of the environment variable
6806 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6807 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6810 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6811 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6812 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6814 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6815 history expansion will be performed on
6816 command line input. The default is OFF.
6818 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6819 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6820 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6822 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6823 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6824 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6827 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6828 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6829 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6832 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6833 ``set width'' instead.
6835 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6836 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6837 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6838 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6840 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6843 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6846 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6849 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6852 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6854 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6855 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6856 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6860 * Support for Shared Libraries
6862 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6863 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6864 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6865 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6866 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6867 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6868 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6869 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6871 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6872 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6873 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6875 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6880 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6881 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6882 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6883 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6884 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6885 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6887 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6889 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6891 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6892 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6893 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6896 * C++ multiple inheritance
6898 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6901 * C++ exception handling
6903 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6904 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6905 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6908 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6909 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6910 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6912 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6913 current stack frame.
6916 * Minor command changes
6918 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6919 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6920 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6922 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6923 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6924 frames without printing.
6926 * New directory command
6928 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6929 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6930 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6931 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6932 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6934 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6936 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6939 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6940 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6941 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6942 where the program that you are debugging will run.