1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.0
6 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
7 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
8 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
10 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
11 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
12 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
14 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
15 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
20 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
21 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
24 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
26 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
27 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
29 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
30 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
32 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
33 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
34 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
35 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
36 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
38 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
39 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
40 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
44 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
45 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
46 the inferior when starting it.
49 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
50 before starting the remote inferior.
53 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
54 user-set environment variables should be unset).
57 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
59 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
60 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
62 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
63 filter the tests to be run.
68 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
69 with the 'compile' commands.
71 set debug separate-debug-file
72 show debug separate-debug-file
73 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
76 List the registered selftests.
79 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
81 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
84 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
86 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
89 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
90 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
91 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
92 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
94 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
95 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
96 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
97 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
98 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
99 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
101 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
102 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
103 unless you tell it the variable's type:
106 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
110 * New native configurations
112 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
116 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
118 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
120 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
121 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
122 available in future Intel CPUs.
124 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
128 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
129 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
131 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
134 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
136 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
138 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
139 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
142 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
144 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
145 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
147 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
149 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
150 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
151 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
152 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
155 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
157 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
158 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
161 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
163 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
164 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
166 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
168 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
173 eval "print $arg%d", $i
178 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
180 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
181 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
183 * New native configurations
185 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
189 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
190 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
192 * Removed targets and native configurations
194 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
195 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
200 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
202 maint print arc arc-instruction address
203 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
207 set disassembler-options
208 show disassembler-options
209 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
210 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
211 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
212 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
213 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
218 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
219 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
221 -file-list-shared-libraries
222 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
223 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
225 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
227 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
229 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
230 default. One must now explicitly configure with
231 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
232 option will be removed in a future release.
234 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
237 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
238 memory backward from the given address. For example:
241 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
242 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
243 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
244 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
245 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
246 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
247 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
248 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
249 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
251 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
252 arrays of dynamic types.
254 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
255 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
256 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
257 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
258 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
259 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
261 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
264 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
265 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
266 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
268 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
270 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
271 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
272 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
273 signal received and code location.
277 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
278 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
279 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
280 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
282 * Rust language support.
283 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
284 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
287 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
289 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
290 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
291 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
292 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
293 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
294 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
295 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
296 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
297 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
298 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
301 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
303 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
304 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
309 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
310 skip -function function
311 skip -rfunction regular-expression
312 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
313 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
314 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
316 maint info line-table REGEXP
317 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
320 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
323 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
324 using the TTY file for input/output.
328 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
329 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
330 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
331 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
332 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
335 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
336 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
337 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
338 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
341 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
342 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
343 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
345 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
348 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
349 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
350 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
351 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
352 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
353 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
355 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
356 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
357 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
358 bytecode into native code.
360 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
361 recording. For example:
363 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
365 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
367 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
371 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
373 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
375 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
377 * Per-inferior thread numbers
379 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
380 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
381 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
385 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
386 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
387 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
388 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
390 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
391 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
392 are no longer unique between inferiors.
394 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
395 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
396 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
398 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
401 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
402 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
405 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
408 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
409 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
410 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
411 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
414 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
417 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
420 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
423 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
424 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
427 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
428 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
430 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
432 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
434 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
435 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
437 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
438 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
441 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
442 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
445 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
446 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
449 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
451 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
452 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
453 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
455 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
456 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
460 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
461 maint show target-non-stop
462 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
463 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
464 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
466 maint set bfd-sharing
467 maint show bfd-sharing
468 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
472 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
476 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
478 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
479 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
480 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
482 set remote thread-events
483 show remote thread-events
484 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
486 set ada print-signatures on|off
487 show ada print-signatures"
488 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
489 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
493 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
494 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
495 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
497 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
498 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
499 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
500 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
501 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
502 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
504 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
505 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
507 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
508 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
510 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
512 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
513 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
514 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
515 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
516 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
517 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
519 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
520 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
525 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
527 exec-events feature in qSupported
528 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
529 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
530 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
531 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
534 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
537 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
538 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
540 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
541 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
544 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
545 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
546 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
547 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
548 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
549 stop for that same thread.
552 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
553 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
554 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
557 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
558 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
560 syscall_entry stop reason
561 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
563 syscall_return stop reason
564 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
566 * Extended-remote exec events
568 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
569 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
570 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
572 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
573 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
574 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
576 * Thread names in remote protocol
578 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
581 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
583 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
584 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
585 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
586 fork and exec catchpoints.
588 * Remote syscall events
590 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
591 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
593 set remote catch-syscall-packet
594 show remote catch-syscall-packet
595 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
599 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
600 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
605 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
606 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
607 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
608 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
609 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
610 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
612 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
614 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
615 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
616 including advance SIMD instructions.
618 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
620 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
621 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
622 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
623 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
624 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
625 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
626 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
628 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
630 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
632 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
633 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
636 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
637 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
638 and may include things like its command line arguments.
640 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
641 is now available on all platforms.
643 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
644 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
645 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
646 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
647 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
648 backward compatibility.
650 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
651 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
652 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
653 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
655 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
656 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
657 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
658 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
661 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
663 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
665 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
666 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
667 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
668 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
669 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
670 See "New remote packets" below.
672 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
673 available register groups, including target specific groups.
675 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
676 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
677 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
678 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
683 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
687 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
688 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
689 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
690 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
691 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
692 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
693 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
694 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
695 "const" version of the value respectively.
699 maint print symbol-cache
700 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
702 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
703 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
705 maint flush-symbol-cache
706 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
710 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
713 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
717 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
720 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
721 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
725 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
728 Print information about branch tracing internals.
730 maint btrace packet-history
731 Print the raw branch tracing data.
733 maint btrace clear-packet-history
734 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
737 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
738 anew by the next "record" command.
743 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
745 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
748 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
749 show debug dwarf-read
750 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
752 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
753 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
754 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
755 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
757 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
758 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
759 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
760 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
763 show debug dwarf-line
764 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
768 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
769 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
770 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
771 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
773 set history remove-duplicates
774 show history remove-duplicates
775 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
777 maint set symbol-cache-size
778 maint show symbol-cache-size
779 Control the size of the symbol cache.
781 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
782 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
784 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
785 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
787 set debug linux-namespaces
788 show debug linux-namespaces
789 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
791 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
792 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
793 Intel Processor Trace format.
794 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
795 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
797 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
798 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
801 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
802 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
804 * Python/Guile scripting
806 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
807 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
811 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
812 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
814 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
815 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
818 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
819 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
823 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
827 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
828 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
829 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
833 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
834 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
837 Return information about files on the remote system.
840 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
841 create a process running on the remote system.
844 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
845 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
846 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
847 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
850 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
853 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
855 vforkdone stop reason
856 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
857 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
859 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
860 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
861 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
862 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
863 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
864 whether these features are enabled.
866 * Extended-remote fork events
868 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
869 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
870 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
871 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
873 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
874 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
875 the btrace record target.
876 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
878 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
879 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
881 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
884 * Removed command line options
886 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
888 * Removed targets and native configurations
890 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
891 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
893 * New configure options
896 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
897 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
899 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
900 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
901 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
902 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
904 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
908 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
910 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
912 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
916 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
917 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
918 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
919 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
920 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
921 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
922 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
923 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
924 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
925 selecting a new file to debug.
926 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
927 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
929 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
932 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
933 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
934 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
935 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
937 * New Python-based convenience functions:
939 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
940 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
941 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
942 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
944 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
945 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
946 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
947 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
948 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
949 interface with this new feature are:
951 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
952 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
956 demangle [-l language] [--] name
957 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
958 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
959 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
960 as "maint demangler-warning".
962 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
963 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
965 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
966 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
969 maint print user-registers
970 List all currently available "user" registers.
972 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
973 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
974 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
976 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
977 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
978 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
981 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
982 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
983 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
984 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
987 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
988 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
989 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
990 switched threads meanwhile.
992 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
994 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
995 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
996 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
997 is now the default mode.
1001 set debug symbol-lookup
1002 show debug symbol-lookup
1003 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1007 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1008 inferiors that have exited.
1012 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1016 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1018 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1019 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1020 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1021 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1022 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1024 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1025 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1026 its alias "share", instead.
1028 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1030 * New command line options
1033 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1035 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1036 as specified in ISO C99.
1038 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1039 with or without disassembly.
1043 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1044 available is determined at configure time.
1045 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1046 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1048 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1052 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1056 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1058 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1059 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1061 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1062 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1066 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1067 show print symbol-loading
1068 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1069 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1070 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1071 becomes less useful.
1073 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1074 show guile print-stack
1075 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1077 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1078 show auto-load guile-scripts
1079 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1081 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1082 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1083 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1084 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1085 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1086 usage of this option.
1088 set auto-connect-native-target
1090 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1091 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1092 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1094 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1095 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1096 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1098 maint set target-async (on|off)
1099 maint show target-async
1100 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1101 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1102 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1103 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1105 set mi-async (on|off)
1107 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1108 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1110 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1111 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1113 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1114 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1115 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1116 "set target-async on" command.
1118 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1120 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1121 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1122 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1123 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1124 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1126 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1127 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1128 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1130 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1131 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1132 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1133 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1134 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1135 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1136 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1138 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1139 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1141 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1142 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1143 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1145 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1146 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1147 memory or registers.
1149 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1151 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1152 remote. It now works with all targets.
1154 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1155 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1156 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1157 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1158 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1159 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1160 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1161 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1162 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1165 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1166 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1167 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1169 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1171 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1172 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1173 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1175 * New remote packets
1177 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1178 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1179 branch trace incrementally.
1183 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1184 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1186 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1187 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1188 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1189 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1190 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1193 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1195 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1196 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1197 its alias "share", instead.
1199 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1200 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1205 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1206 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1207 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1208 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1209 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1210 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1211 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1212 commands and CLI execution commands.
1214 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1216 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1217 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1218 recording has been added.
1220 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1222 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1223 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1225 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1226 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1227 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1228 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1229 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1230 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1233 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1235 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1237 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1238 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1239 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1240 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1245 (gdb) info registers rax
1248 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1249 "*value not available*".
1251 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1256 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1257 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1258 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1259 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1260 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1261 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1265 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1266 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1267 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1269 * Removed native configurations
1271 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1272 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1274 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1275 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1276 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1277 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1278 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1279 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1280 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1284 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1285 maint check-psymtabs
1286 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1288 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1289 maint expand-symtabs
1290 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1293 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1295 maint set|show per-command
1296 maint set|show per-command space
1297 maint set|show per-command time
1298 maint set|show per-command symtab
1299 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1301 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1302 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1303 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1304 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1305 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1308 info exceptions REGEXP
1309 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1310 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1315 set debug symfile off|on
1317 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1318 symbol tables within those files
1320 set print raw frame-arguments
1321 show print raw frame-arguments
1322 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1323 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1325 set remote trace-status-packet
1326 show remote trace-status-packet
1327 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1331 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1335 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1337 set startup-with-shell
1338 show startup-with-shell
1339 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1344 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1345 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1347 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1348 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1349 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1350 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1353 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1354 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1355 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1357 * New command-line options
1359 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1361 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1362 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1364 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1367 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1369 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1370 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1372 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1373 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1375 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1376 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1377 due to an uncaught signal.
1381 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
1382 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
1383 command, which should contain "language-option".
1385 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
1386 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
1388 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
1389 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
1390 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
1391 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1392 "undefined-command-error-code".
1394 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
1397 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
1399 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
1400 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
1403 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
1404 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
1406 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
1407 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
1408 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
1410 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
1411 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
1412 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
1413 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
1414 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
1415 "exec-run-start-option".
1417 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
1418 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
1420 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
1421 the new "info exceptions" command.
1423 * New system-wide configuration scripts
1424 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
1425 configuration scripts for the following systems:
1429 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
1430 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
1431 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
1434 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
1435 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
1437 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
1438 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
1439 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
1441 * New remote packets
1445 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
1446 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
1447 involvemement at each single-step.
1449 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
1450 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
1451 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
1452 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
1453 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
1454 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
1457 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1459 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
1460 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
1462 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
1463 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
1464 trace state variables.
1466 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
1469 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
1470 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
1472 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
1474 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
1475 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
1476 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
1477 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
1479 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
1481 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
1482 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
1483 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
1484 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
1486 set|show record full insn-number-max
1487 set|show record full stop-at-limit
1488 set|show record full memory-query
1490 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
1491 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
1492 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
1493 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
1494 This new recording method can be enabled using:
1498 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
1499 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
1501 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
1502 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
1503 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
1505 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
1506 instruction granularity
1508 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
1509 function granularity
1511 * New native configurations
1513 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
1514 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
1515 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1516 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
1520 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
1521 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
1522 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
1523 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
1524 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
1526 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
1527 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
1528 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
1529 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
1530 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
1531 --data-directory command-line option.
1533 * New command line options:
1535 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
1536 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
1538 * Removed command line options
1540 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
1543 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
1546 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
1550 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
1552 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
1554 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
1556 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
1558 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
1559 of architecture in the Python API.
1561 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
1562 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
1564 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1566 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
1567 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
1569 ** $_regex(str, regex)
1571 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
1574 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
1575 default for GCC since November 2000.
1577 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
1579 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
1580 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
1582 * New configure options
1584 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
1585 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
1586 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
1587 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
1588 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
1589 options allow the user to override that default.
1590 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
1591 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
1592 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
1594 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1597 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
1598 conditions to be attached.
1601 List the BFDs known to GDB.
1603 python-interactive [command]
1605 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
1606 and print the result of expressions.
1609 "py" is a new alias for "python".
1611 enable type-printer [name]...
1612 disable type-printer [name]...
1613 Enable or disable type printers.
1617 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
1618 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
1623 set print type methods (on|off)
1624 show print type methods
1625 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
1626 The default is to show them.
1628 set print type typedefs (on|off)
1629 show print type typedefs
1630 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
1631 The default is to show them.
1633 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
1634 show filename-display
1635 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
1636 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
1638 set trace-buffer-size
1639 show trace-buffer-size
1640 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
1642 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
1643 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
1644 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
1648 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
1651 set debug coff-pe-read
1652 show debug coff-pe-read
1653 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
1658 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
1661 set debug notification
1662 show debug notification
1663 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
1667 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
1668 "=cmd-param-changed".
1669 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
1670 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
1671 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
1672 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
1673 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
1674 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
1675 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
1676 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
1678 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
1679 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
1680 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
1681 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
1682 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
1683 library load/unload events.
1684 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
1685 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
1686 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
1687 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
1688 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
1689 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
1690 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
1691 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
1693 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
1694 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
1695 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
1696 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
1698 * New remote packets
1701 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
1702 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1705 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
1706 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
1710 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
1711 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1714 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
1715 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
1717 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
1719 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
1720 for more x32 ABI info.
1722 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
1724 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
1726 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1727 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
1728 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
1729 "info os files" lists file descriptors
1730 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
1731 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
1732 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
1733 "info os msg" lists message queues
1734 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
1736 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
1737 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
1738 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
1739 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
1740 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
1741 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
1743 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
1744 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
1745 record/replay support.
1747 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
1751 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
1754 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
1756 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
1757 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
1759 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
1761 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
1762 the source at which the symbol was defined.
1764 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
1765 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
1766 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
1769 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
1770 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
1772 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
1773 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
1774 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
1776 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
1777 object associated with a PC value.
1779 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
1780 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
1782 * Go language support.
1783 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
1786 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
1787 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
1789 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
1790 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
1792 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
1793 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
1794 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
1795 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
1796 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
1799 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
1800 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
1801 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
1802 build/libcpp/expr.c.
1804 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
1805 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
1807 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
1808 since December 2007.
1810 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
1811 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
1812 command does. For instance:
1814 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
1816 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
1817 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
1818 created, using the "condition" command.
1820 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
1821 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
1823 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
1825 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
1826 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
1827 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
1828 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
1829 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
1830 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
1831 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
1832 files with older .gdb_index sections.
1834 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
1835 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
1836 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
1837 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
1838 the .gdb_index section.
1840 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
1842 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
1847 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
1849 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
1853 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1854 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
1855 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
1857 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
1858 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
1860 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
1863 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
1864 C++ and Java objects.
1866 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
1867 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
1868 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
1869 configured with '--with-python'.
1871 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
1872 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
1873 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
1874 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
1875 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
1876 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
1877 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
1879 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
1880 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
1881 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
1882 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
1884 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
1885 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
1886 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
1887 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
1889 ** "set print symbol"
1891 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
1892 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
1893 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
1895 * Deprecated commands
1897 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
1898 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
1902 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
1903 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
1905 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
1906 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
1907 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
1908 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
1913 set mips compression
1914 show mips compression
1915 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
1916 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
1919 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
1921 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
1922 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
1923 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
1924 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
1926 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
1930 Disable auto-loading globally.
1933 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
1935 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
1936 show auto-load gdb-scripts
1937 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
1939 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
1940 show auto-load python-scripts
1941 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
1943 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
1944 show auto-load local-gdbinit
1945 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
1947 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
1948 show auto-load libthread-db
1949 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
1951 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1952 show auto-load scripts-directory
1953 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
1954 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
1955 of the directories listed by this option.
1956 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1958 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
1959 show auto-load safe-path
1960 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
1961 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
1963 set debug auto-load on|off
1964 show debug auto-load
1965 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
1967 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
1969 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
1970 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
1971 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
1972 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
1974 set dprintf-function <expr>
1975 show dprintf-function
1976 set dprintf-channel <expr>
1977 show dprintf-channel
1978 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
1979 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
1981 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
1982 show disconnected-dprintf
1983 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
1984 after GDB disconnects.
1986 * New configure options
1988 --with-auto-load-dir
1989 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
1990 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
1991 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
1992 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
1993 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
1995 --with-auto-load-safe-path
1996 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
1997 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
1999 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2000 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2003 * New remote packets
2005 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2007 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2008 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2009 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2010 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2014 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2015 program without GDB involvement.
2017 * New command line options
2019 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2020 before loading inferior.
2021 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2022 execute it before loading inferior.
2024 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2026 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2027 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2028 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2029 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2032 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2033 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2035 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2036 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2037 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2038 target hardware watchpoint.
2040 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2041 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2042 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2043 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2047 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2048 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2051 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2052 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2053 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2054 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2055 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2058 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2061 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2062 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2063 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2064 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2065 corresponding value.
2067 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2068 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2069 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2072 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2073 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2074 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2075 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2077 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2079 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2082 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2083 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2084 available in the CLI.
2086 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2087 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2088 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2089 "some_type.items()".
2091 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2094 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2095 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2096 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2097 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2098 any anonymous fields.
2102 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2105 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2106 "=breakpoint-modified".
2108 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2110 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2111 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2112 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2115 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2116 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2117 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2118 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2119 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2121 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2122 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2124 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2125 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2126 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2127 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2128 use this option to specify where to find it.
2130 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2131 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2132 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2133 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2134 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2135 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2136 section in the user manual for more details.
2138 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2139 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2140 become available after that.
2142 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2144 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2145 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2151 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2152 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2156 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2157 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2158 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2160 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2161 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2162 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2164 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2165 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2166 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2167 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2168 name starts with a hyphen.
2170 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2171 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2172 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2173 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2174 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2175 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2176 number of bytes that will be collected.
2179 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2180 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2181 setting the variable trace-notes.
2184 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2185 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2186 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2189 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2190 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2191 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2192 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2193 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2196 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2197 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2198 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2202 set debug dwarf2-read
2203 show debug dwarf2-read
2204 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2205 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2207 set debug symtab-create
2208 show debug symtab-create
2209 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2210 creation. The default is off.
2213 show extended-prompt
2214 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2215 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2216 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2217 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2218 prompt is displayed.
2220 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2221 show print entry-values
2222 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2223 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2224 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2226 set debug entry-values
2227 show debug entry-values
2228 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2229 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2231 set basenames-may-differ
2232 show basenames-may-differ
2233 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2234 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2235 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2236 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2237 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2238 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2239 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2240 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2246 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2247 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2248 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2249 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2251 set trace-stop-notes
2252 show trace-stop-notes
2253 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2254 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2255 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2256 started by someone else.
2258 * New remote packets
2262 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2266 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2270 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2274 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2278 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2281 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2282 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2286 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2290 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2292 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2294 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2296 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2298 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2299 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2300 matches the given regular expression.
2302 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2304 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2305 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2307 * New command line options
2309 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2310 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2312 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2313 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2315 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2316 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2317 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2319 * GDB now understands thread names.
2321 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2322 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2324 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2325 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2328 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2329 has been integrated into GDB.
2333 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2334 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2335 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2337 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2338 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2339 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2340 and allows for more dynamic content.
2342 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2343 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2344 have an is_valid method.
2346 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2347 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2348 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2350 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2352 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2353 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2354 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2355 that function like so:
2357 result = some_value (10,20)
2359 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2360 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2361 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2363 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2364 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2365 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2366 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2367 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2369 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2370 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2372 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2374 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2377 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2378 holds the thread's name.
2380 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
2381 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
2382 occurring in the process being debugged.
2383 The following events are currently supported:
2384 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
2385 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
2386 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
2390 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
2391 instantiation. For example, if you have:
2393 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
2395 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
2396 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
2397 was added to GCC 4.5.
2399 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
2400 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
2401 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
2402 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
2403 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
2404 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
2406 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
2407 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
2408 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
2409 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
2410 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
2412 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
2413 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
2414 execution to a label.
2416 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
2417 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
2418 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
2419 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
2421 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
2422 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
2423 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
2426 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
2428 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
2429 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
2430 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
2431 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
2432 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
2433 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
2436 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
2438 While now you see this:
2441 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
2443 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
2446 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
2447 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
2448 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
2449 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
2451 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2452 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
2453 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
2454 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2455 section in the user manual for more details.
2457 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2459 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
2460 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
2462 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
2464 * New native configurations
2466 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
2470 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
2472 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
2473 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
2474 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
2475 in the GDB user manual.
2477 * Guile support was removed.
2479 * New features in the GNU simulator
2481 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
2483 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
2485 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
2487 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
2489 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
2490 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
2491 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
2492 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
2493 was always disabled for such configurations.
2497 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
2499 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
2500 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
2510 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
2511 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
2512 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
2514 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
2516 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
2517 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
2518 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
2519 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
2521 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
2522 mentioned flavors of operators.
2524 ** static const class members
2526 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
2527 class definition has been fixed.
2529 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
2531 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
2532 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
2533 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
2534 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
2535 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
2536 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
2538 * Static tracepoints
2540 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
2541 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
2542 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
2543 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
2544 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
2545 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
2546 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
2547 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
2548 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
2549 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
2550 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
2551 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
2552 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
2553 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
2554 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
2555 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
2556 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
2557 the "New remote packets" section below.
2559 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
2561 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
2562 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
2563 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
2564 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
2568 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
2569 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
2570 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
2571 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
2572 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
2573 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
2574 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
2576 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
2579 * New remote packets
2583 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
2587 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
2588 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
2589 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
2590 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
2591 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
2592 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
2596 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
2600 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
2603 qXfer:statictrace:read
2605 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
2606 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
2607 to gdb's qSupported query.
2611 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
2615 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
2616 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
2618 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
2619 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
2622 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2624 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
2625 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
2626 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
2627 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
2629 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
2630 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
2631 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
2632 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
2633 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
2634 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
2635 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
2637 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
2638 for static tracepoints support.
2640 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
2642 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
2643 it understands register description.
2645 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
2647 * X86 general purpose registers
2649 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
2650 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
2651 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
2652 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
2653 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
2655 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
2656 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
2657 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
2658 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
2659 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
2660 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
2662 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
2663 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
2664 in the specified file.
2666 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
2667 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
2668 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
2669 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
2670 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
2671 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
2672 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
2673 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
2674 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
2675 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
2679 eval template, expressions...
2680 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
2681 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
2683 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
2684 show target-file-system-kind
2685 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
2688 save breakpoints <filename>
2689 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
2690 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
2691 definitions, use the `source' command.
2693 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
2696 info static-tracepoint-markers
2697 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
2699 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
2700 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
2701 function, line, address, or marker ID.
2705 Enable and disable observer mode.
2707 set may-write-registers on|off
2708 set may-write-memory on|off
2709 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
2710 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
2711 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
2712 set may-interrupt on|off
2713 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
2714 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
2715 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
2716 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
2717 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
2718 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
2719 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
2721 set record memory-query on|off
2722 show record memory-query
2723 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
2724 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
2729 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
2733 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
2734 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
2735 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
2736 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
2737 GDB using Python' in the manual.
2739 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
2740 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
2741 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
2742 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
2744 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
2745 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
2747 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
2749 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
2751 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
2753 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
2754 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
2755 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
2757 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
2758 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
2759 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
2760 regular breakpoints.
2764 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
2766 * D language support.
2767 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
2770 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
2771 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
2772 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
2773 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
2774 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
2776 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
2777 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
2778 conditions of the form:
2780 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
2782 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
2783 interface mentioned above.
2785 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
2789 ** Namespace Support
2791 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
2792 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
2793 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
2794 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
2795 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
2799 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
2800 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
2805 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
2806 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
2810 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
2815 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
2818 * Multi-program debugging.
2820 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
2821 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
2822 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
2823 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
2824 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
2825 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
2826 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
2827 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
2829 * New tracing features
2831 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
2833 ** Trace state variables
2835 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
2836 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
2837 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
2838 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
2839 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
2840 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
2841 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
2842 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
2843 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
2844 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
2848 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
2849 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
2850 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
2851 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
2852 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
2853 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
2854 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
2855 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
2856 the regular trace command.
2858 ** Disconnected tracing
2860 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
2861 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
2862 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
2863 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
2864 connection is lost unexpectedly.
2868 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
2869 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
2870 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
2871 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
2872 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
2873 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
2876 ** Circular trace buffer
2878 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
2879 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
2880 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
2881 not be available for all target agents.
2886 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
2887 the arguments to be comma-separated.
2890 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
2891 which only declare a variable are not shown.
2894 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
2895 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
2898 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
2899 "set script-extension" (see below).
2901 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2903 record save [<FILENAME>]
2904 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
2905 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
2907 record restore <FILENAME>
2908 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
2909 earlier time, for replay debugging.
2911 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
2914 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
2915 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
2916 inferior has loaded.
2921 maint info program-spaces
2922 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
2924 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
2925 show remote interrupt-sequence
2926 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
2927 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
2928 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
2929 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
2930 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
2932 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
2933 show remote interrupt-on-connect
2934 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
2935 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
2938 set remotebreak [on | off]
2940 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
2942 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
2943 Create or modify a trace state variable.
2946 List trace state variables and their values.
2948 delete tvariable $NAME ...
2949 Delete one or more trace state variables.
2952 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
2953 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
2955 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
2956 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
2958 * New expression syntax
2960 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
2961 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
2965 set follow-exec-mode new|same
2966 show follow-exec-mode
2967 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
2968 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
2969 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
2971 set default-collect EXPR, ...
2972 show default-collect
2973 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
2974 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
2975 such as registers or a critical global variable.
2977 set disconnected-tracing
2978 show disconnected-tracing
2979 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
2980 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
2983 set circular-trace-buffer
2984 show circular-trace-buffer
2985 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
2986 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
2987 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
2988 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
2990 set script-extension off|soft|strict
2991 show script-extension
2992 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
2993 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
2994 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
2995 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
2997 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
2999 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3000 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3001 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3002 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3003 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3004 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3005 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3008 * Python API Improvements
3010 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3011 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3012 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3014 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3015 `is_base_class' attribute.
3017 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3019 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3020 evaluate an expression.
3022 * New remote packets
3025 Define a trace state variable.
3028 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3031 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3034 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3037 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3041 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3043 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3044 much more reliable. In particular:
3045 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3046 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3047 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3048 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3049 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3050 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3051 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3052 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3053 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3054 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3055 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3056 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3057 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3058 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3059 non-threaded programs.
3061 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3062 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3063 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3066 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3068 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3069 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3070 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3071 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3072 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3074 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3075 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3076 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3077 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3078 for tracepoint actions.
3080 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3081 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3082 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3084 * Process record and replay
3086 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3087 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3088 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3091 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3092 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3093 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3096 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3097 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3100 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3101 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3102 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3103 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3104 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3105 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3106 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3107 the installation instructions for more information.
3109 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3110 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3111 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3112 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3114 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3115 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3117 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3118 now complete on file names.
3120 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3121 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3122 For instance, consider:
3124 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3125 # struct example variable;
3128 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3129 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3131 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3132 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3134 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3135 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3138 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3139 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3140 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3142 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3143 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3144 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3145 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3147 * New remote packets
3150 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3153 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3154 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3155 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3158 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3159 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3162 Obtains additional operating system information
3166 Read or write additional signal information.
3168 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3170 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3171 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3172 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3174 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3175 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3177 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3178 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3179 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3181 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3182 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3184 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3186 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3188 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3189 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3191 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3192 list of section offsets.
3194 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3195 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3196 have also been fixed.
3198 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3199 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3200 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3202 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3205 template<typename T> class C { };
3208 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3210 ptype C<char const *>
3211 ptype C<char const*>
3212 ptype C<const char *>
3213 ptype C<const char*>
3215 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3217 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3218 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3220 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3221 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3222 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3224 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3225 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3227 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3230 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3231 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3233 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3234 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3239 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3240 available is determined at configure time.
3242 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3244 * Ada tasking support
3246 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3250 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3252 Print detailed information about task number N.
3254 Print the task number of the current task.
3256 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3258 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3259 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3261 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3263 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3264 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3265 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3266 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3267 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3268 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3271 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3272 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3275 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3276 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3277 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3278 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3281 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3283 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3284 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3285 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3286 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3287 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3289 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3290 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3291 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3292 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3293 --enable-targets configure option.
3295 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3297 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3298 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3299 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3300 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3301 section in the user manual for more information.
3303 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3304 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3305 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3306 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3307 extensions on linux targets.
3309 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3311 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3312 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3313 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3314 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3315 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3316 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3317 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3318 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3319 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3321 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3323 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3325 maint set python print-stack
3326 maint show python print-stack
3327 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3330 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3335 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3339 Show operating system information about processes.
3342 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3345 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3348 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3351 Kill inferior number NUM.
3355 set spu stop-on-load
3356 show spu stop-on-load
3357 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3359 set spu auto-flush-cache
3360 show spu auto-flush-cache
3361 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3362 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3364 set sh calling-convention
3365 show sh calling-convention
3366 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3369 show debug timestamp
3370 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3372 set disassemble-next-line
3373 show disassemble-next-line
3374 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3377 set remote noack-packet
3378 show remote noack-packet
3379 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
3380 under "New remote packets."
3382 set remote query-attached-packet
3383 show remote query-attached-packet
3384 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
3386 set remote read-siginfo-object
3387 show remote read-siginfo-object
3388 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
3391 set remote write-siginfo-object
3392 show remote write-siginfo-object
3393 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
3396 set remote reverse-continue
3397 show remote reverse-continue
3398 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
3400 set remote reverse-step
3401 show remote reverse-step
3402 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
3404 set displaced-stepping
3405 show displaced-stepping
3406 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
3407 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
3408 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
3411 show debug displaced
3412 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
3414 maint set internal-error
3415 maint show internal-error
3416 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
3418 maint set internal-warning
3419 maint show internal-warning
3420 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
3425 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3427 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
3428 show multiple-symbols
3429 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
3430 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
3431 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
3433 set breakpoint always-inserted
3434 show breakpoint always-inserted
3435 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
3436 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
3437 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
3439 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3440 show arm fallback-mode
3441 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
3443 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
3444 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
3445 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
3446 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
3448 set disable-randomization
3449 show disable-randomization
3450 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
3451 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
3452 multiple debugging sessions.
3456 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
3461 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
3462 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
3463 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
3464 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
3466 set target-wide-charset
3467 show target-wide-charset
3468 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
3469 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
3471 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
3473 set tcp connect-timeout
3474 show tcp connect-timeout
3475 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
3476 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
3477 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
3479 set libthread-db-search-path
3480 show libthread-db-search-path
3481 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
3484 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
3485 show schedule-multiple
3486 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
3487 the current process.
3491 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
3492 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
3493 affecting correctness.
3495 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
3496 show interactive-mode
3497 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
3498 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
3499 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
3500 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
3501 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
3506 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
3507 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
3508 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
3512 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
3513 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
3514 alias for the `fork' command.
3517 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
3518 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
3519 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
3522 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
3523 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
3524 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
3528 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
3529 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
3530 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
3533 * New native configurations
3535 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
3537 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
3541 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
3542 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
3543 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
3546 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
3547 (mingw32ce) debugging.
3553 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
3555 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
3557 * New native configurations
3559 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
3560 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
3564 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
3565 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
3567 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
3569 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
3570 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
3571 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
3572 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
3574 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
3575 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
3577 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
3580 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
3581 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
3582 and in inlined functions.
3584 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
3585 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
3586 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
3588 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
3590 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
3591 registers on PowerPC targets.
3593 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
3594 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
3596 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
3597 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
3599 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
3600 extended-remote mode.
3602 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
3603 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
3604 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
3605 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
3607 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
3608 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
3609 target architectures.
3611 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
3612 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
3613 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
3614 stored in two consecutive float registers.
3616 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
3619 * Improved support for debugging Ada
3620 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
3622 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
3623 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
3624 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
3625 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
3627 - Improved command completion in Ada
3630 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
3635 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
3636 show print frame-arguments
3637 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
3638 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
3643 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3650 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
3652 * New remote packets
3659 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
3662 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
3666 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
3668 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
3670 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
3671 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
3672 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
3674 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
3675 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
3676 -Bsymbolic linker option.
3678 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
3679 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
3682 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
3683 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
3685 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
3686 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
3688 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
3690 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
3691 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
3692 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
3694 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
3695 automatically displayed as character or string data.
3697 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
3698 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
3701 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
3702 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
3703 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
3705 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
3708 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
3709 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
3710 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
3712 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
3714 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
3716 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
3717 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
3718 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
3720 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
3721 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
3723 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
3724 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
3725 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
3726 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
3727 Windows and SymbianOS).
3729 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
3730 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
3732 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
3733 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
3739 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
3740 when debugging using remote targets.
3742 set mem inaccessible-by-default
3743 show mem inaccessible-by-default
3744 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3745 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3746 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
3747 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
3748 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
3750 set breakpoint auto-hw
3751 show breakpoint auto-hw
3752 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
3753 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
3754 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
3755 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
3756 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
3757 including "next" and "finish".
3760 catch exception unhandled
3761 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
3764 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
3768 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
3769 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
3770 an alias to "set sysroot".
3773 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
3774 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
3777 * New native configurations
3779 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
3782 unset tdesc filename
3784 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
3785 not query the target for its built-in description.
3789 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
3790 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
3791 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
3793 * New remote packets
3796 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
3797 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
3799 qXfer:features:read:
3800 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
3805 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
3806 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
3808 qXfer:libraries:read:
3809 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
3810 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
3811 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
3812 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
3816 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
3824 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
3825 i[34567]86-*-netware*
3826 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
3827 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
3829 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
3832 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
3833 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
3842 * Other removed features
3849 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
3856 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
3861 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
3862 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
3867 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
3868 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
3870 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
3872 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
3873 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
3874 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
3875 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
3877 MIPS ".pdr" sections
3879 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
3880 in debugging information.
3884 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
3885 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
3887 set mips stack-arg-size
3888 set mips saved-gpreg-size
3890 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
3892 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
3897 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
3899 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
3900 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
3901 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
3903 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
3904 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
3907 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
3908 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
3910 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
3911 stub provides the required support.
3913 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
3914 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
3919 unset substitute-path
3920 show substitute-path
3921 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
3922 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
3923 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
3924 between compilation and debugging.
3928 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
3929 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
3930 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
3934 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
3936 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
3937 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
3939 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
3941 * New remote packets
3944 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
3945 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
3946 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
3947 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
3951 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
3952 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
3954 qXfer:memory-map:read:
3955 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
3956 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
3961 Erase and program a flash memory device.
3963 * Removed remote packets
3966 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
3967 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
3969 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
3973 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
3975 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
3979 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
3980 only if it doesn't already have a value.
3982 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
3984 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
3986 restart <n> Return the program state to a
3987 previously saved state.
3989 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
3991 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
3993 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
3994 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
3996 info forks List forks of the user program that
3997 are available to be debugged.
3999 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4000 forks of the user program that are
4001 available to be debugged.
4003 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4004 that are available to be debugged (and
4005 kill the forked process).
4007 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4008 that are available to be debugged (and
4009 allow the process to continue).
4013 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4015 * Improved Windows host support
4017 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4018 native console support, and remote communications using either
4019 network sockets or serial ports.
4021 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4023 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4024 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4025 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4026 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4027 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4028 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4032 The ARM rdi-share module.
4034 The Netware NLM debug server.
4036 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4038 * New native configurations
4040 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4041 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4045 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4047 * New command line options
4049 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4050 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4051 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4052 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4053 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4054 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4055 with the --command (-x) option.
4057 * Deprecated commands removed
4059 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4063 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4064 othernames set arm disassembler
4065 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4066 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4067 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4070 * New BSD user-level threads support
4072 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4073 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4076 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4077 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4078 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4080 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4081 are not yet supported.
4083 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4084 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4086 * REMOVED configurations and files
4088 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4089 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4090 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4092 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4094 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4095 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4098 * VAX floating point support
4100 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4102 * User-defined command support
4104 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4105 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4106 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4108 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4110 * New command line option
4112 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4115 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4117 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4118 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4119 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4120 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4121 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4123 * Internationalization
4125 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4126 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4127 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4131 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4132 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4133 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4135 * New native configurations
4137 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4141 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4142 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4144 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4146 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4147 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4148 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4151 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4152 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4153 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4163 powerpc bdm protocol
4165 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4166 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4168 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4170 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4171 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4172 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4173 permanently REMOVED.
4182 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4184 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4186 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4187 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4190 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4192 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4193 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4194 IRIX long double values).
4198 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4199 command. This problem has been fixed.
4201 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4203 * Fix for ``many threads''
4205 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4206 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4209 ptrace: No such process.
4210 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4212 This problem has been fixed.
4214 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4216 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4219 * New ``start'' command.
4221 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4223 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4225 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4226 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4227 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4229 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4230 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4231 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4232 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4233 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4234 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4235 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4236 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4237 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4239 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4241 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4242 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4243 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4244 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4245 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4247 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4248 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4249 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4251 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4253 * New native configurations
4255 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4256 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4257 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4258 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4259 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4260 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4261 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4263 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4265 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4266 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4267 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4268 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4269 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4270 work, was also included.
4272 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4273 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4283 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4284 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4286 * REMOVED configurations and files
4288 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4289 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4290 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4291 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4292 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4293 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4294 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4295 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4296 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4297 sonymips mips-sony-*
4298 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4300 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4302 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4304 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4305 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4306 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4307 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4310 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4312 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4313 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4314 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4315 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4316 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4317 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4320 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4322 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4324 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4325 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4326 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4328 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4330 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4331 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4333 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4335 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4336 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4337 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4339 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4341 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4342 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4344 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4346 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4347 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4348 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4350 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4352 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4353 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4354 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4356 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4358 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4360 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4361 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4363 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4365 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4366 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4367 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4368 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4370 * Revised SPARC target
4372 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4373 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4374 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4375 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4376 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
4380 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
4381 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
4382 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
4385 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4387 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
4388 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
4391 * C++ nested types and namespaces
4393 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
4394 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
4395 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
4396 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
4397 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
4398 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
4399 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
4400 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
4401 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
4403 * New native configurations
4405 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
4406 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4407 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
4408 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4409 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
4411 * New debugging protocols
4413 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
4415 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
4417 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
4418 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
4419 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
4421 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4423 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4424 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4425 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4426 permanently REMOVED.
4428 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4429 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4430 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4431 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4432 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4433 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4434 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4435 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4436 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4437 sonymips mips-sony-*
4438 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4440 * REMOVED configurations and files
4442 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
4443 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
4444 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4445 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4446 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4447 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4448 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4449 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4450 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4451 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
4452 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4453 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4454 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4455 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
4456 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
4457 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4458 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4460 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
4464 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
4465 integrated into GDB.
4467 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
4469 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
4470 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
4471 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
4474 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
4475 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
4476 DWARF 2 CFI support.
4480 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
4481 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
4482 remote protocol documentation for details.
4484 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
4486 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
4487 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
4488 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
4491 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
4493 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
4494 per-thread variables.
4496 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
4498 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
4499 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
4501 * Separate debug info.
4503 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
4504 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
4505 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
4506 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
4507 and optional debug files.
4509 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
4511 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
4512 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
4515 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
4516 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
4520 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
4521 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
4522 considered "useable".
4524 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
4526 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
4527 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
4530 * GDB supports logging output to a file
4532 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
4533 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
4535 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
4537 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
4538 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
4541 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
4543 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
4544 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
4548 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
4549 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
4550 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
4551 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
4552 data, for more informative profiling results.
4554 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
4556 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
4557 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
4558 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
4560 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
4563 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
4564 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
4565 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
4566 in a subsequent -var-update.
4568 * New native configurations.
4570 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4572 * Multi-arched targets.
4574 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
4575 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
4577 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4579 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4580 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4581 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4582 permanently REMOVED.
4584 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
4585 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
4586 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
4587 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
4588 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
4589 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
4590 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
4591 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
4592 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
4593 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
4594 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
4595 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
4597 * REMOVED configurations and files
4600 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4601 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4602 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4603 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4604 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4605 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4607 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4608 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4609 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4610 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4611 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4612 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4614 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
4616 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
4617 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
4618 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
4619 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
4620 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
4622 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
4624 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
4626 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
4627 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
4628 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
4629 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
4630 shared libs like mad''.
4632 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
4634 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
4635 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
4636 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
4637 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
4639 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
4641 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
4642 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
4645 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
4646 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
4648 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
4649 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
4651 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
4652 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
4653 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
4654 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
4656 * Multi-arched targets.
4658 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
4659 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
4661 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
4662 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
4663 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4667 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
4670 * New native configurations
4672 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
4673 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
4674 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
4675 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
4677 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4679 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4680 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4681 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4682 permanently REMOVED.
4684 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
4685 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
4686 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
4687 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
4688 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
4689 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
4690 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
4691 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
4692 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
4693 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
4695 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
4696 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
4698 * OBSOLETE languages
4700 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
4702 * REMOVED configurations and files
4704 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4705 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4706 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4707 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4708 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4710 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4712 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
4714 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
4715 commands. The default is 1024.
4717 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
4719 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
4721 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
4723 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
4724 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
4725 from a file into memory (restore).
4727 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
4729 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
4730 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
4731 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
4733 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
4741 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
4742 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
4743 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
4745 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
4746 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
4747 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
4749 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
4750 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
4751 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
4753 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
4754 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
4755 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
4757 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
4759 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
4761 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
4762 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
4763 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
4764 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
4765 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
4766 (notably embedded) targets.
4768 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
4770 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
4771 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
4772 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
4773 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
4775 * New command line option
4777 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
4779 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4781 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
4782 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
4783 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
4784 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
4785 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
4786 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
4787 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
4788 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
4789 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
4790 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
4792 * Changes in ARM configurations.
4794 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
4795 configuration is fully multi-arch.
4797 * New native configurations
4799 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
4800 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
4801 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
4802 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
4806 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
4808 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4810 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4811 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4812 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4813 permanently REMOVED.
4815 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
4816 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
4817 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
4818 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
4819 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
4821 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
4823 * REMOVED configurations and files
4825 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4827 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4828 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4829 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4830 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4831 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4832 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4833 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4834 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4835 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4836 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4837 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
4839 * Changes to command line processing
4841 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
4842 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
4844 * Changes to key bindings
4846 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
4848 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
4850 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
4852 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
4855 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
4857 Numerous documentation fixes.
4859 Numerous testsuite fixes.
4861 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
4863 * New native configurations
4865 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
4866 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
4867 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
4868 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
4869 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
4870 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
4874 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
4876 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
4878 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4880 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
4881 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
4882 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
4883 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
4884 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
4886 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
4887 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
4888 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
4889 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
4890 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
4891 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
4892 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
4893 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
4895 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
4896 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
4898 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4899 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4900 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4901 permanently REMOVED.
4903 * REMOVED configurations and files
4905 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
4906 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
4908 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
4912 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
4914 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
4915 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
4920 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
4922 * The MI enabled by default.
4924 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
4925 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
4926 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
4927 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
4928 which is now deprecated.
4930 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
4932 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
4933 main features are supported:
4935 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
4937 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
4940 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
4942 - a Pascal expression parser.
4944 However, some important features are not yet supported.
4946 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
4948 - there are some problems with boolean types;
4950 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
4951 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
4953 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
4955 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
4957 * Changes in completion.
4959 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
4960 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
4961 users expect at the shell prompt.
4963 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
4964 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
4965 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
4966 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
4967 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
4968 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
4969 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
4971 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
4973 * New platform-independent commands:
4975 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
4976 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
4977 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
4979 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
4981 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
4982 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
4983 many threads as your system allows you to have.
4985 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
4987 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
4988 multi-threaded programs though.
4990 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
4992 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
4994 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
4995 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
4998 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5000 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5001 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5002 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5003 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5004 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5007 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5008 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5009 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5011 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5013 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5014 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5016 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5017 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5020 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5021 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5022 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5023 a given linear address.
5025 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5026 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5027 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5029 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5031 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5033 * Changes in documentation.
5035 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5036 Documentation License.
5038 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5041 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5043 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5046 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5047 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5048 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5050 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5052 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5053 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5054 contents of this file.
5058 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5060 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5062 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5064 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5065 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5066 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5067 greater level of detail.
5069 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5071 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5072 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5073 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5076 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5078 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5079 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5080 machines ``out of the box''.
5082 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5083 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5084 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5085 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5086 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5088 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5089 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5090 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5091 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5092 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5094 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5095 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5098 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5101 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5102 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5103 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5104 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5106 * New native configurations
5108 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5109 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5113 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5114 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5115 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5116 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5118 * OBSOLETE configurations
5120 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5121 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5123 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5126 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5127 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5128 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5129 be permanently REMOVED.
5131 * Gould support removed
5133 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5135 * New features for SVR4
5137 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5138 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5139 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5141 * Many C++ enhancements
5143 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5144 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5146 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5148 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5149 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5150 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5151 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5153 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5154 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5156 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5158 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5159 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5160 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5162 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5163 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5165 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5167 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5168 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5169 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5171 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5173 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5174 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5175 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5177 * ``apropos'' command added.
5179 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5180 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5181 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5185 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5186 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5187 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5188 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5189 enabled by configuring with:
5191 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5193 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5195 * New native configurations
5197 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5198 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5199 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5203 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5204 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5205 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5207 * OBSOLETE configurations
5209 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5211 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5212 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5213 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5214 be permanently REMOVED.
5218 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5219 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5220 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5221 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5222 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5223 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5224 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5229 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5231 * set extension-language
5233 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5234 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5235 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5236 set extension-language .c c++
5237 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5238 and their associated languages.
5240 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5242 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5243 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5244 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5248 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5249 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5251 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5252 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5254 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5255 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5256 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5257 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5258 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5259 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5260 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5261 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5263 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5264 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5265 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5266 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5270 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5271 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5272 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5273 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5274 for xdb and dbx commands.
5278 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5279 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5280 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5282 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5283 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5284 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5286 * Debugging across forks
5288 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5293 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5294 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5295 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5297 * GDB remote protocol additions
5299 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5300 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5301 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5302 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5304 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5305 full 64-bit address. The command
5307 set remoteaddresssize 32
5309 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5310 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5313 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5314 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5316 maint packet heythere
5318 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5319 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5322 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5323 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5324 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5326 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5328 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5329 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5330 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5332 * mask-address variable for Mips
5334 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5335 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5336 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5338 * Higher serial baud rates
5340 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5341 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5342 to achieve all of these rates.)
5346 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5347 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5350 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5352 * New native configurations
5354 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5355 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5356 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5357 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5358 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5359 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5360 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5364 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5365 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5366 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5367 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5368 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5369 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5370 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5371 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5372 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5373 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5374 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5376 * New debugging protocols
5378 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
5379 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
5380 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
5381 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5382 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5383 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
5387 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
5388 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
5393 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
5394 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
5396 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
5398 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
5399 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
5400 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
5402 * Live range splitting
5404 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
5405 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
5406 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
5410 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
5411 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
5415 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
5416 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
5417 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
5422 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
5427 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
5428 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
5429 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
5430 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
5431 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
5432 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
5436 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
5437 the symbol at the specified address.
5441 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
5442 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
5443 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
5444 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
5445 file tracepoint.c for more details.
5449 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
5450 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
5451 of most MIPS variants.
5455 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
5456 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
5457 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
5461 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
5462 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
5463 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
5464 the possible architectures.
5466 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
5468 * New native configurations
5470 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
5471 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
5472 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
5473 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
5474 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5475 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
5479 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
5480 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5481 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
5482 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
5483 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
5485 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5489 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
5490 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
5491 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
5492 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
5493 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
5497 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
5499 * Windows 95/NT native
5501 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
5502 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
5503 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
5504 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
5505 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
5507 * dont-repeat command
5509 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
5510 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
5511 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
5512 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
5514 * Send break instead of ^C
5516 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
5517 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
5518 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
5520 * Remote protocol timeout
5522 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
5523 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
5524 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
5526 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
5528 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
5529 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
5530 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
5531 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
5532 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
5534 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
5535 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
5536 automatically on hpux10.
5538 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
5540 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
5542 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
5544 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
5545 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
5546 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
5547 every character. The default value is 1050.
5549 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
5551 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
5552 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
5553 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
5554 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
5555 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
5556 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
5558 * Speedups for remote debugging
5560 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
5561 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
5562 and more efficient S-record downloading.
5564 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
5566 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
5567 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
5569 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
5571 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
5573 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
5574 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
5576 * Remote targets use caching
5578 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
5579 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
5580 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
5581 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
5582 off' turns the the data cache off.
5584 * Remote targets may have threads
5586 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
5587 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
5588 gdb/remote.c for details.
5592 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
5593 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
5594 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
5595 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
5596 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
5597 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
5598 sequence is something like
5600 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
5602 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
5606 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
5607 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
5608 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
5609 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
5610 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
5611 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
5612 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
5613 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
5617 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
5618 but does simplify configuration and building.
5622 GDB now supports hpux10.
5624 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
5626 * New native configurations
5628 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
5629 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
5630 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
5631 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
5635 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5636 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
5637 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
5638 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
5641 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
5643 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
5644 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
5645 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
5646 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
5647 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
5649 * Arguments to user-defined commands
5651 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
5652 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
5655 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
5657 To execute the command use:
5660 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
5661 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
5662 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
5664 * New `if' and `while' commands
5666 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
5667 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
5668 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
5669 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
5670 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
5671 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
5672 if the expression is zero.
5674 * Fortran source language mode
5676 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
5677 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
5678 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
5679 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
5682 * Better HPUX support
5684 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
5685 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
5686 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
5687 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
5688 that behavior do the following before running the program:
5694 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
5695 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
5701 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
5702 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
5705 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
5706 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
5708 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
5710 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
5711 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
5712 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
5713 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
5714 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
5715 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
5717 * New DOS host serial code
5719 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
5720 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
5723 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
5725 * New "complete" command
5727 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
5728 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
5730 * Trailing space optional in prompt
5732 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
5733 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
5735 * Breakpoint hit counts
5737 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
5738 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
5739 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
5740 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
5741 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
5744 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
5746 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
5747 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
5748 arrays actually contain only short strings.
5750 * Shared library breakpoints
5752 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
5753 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
5755 * Hardware watchpoints
5757 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
5758 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
5760 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
5764 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
5765 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
5767 * Improved Irix 5 support
5769 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
5771 * Improved HPPA support
5773 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
5775 * New native configurations
5777 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
5778 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5779 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
5780 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
5784 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5785 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
5788 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
5790 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
5791 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
5795 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
5796 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
5798 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
5800 * Irix 5 is now supported
5804 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
5805 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
5806 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
5807 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
5808 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
5811 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
5813 * User visible changes:
5817 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
5818 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
5819 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
5820 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
5821 debugging info for the mips target).
5823 * DEC Alpha native support
5825 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
5826 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
5827 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
5828 Alpha-specific notes.
5830 * Preliminary thread implementation
5832 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
5834 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
5836 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
5837 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
5840 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
5842 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
5843 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
5844 call methods, ...etc.
5846 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
5848 * User visible changes:
5850 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
5851 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
5852 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
5853 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
5855 Filename completion now works.
5857 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
5858 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
5859 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
5861 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
5862 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
5863 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
5864 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
5865 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
5869 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
5870 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
5873 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
5877 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
5878 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
5879 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
5883 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
5884 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
5885 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
5886 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
5887 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
5891 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
5892 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
5893 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
5895 * New targets supported
5897 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
5898 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5899 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
5900 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5901 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
5903 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
5904 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
5905 GO32 memory extender.
5907 * New remote protocols
5909 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
5911 * New source languages supported
5913 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
5914 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
5915 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
5918 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
5920 * HP Precision Architecture supported
5922 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
5923 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
5924 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
5925 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
5926 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
5927 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
5929 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
5931 * Faster and better demangling
5933 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
5934 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
5935 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
5936 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
5937 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
5938 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
5941 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
5942 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
5943 compiler does not actually implement.
5945 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
5947 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
5948 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
5949 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
5950 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
5951 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
5952 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
5955 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
5956 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
5958 * Improved configure script
5960 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
5961 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
5962 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
5963 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
5965 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
5966 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
5967 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
5968 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
5969 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
5970 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
5972 * Documentation improvements
5974 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
5975 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
5976 before submitting changes.
5978 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
5979 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
5980 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
5981 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
5982 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
5984 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
5985 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
5986 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
5987 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
5988 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
5989 around this problem.
5993 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
5994 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
5995 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
5998 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
5999 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6001 * New native hosts supported
6003 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6004 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6006 * New targets supported
6008 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6010 * New file formats supported
6012 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6013 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6017 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6019 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6020 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6022 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6023 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6024 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6026 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6027 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6029 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6030 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6031 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6034 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6035 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6036 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6037 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6038 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6040 * Internal improvements
6042 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6043 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6045 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6046 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6047 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6048 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6049 shared code that handles any of them.
6051 * New command line options
6053 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6057 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6058 General Public License.
6060 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6062 * Host/native/target split
6064 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6065 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6066 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6067 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6068 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6070 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6071 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6072 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6073 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6074 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6075 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6076 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6078 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6079 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6080 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6082 * New hosts supported
6084 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6085 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6086 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6088 * New targets supported
6090 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6091 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6093 * New native hosts supported
6095 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6096 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6097 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6099 * New file formats supported
6101 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6102 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6103 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6107 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6108 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6109 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6111 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6113 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6114 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6115 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6116 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6120 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6121 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6122 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6124 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6128 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6129 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6132 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6133 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6135 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6136 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6137 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6138 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6139 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6140 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6142 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6143 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6144 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6145 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6149 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6150 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6151 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6152 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6153 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6155 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6156 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6157 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6158 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6162 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6163 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6164 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6165 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6166 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6167 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6168 each instruction being stepped through.
6170 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6171 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6173 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6174 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6175 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6176 processor with a serial port.
6180 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6181 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6182 supported, and what files each one uses.
6186 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6187 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6188 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6189 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6191 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6192 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6193 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6194 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6198 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6199 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6200 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6201 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6202 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6203 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6205 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6208 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6210 * Better support for C++ function names
6212 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6213 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6214 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6215 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6216 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6218 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6219 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6220 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6221 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6222 for the list of formats.
6224 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6226 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6227 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6228 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6229 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6230 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6231 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6234 * New 'maintenance' command
6236 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6237 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6238 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6240 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6241 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6242 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6243 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6244 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6245 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6247 The following commands are new:
6249 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6250 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6251 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6253 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6255 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6256 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6257 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6258 read after argv processing.
6260 * New hosts supported
6262 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6264 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6266 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6267 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6268 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6269 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6270 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6273 * New targets supported
6275 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6277 * More smarts about finding #include files
6279 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6280 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6281 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6282 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6283 the one that contains your sources.
6285 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6286 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6287 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6289 * Interesting infernals change
6291 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6292 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6293 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6294 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6296 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6298 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6299 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6300 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6302 See the ChangeLog for details.
6304 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6306 * New machines supported (host and target)
6308 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6310 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6312 * New malloc package
6314 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6315 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6316 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6317 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6318 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6319 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6323 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6324 'help info proc' for details.
6326 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6328 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6329 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6332 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6334 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6335 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6336 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6337 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6338 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6339 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6341 * Cross byte order fixes
6343 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6344 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6346 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6348 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6349 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6350 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6351 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6352 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6353 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6354 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6355 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6356 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6357 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6359 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6360 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6361 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6362 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6364 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6365 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6366 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6369 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6371 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6372 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6373 shared across multiple host platforms.
6375 * longjmp() handling
6377 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6378 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
6379 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
6380 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
6384 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
6385 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
6390 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
6391 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
6392 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
6394 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
6396 * New machines supported (host and target)
6398 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6400 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
6401 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
6403 * New machines supported (target)
6405 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
6409 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
6410 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
6411 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
6413 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
6414 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
6415 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
6416 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
6417 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
6420 * New features for SVR4
6422 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
6423 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
6424 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
6426 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
6427 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
6428 it prints the address mappings of the process.
6430 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
6431 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
6433 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
6435 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
6436 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
6437 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
6438 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
6439 same code linked statically.
6443 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
6444 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
6445 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
6446 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
6447 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
6448 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
6452 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6453 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6454 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6457 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
6459 * New machines supported (host and target)
6461 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
6462 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
6463 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
6465 * Almost SCO Unix support
6467 We had hoped to support:
6468 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
6469 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
6470 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
6471 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
6473 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
6475 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
6476 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
6477 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
6478 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
6483 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
6484 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
6485 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
6489 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
6490 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
6491 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
6493 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
6495 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
6496 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
6497 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
6499 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
6500 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
6501 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
6502 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
6505 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
6506 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
6507 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
6508 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
6511 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
6512 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
6515 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
6516 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
6517 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
6520 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
6522 * Improved configuration
6524 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
6525 Porting BFD is simpler.
6529 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
6530 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
6531 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
6532 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
6536 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
6538 * New host supported (not target)
6540 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
6543 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
6545 * Multiple source language support
6547 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
6548 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
6549 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
6550 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
6551 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
6552 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
6556 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
6557 currently under development at the State University of New York at
6558 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
6559 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
6561 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
6562 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
6563 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
6565 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
6566 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
6570 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
6571 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
6572 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
6573 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
6576 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
6578 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
6579 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
6580 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
6581 examining core files.
6585 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
6588 * New machines supported (host and target)
6590 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
6591 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
6592 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
6594 * New hosts supported (not targets)
6596 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
6598 * New targets supported (not hosts)
6600 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
6601 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
6602 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
6604 * New remote interfaces
6610 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
6614 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
6616 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
6617 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
6618 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
6619 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
6620 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
6621 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
6622 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
6623 stub on the target system.
6625 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
6627 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
6628 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
6629 object file types such as a.out and coff.
6631 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
6632 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
6635 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
6637 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
6638 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
6640 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
6641 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
6642 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
6644 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
6645 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
6646 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
6647 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
6649 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
6650 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
6651 it is already running. Default is ON.
6653 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
6654 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
6655 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
6656 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
6659 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
6660 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
6661 or the value of the environment variable
6664 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
6665 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
6668 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
6669 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
6670 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
6672 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
6673 history expansion will be performed on
6674 command line input. The default is OFF.
6676 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
6677 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
6678 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
6680 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
6681 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
6682 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6685 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
6686 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
6687 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
6690 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
6691 ``set width'' instead.
6693 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
6694 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
6695 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
6696 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
6698 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
6701 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
6704 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
6707 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
6710 * Support for Epoch Environment.
6712 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
6713 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
6714 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
6718 * Support for Shared Libraries
6720 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
6721 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
6722 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
6723 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
6724 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
6725 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
6726 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
6727 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
6729 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
6730 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
6731 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
6733 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
6738 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
6739 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
6740 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
6741 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
6742 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
6743 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
6745 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
6747 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
6749 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6750 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6751 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
6754 * C++ multiple inheritance
6756 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
6759 * C++ exception handling
6761 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
6762 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
6763 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
6766 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
6767 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
6768 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
6770 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
6771 current stack frame.
6774 * Minor command changes
6776 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
6777 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
6778 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
6780 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
6781 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
6782 frames without printing.
6784 * New directory command
6786 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
6787 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
6788 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
6789 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
6790 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
6792 * Configuring GDB for compilation
6794 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
6797 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
6798 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
6799 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
6800 where the program that you are debugging will run.