1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 5.2:
6 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
8 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
9 commands. The default is 1024.
11 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
13 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
15 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
17 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
18 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
19 from a file into memory (restore).
21 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
23 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
25 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
26 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
27 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
28 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
29 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
30 (notably embedded) targets.
32 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
34 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
35 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
36 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
37 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
39 * New command line option
41 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
43 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
45 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
46 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
47 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
48 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
49 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
50 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
51 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
52 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
53 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
54 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
56 * Changes in ARM configurations.
58 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
59 configuration is fully multi-arch.
61 * New native configurations
63 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
64 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
65 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
66 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
70 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
72 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
74 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
75 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
76 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
79 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
80 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
81 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
82 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
83 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
85 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
87 * REMOVED configurations and files
89 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
91 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
92 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
93 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
94 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
95 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
96 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
97 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
98 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
99 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
100 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
101 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
103 * Changes to command line processing
105 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
106 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
108 * Changes to key bindings
110 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
112 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
114 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
116 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
119 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
121 Numerous documentation fixes.
123 Numerous testsuite fixes.
125 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
127 * New native configurations
129 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
130 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
131 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
132 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
134 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
138 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
140 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
142 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
144 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
145 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
146 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
147 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
148 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
150 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
151 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
152 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
153 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
154 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
155 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
156 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
157 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
159 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
160 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
162 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
163 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
164 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
167 * REMOVED configurations and files
169 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
170 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
172 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
176 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
178 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
179 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
184 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
186 * The MI enabled by default.
188 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
189 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
190 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
191 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
192 which is now deprecated.
194 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
196 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
197 main features are supported:
199 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
201 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
204 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
206 - a Pascal expression parser.
208 However, some important features are not yet supported.
210 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
212 - there are some problems with boolean types;
214 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
215 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
217 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
219 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
221 * Changes in completion.
223 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
224 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
225 users expect at the shell prompt.
227 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
228 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
229 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
230 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
231 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
232 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
233 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
235 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
237 * New platform-independent commands:
239 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
240 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
241 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
243 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
245 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
246 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
247 many threads as your system allows you to have.
249 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
251 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
252 multi-threaded programs though.
254 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
256 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
258 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
259 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
262 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
264 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
265 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
266 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
267 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
268 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
271 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
272 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
273 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
275 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
277 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
278 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
280 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
281 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
284 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
285 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
286 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
287 a given linear address.
289 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
290 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
291 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
293 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
295 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
297 * Changes in documentation.
299 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
300 Documentation License.
302 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
305 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
307 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
310 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
311 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
312 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
314 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
316 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
317 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
318 contents of this file.
322 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
324 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
326 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
328 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
329 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
330 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
331 greater level of detail.
333 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
335 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
336 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
337 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
340 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
342 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
343 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
344 machines ``out of the box''.
346 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
347 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
348 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
349 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
350 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
352 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
353 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
354 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
355 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
356 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
358 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
359 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
362 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
365 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
366 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
367 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
368 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
370 * New native configurations
372 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
373 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
377 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
378 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
379 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
380 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
382 * OBSOLETE configurations
384 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
385 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
387 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
390 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
391 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
392 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
393 be permanently REMOVED.
395 * Gould support removed
397 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
399 * New features for SVR4
401 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
402 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
403 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
405 * Many C++ enhancements
407 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
408 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
410 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
412 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
413 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
414 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
415 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
417 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
418 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
420 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
422 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
423 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
424 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
426 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
427 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
429 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
431 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
432 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
433 include ``set remote P-packet''.
435 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
437 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
438 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
439 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
441 * ``apropos'' command added.
443 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
444 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
445 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
449 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
450 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
451 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
452 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
453 enabled by configuring with:
455 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
457 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
459 * New native configurations
461 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
462 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
463 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
467 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
468 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
469 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
471 * OBSOLETE configurations
473 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
475 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
476 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
477 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
478 be permanently REMOVED.
482 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
483 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
484 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
485 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
486 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
487 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
488 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
493 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
495 * set extension-language
497 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
498 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
499 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
500 set extension-language .c c++
501 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
502 and their associated languages.
504 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
506 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
507 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
508 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
512 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
513 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
515 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
516 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
518 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
519 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
520 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
521 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
522 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
523 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
524 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
525 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
527 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
528 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
529 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
530 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
534 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
535 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
536 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
537 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
538 for xdb and dbx commands.
542 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
543 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
544 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
546 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
547 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
548 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
550 * Debugging across forks
552 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
557 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
558 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
559 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
561 * GDB remote protocol additions
563 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
564 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
565 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
566 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
568 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
569 full 64-bit address. The command
571 set remoteaddresssize 32
573 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
574 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
577 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
578 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
580 maint packet heythere
582 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
583 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
586 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
587 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
588 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
590 * Tracing can collect general expressions
592 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
593 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
594 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
596 * mask-address variable for Mips
598 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
599 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
600 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
602 * Higher serial baud rates
604 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
605 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
606 to achieve all of these rates.)
610 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
611 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
614 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
616 * New native configurations
618 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
619 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
620 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
621 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
622 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
623 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
624 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
628 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
629 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
630 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
631 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
632 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
633 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
634 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
635 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
636 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
637 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
638 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
640 * New debugging protocols
642 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
643 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
644 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
645 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
646 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
647 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
651 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
652 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
657 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
658 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
660 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
662 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
663 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
664 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
666 * Live range splitting
668 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
669 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
670 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
674 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
675 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
679 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
680 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
681 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
686 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
691 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
692 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
693 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
694 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
695 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
696 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
700 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
701 the symbol at the specified address.
705 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
706 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
707 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
708 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
709 file tracepoint.c for more details.
713 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
714 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
715 of most MIPS variants.
719 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
720 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
721 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
725 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
726 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
727 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
728 the possible architectures.
730 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
732 * New native configurations
734 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
735 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
736 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
737 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
738 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
739 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
743 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
744 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
745 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
746 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
747 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
749 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
753 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
754 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
755 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
756 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
757 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
761 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
763 * Windows 95/NT native
765 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
766 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
767 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
768 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
769 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
771 * dont-repeat command
773 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
774 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
775 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
776 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
778 * Send break instead of ^C
780 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
781 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
782 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
784 * Remote protocol timeout
786 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
787 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
788 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
790 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
792 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
793 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
794 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
795 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
796 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
798 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
799 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
800 automatically on hpux10.
802 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
804 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
806 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
808 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
809 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
810 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
811 every character. The default value is 1050.
813 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
815 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
816 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
817 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
818 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
819 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
820 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
822 * Speedups for remote debugging
824 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
825 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
826 and more efficient S-record downloading.
828 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
830 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
831 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
833 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
837 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
838 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
840 * Remote targets use caching
842 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
843 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
844 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
845 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
846 off' turns the the data cache off.
848 * Remote targets may have threads
850 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
851 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
852 gdb/remote.c for details.
856 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
857 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
858 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
859 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
860 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
861 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
862 sequence is something like
864 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
866 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
870 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
871 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
872 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
873 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
874 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
875 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
876 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
877 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
881 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
882 but does simplify configuration and building.
886 GDB now supports hpux10.
888 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
890 * New native configurations
892 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
893 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
894 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
895 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
899 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
900 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
901 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
902 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
905 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
907 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
908 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
909 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
910 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
911 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
913 * Arguments to user-defined commands
915 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
916 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
919 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
921 To execute the command use:
924 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
925 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
926 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
928 * New `if' and `while' commands
930 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
931 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
932 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
933 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
934 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
935 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
936 if the expression is zero.
938 * Fortran source language mode
940 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
941 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
942 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
943 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
946 * Better HPUX support
948 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
949 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
950 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
951 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
952 that behavior do the following before running the program:
958 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
959 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
965 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
966 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
969 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
970 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
972 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
974 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
975 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
976 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
977 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
978 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
979 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
981 * New DOS host serial code
983 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
984 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
987 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
989 * New "complete" command
991 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
992 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
994 * Trailing space optional in prompt
996 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
997 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
999 * Breakpoint hit counts
1001 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1002 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1003 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1004 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1005 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1008 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1010 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1011 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1012 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1014 * Shared library breakpoints
1016 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1017 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1019 * Hardware watchpoints
1021 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1022 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1024 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1028 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1029 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1031 * Improved Irix 5 support
1033 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1035 * Improved HPPA support
1037 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1039 * New native configurations
1041 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1042 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1043 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1044 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1048 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1049 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1052 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1054 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1055 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1059 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1060 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1062 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1064 * Irix 5 is now supported
1068 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1069 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1070 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1071 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1072 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1075 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1077 * User visible changes:
1081 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1082 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1083 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1084 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1085 debugging info for the mips target).
1087 * DEC Alpha native support
1089 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1090 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1091 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1092 Alpha-specific notes.
1094 * Preliminary thread implementation
1096 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1098 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1100 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1101 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1104 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1106 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1107 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1108 call methods, ...etc.
1110 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1112 * User visible changes:
1114 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1115 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1116 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1117 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1119 Filename completion now works.
1121 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1122 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1123 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1125 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1126 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1127 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1128 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1129 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1133 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1134 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1137 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1141 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1142 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1143 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1147 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1148 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1149 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1150 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1151 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1155 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1156 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1157 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1159 * New targets supported
1161 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1162 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1163 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1164 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1165 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1167 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1168 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1169 GO32 memory extender.
1171 * New remote protocols
1173 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1175 * New source languages supported
1177 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1178 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1179 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1182 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1184 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1186 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1187 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1188 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1189 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1190 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1191 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1193 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1195 * Faster and better demangling
1197 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1198 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1199 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1200 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1201 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1202 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1205 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1206 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1207 compiler does not actually implement.
1209 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1211 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1212 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1213 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1214 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1215 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1216 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1219 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1220 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1222 * Improved configure script
1224 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1225 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1226 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1227 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1229 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1230 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1231 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1232 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1233 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1234 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1236 * Documentation improvements
1238 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1239 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1240 before submitting changes.
1242 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1243 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1244 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1245 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1246 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1248 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1249 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1250 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1251 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1252 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1253 around this problem.
1257 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1258 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1259 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1262 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1263 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1265 * New native hosts supported
1267 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1268 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1270 * New targets supported
1272 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1274 * New file formats supported
1276 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1277 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1281 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1283 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1284 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1286 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1287 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1288 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1290 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1291 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1293 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1294 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1295 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1298 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1299 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1300 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1301 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1302 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1304 * Internal improvements
1306 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1307 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1309 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1310 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1311 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1312 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1313 shared code that handles any of them.
1315 * New command line options
1317 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1321 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1322 General Public License.
1324 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1326 * Host/native/target split
1328 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1329 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1330 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1331 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1332 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1334 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1335 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1336 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1337 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1338 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1339 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1340 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1342 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1343 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1344 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1346 * New hosts supported
1348 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1349 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1350 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1352 * New targets supported
1354 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1355 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1357 * New native hosts supported
1359 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1360 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1361 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1363 * New file formats supported
1365 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1366 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1367 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1371 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1372 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1373 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1375 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1377 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1378 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1379 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1380 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1384 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1385 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1386 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1388 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1392 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1393 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1396 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1397 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1399 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1400 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1401 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1402 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1403 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1404 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1406 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1407 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1408 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1409 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1413 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1414 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1415 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1416 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1417 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1419 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1420 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1421 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1422 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1426 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1427 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1428 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1429 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1430 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1431 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1432 each instruction being stepped through.
1434 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1435 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1437 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1438 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1439 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1440 processor with a serial port.
1444 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1445 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1446 supported, and what files each one uses.
1450 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1451 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1452 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1453 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1455 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1456 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1457 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1458 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
1462 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
1463 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
1464 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
1465 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
1466 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
1467 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
1469 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
1472 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
1474 * Better support for C++ function names
1476 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
1477 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
1478 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
1479 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
1480 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
1482 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
1483 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
1484 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
1485 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
1486 for the list of formats.
1488 * G++ symbol mangling problem
1490 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
1491 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
1492 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
1493 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
1494 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
1495 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
1498 * New 'maintenance' command
1500 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
1501 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
1502 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
1504 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
1505 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
1506 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
1507 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
1508 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
1509 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
1511 The following commands are new:
1513 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
1514 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
1515 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1517 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1519 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1520 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1521 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1522 read after argv processing.
1524 * New hosts supported
1526 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1528 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1530 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1531 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1532 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1533 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1534 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1537 * New targets supported
1539 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1541 * More smarts about finding #include files
1543 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1544 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1545 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1546 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1547 the one that contains your sources.
1549 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1550 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1551 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1553 * Interesting infernals change
1555 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1556 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1557 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1558 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1560 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1562 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1563 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1564 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1566 See the ChangeLog for details.
1568 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1570 * New machines supported (host and target)
1572 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1574 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1576 * New malloc package
1578 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1579 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1580 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1581 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1582 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1583 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1587 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1588 'help info proc' for details.
1590 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1592 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1593 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1596 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1598 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1599 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1600 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1601 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1602 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1603 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1605 * Cross byte order fixes
1607 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1608 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1610 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1612 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1613 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1614 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1615 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1616 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1617 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1618 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1619 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1620 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1621 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1623 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1624 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1625 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1626 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1628 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1629 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1630 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1633 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1635 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1636 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1637 shared across multiple host platforms.
1639 * longjmp() handling
1641 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1642 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1643 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1644 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1648 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1649 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1654 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1655 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1656 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1658 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1660 * New machines supported (host and target)
1662 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1664 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1665 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1667 * New machines supported (target)
1669 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1673 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1674 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1675 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1677 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1678 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1679 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1680 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1681 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1684 * New features for SVR4
1686 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1687 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1688 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1690 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1691 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1692 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1694 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1695 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1697 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1699 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1700 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1701 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1702 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1703 same code linked statically.
1707 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1708 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1709 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1710 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1711 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1712 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1716 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1717 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1718 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1721 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1723 * New machines supported (host and target)
1725 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1726 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1727 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1729 * Almost SCO Unix support
1731 We had hoped to support:
1732 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1733 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1734 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1735 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1737 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1739 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1740 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1741 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1742 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1747 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1748 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1749 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1753 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1754 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1755 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1757 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1759 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1760 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1761 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1763 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1764 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1765 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1766 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1769 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1770 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1771 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1772 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1775 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1776 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1779 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1780 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1781 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1784 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1786 * Improved configuration
1788 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1789 Porting BFD is simpler.
1793 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1794 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1795 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1796 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1800 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1802 * New host supported (not target)
1804 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1807 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1809 * Multiple source language support
1811 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1812 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1813 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1814 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1815 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1816 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1820 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1821 currently under development at the State University of New York at
1822 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1823 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1825 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1826 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1827 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1829 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1830 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1834 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1835 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1836 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1837 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1840 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1842 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1843 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1844 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1845 examining core files.
1849 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1852 * New machines supported (host and target)
1854 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1855 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1856 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1858 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1860 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1862 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1864 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1865 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1866 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1868 * New remote interfaces
1874 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1878 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1880 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1881 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1882 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1883 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1884 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1885 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1886 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1887 stub on the target system.
1889 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1891 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1892 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1893 object file types such as a.out and coff.
1895 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1896 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1899 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1901 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1902 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1904 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1905 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1906 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1908 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1909 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1910 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1911 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1913 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1914 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1915 it is already running. Default is ON.
1917 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1918 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1919 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1920 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1923 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1924 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1925 or the value of the environment variable
1928 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1929 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1932 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1933 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1934 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1936 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1937 history expansion will be performed on
1938 command line input. The default is OFF.
1940 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1941 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1942 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1944 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1945 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1946 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1949 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1950 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1951 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1954 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1955 ``set width'' instead.
1957 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1958 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1959 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1960 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1962 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1965 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1968 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1971 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1974 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1976 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1977 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1978 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1982 * Support for Shared Libraries
1984 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1985 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1986 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1987 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1988 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1989 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1990 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1991 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1993 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1994 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1995 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1997 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2002 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2003 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2004 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2005 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2006 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2007 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2009 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2011 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2013 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2014 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2015 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2018 * C++ multiple inheritance
2020 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2023 * C++ exception handling
2025 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2026 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2027 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2030 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2031 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2032 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2034 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2035 current stack frame.
2038 * Minor command changes
2040 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2041 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2042 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2044 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2045 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2046 frames without printing.
2048 * New directory command
2050 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2051 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2052 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2053 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2054 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2056 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2058 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2061 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2062 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2063 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2064 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob