1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 8.3
6 * 'thread-exited' event is now available in the annotations interface.
8 * New built-in convenience variables $_gdb_major and $_gdb_minor
9 provide the GDB version. They are handy for conditionally using
10 features available only in or since specific GDB versions, in
11 scripts that should work error-free with many different versions,
12 such as in system-wide init files.
14 * GDB now supports Thread Local Storage (TLS) variables on several
15 FreeBSD architectures (amd64, i386, powerpc, riscv). Other
16 architectures require kernel changes. TLS is not yet supported for
17 amd64 and i386 process core dumps.
19 * Support for Pointer Authentication on AArch64 Linux.
21 * Two new convenience functions $_cimag and $_creal that extract the
22 imaginary and real parts respectively from complex numbers.
26 ** The gdb.Value type has a new method 'format_string' which returns a
27 string representing the value. The formatting is controlled by the
28 optional keyword arguments: 'raw', 'pretty_arrays', 'pretty_structs',
29 'array_indexes', 'symbols', 'unions', 'deref_refs', 'actual_objects',
30 'static_members', 'max_elements', 'repeat_threshold', and 'format'.
32 ** gdb.Type has a new property 'objfile' which returns the objfile the
35 * New built-in convenience variables $_shell_exitcode and $_shell_exitsignal
36 provide the exitcode or exit status of the shell commands launched by
37 GDB commands such as "shell", "pipe" and "make".
41 | [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
42 | -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
43 pipe [COMMAND] | SHELL_COMMAND
44 pipe -d DELIM COMMAND DELIM SHELL_COMMAND
45 Executes COMMAND and sends its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
46 With no COMMAND, repeat the last executed command
47 and send its output to SHELL_COMMAND.
49 set may-call-functions [on|off]
50 show may-call-functions
51 This controls whether GDB will attempt to call functions in
52 the program, such as with expressions in the print command. It
53 defaults to on. Calling functions in the program being debugged
54 can have undesired side effects. It is now possible to forbid
55 such function calls. If function calls are forbidden, GDB will throw
56 an error when a command (such as print expression) calls a function
59 set print finish [on|off]
61 This controls whether the `finish' command will display the value
62 that is returned by the current function. When `off', the value is
63 still entered into the value history, but it is not printed. The
68 Allows deeply nested structures to be simplified when printing by
69 replacing deeply nested parts (beyond the max-depth) with ellipses.
70 The default max-depth is 20, but this can be set to unlimited to get
71 the old behavior back.
73 set logging debugredirect [on|off]
74 By default, GDB debug output will go to both the terminal and the logfile.
75 Set if you want debug output to go only to the log file.
77 set style title foreground COLOR
78 set style title background COLOR
79 set style title intensity VALUE
80 Control the styling of titles.
82 set style highlight foreground COLOR
83 set style highlight background COLOR
84 set style highlight intensity VALUE
85 Control the styling of highlightings.
90 The "help" command uses the title style to enhance the
91 readibility of its output by styling the classes and
95 Similarly to "help", the "apropos" command also uses the
96 title style for the command names. "apropos" accepts now
97 a flag "-v" (verbose) to show the full documentation
98 of matching commands and to use the highlight style to mark
99 the documentation parts matching REGEXP.
102 The "show style" and its subcommands are now styling
103 a style name in their output using its own style, to help
104 the user visualize the different styles.
110 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
111 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by MI
112 frontends in cases when separate CLI and MI channels cannot be used.
116 The testsuite now creates the files gdb.cmd (containing the arguments
117 used to launch GDB) and gdb.in (containing all the commands sent to
118 GDB) in the output directory for each test script. Multiple invocations
119 are appended with .1, .2, .3 etc.
121 *** Changes in GDB 8.3
123 * GDB and GDBserver now support access to additional registers on
124 PowerPC GNU/Linux targets: PPR, DSCR, TAR, EBB/PMU registers, and
127 * GDB now has experimental support for the compilation and injection of
128 C++ source code into the inferior. This beta release does not include
129 support for several language features, such as templates, constructors,
132 This feature requires GCC 7.1 or higher built with libcp1.so
135 * GDB and GDBserver now support IPv6 connections. IPv6 addresses
136 can be passed using the '[ADDRESS]:PORT' notation, or the regular
137 'ADDRESS:PORT' method.
139 * DWARF index cache: GDB can now automatically save indices of DWARF
140 symbols on disk to speed up further loading of the same binaries.
142 * Ada task switching is now supported on aarch64-elf targets when
143 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
144 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
145 in the GDB user manual.
147 * GDB in batch mode now exits with status 1 if the last command to be
150 * The RISC-V target now supports target descriptions.
152 * System call catchpoints now support system call aliases on FreeBSD.
153 When the ABI of a system call changes in FreeBSD, this is
154 implemented by leaving a compatibility system call using the old ABI
155 at the existing number and allocating a new system call number for
156 the new ABI. For example, FreeBSD 12 altered the layout of 'struct
157 kevent' used by the 'kevent' system call. As a result, FreeBSD 12
158 kernels ship with both 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent' system calls.
159 The 'freebsd11_kevent' system call is assigned an alias of 'kevent'
160 so that a system call catchpoint for the 'kevent' system call will
161 catch invocations of both the 'kevent' and 'freebsd11_kevent'
162 binaries. This ensures that 'kevent' system calls are caught for
163 binaries using either the old or new ABIs.
165 * Terminal styling is now available for the CLI and the TUI. GNU
166 Source Highlight can additionally be used to provide styling of
167 source code snippets. See the "set style" commands, below, for more
170 * Removed support for old demangling styles arm, edg, gnu, hp and
175 set debug compile-cplus-types
176 show debug compile-cplus-types
177 Control the display of debug output about type conversion in the
178 C++ compile feature. Commands have no effect while compiliong
183 Control whether debug output about files/functions skipping is
186 frame apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT | level LEVEL...] [FLAG]... COMMAND
187 Apply a command to some frames.
188 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
189 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a frame.
192 Apply a command to all threads (ignoring errors and empty output).
193 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s COMMAND'.
196 Apply a command to all frames (ignoring errors and empty output).
197 Shortcut for 'frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
200 Apply a command to all frames of all threads (ignoring errors and empty
202 Shortcut for 'thread apply all -s frame apply all -s COMMAND'.
204 maint set dwarf unwinders (on|off)
205 maint show dwarf unwinders
206 Control whether DWARF unwinders can be used.
209 Display a list of open files for a process.
213 Changes to the "frame", "select-frame", and "info frame" CLI commands.
214 These commands all now take a frame specification which
215 is either a frame level, or one of the keywords 'level', 'address',
216 'function', or 'view' followed by a parameter. Selecting a frame by
217 address, or viewing a frame outside the current backtrace now
218 requires the use of a keyword. Selecting a frame by level is
219 unchanged. The MI comment "-stack-select-frame" is unchanged.
221 target remote FILENAME
222 target extended-remote FILENAME
223 If FILENAME is a Unix domain socket, GDB will attempt to connect
224 to this socket instead of opening FILENAME as a character device.
226 info args [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
227 info functions [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
228 info locals [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
229 info variables [-q] [-t TYPEREGEXP] [NAMEREGEXP]
230 These commands can now print only the searched entities
231 matching the provided regexp(s), giving a condition
232 on the entity names or entity types. The flag -q disables
233 printing headers or informations messages.
239 These commands now determine the syntax for the shown entities
240 according to the language chosen by `set language'. In particular,
241 `set language auto' means to automatically choose the language of
244 thread apply [all | COUNT | -COUNT] [FLAG]... COMMAND
245 The 'thread apply' command accepts new FLAG arguments.
246 FLAG arguments allow to control what output to produce and how to handle
247 errors raised when applying COMMAND to a thread.
249 set tui tab-width NCHARS
250 show tui tab-width NCHARS
251 "set tui tab-width" replaces the "tabset" command, which has been deprecated.
253 set style enabled [on|off]
255 Enable or disable terminal styling. Styling is enabled by default
256 on most hosts, but disabled by default when in batch mode.
258 set style sources [on|off]
260 Enable or disable source code styling. Source code styling is
261 enabled by default, but only takes effect if styling in general is
262 enabled, and if GDB was linked with GNU Source Highlight.
264 set style filename foreground COLOR
265 set style filename background COLOR
266 set style filename intensity VALUE
267 Control the styling of file names.
269 set style function foreground COLOR
270 set style function background COLOR
271 set style function intensity VALUE
272 Control the styling of function names.
274 set style variable foreground COLOR
275 set style variable background COLOR
276 set style variable intensity VALUE
277 Control the styling of variable names.
279 set style address foreground COLOR
280 set style address background COLOR
281 set style address intensity VALUE
282 Control the styling of addresses.
286 ** The default version of the MI interpreter is now 3 (-i=mi3).
288 ** The '-data-disassemble' MI command now accepts an '-a' option to
289 disassemble the whole function surrounding the given program
290 counter value or function name. Support for this feature can be
291 verified by using the "-list-features" command, which should
292 contain "data-disassemble-a-option".
294 ** Command responses and notifications that include a frame now include
295 the frame's architecture in a new "arch" attribute.
297 ** The output of information about multi-location breakpoints (which is
298 syntactically incorrect in MI 2) has changed in MI 3. This affects
299 the following commands and events:
303 - =breakpoint-created
304 - =breakpoint-modified
306 The -fix-multi-location-breakpoint-output command can be used to enable
307 this behavior with previous MI versions.
309 * New native configurations
311 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
312 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
316 GNU/Linux/RISC-V riscv*-*-linux*
318 CSKY GNU/LINUX csky*-*-linux
319 FreeBSD/riscv riscv*-*-freebsd*
321 GNU/Linux/OpenRISC or1k*-*-linux*
325 GDB no longer supports native debugging on versions of MS-Windows
330 ** GDB no longer supports Python versions less than 2.6.
332 ** The gdb.Inferior type has a new 'progspace' property, which is the program
333 space associated to that inferior.
335 ** The gdb.Progspace type has a new 'objfiles' method, which returns the list
336 of objfiles associated to that program space.
338 ** gdb.SYMBOL_LOC_COMMON_BLOCK, gdb.SYMBOL_MODULE_DOMAIN, and
339 gdb.SYMBOL_COMMON_BLOCK_DOMAIN were added to reflect changes to
342 ** gdb.SYMBOL_VARIABLES_DOMAIN, gdb.SYMBOL_FUNCTIONS_DOMAIN, and
343 gdb.SYMBOL_TYPES_DOMAIN are now deprecated. These were never
344 correct and did not work properly.
346 ** The gdb.Value type has a new constructor, which is used to construct a
347 gdb.Value from a Python buffer object and a gdb.Type.
353 Enable or disable the undefined behavior sanitizer. This is
354 disabled by default, but passing --enable-ubsan=yes or
355 --enable-ubsan=auto to configure will enable it. Enabling this can
356 cause a performance penalty. The undefined behavior sanitizer was
357 first introduced in GCC 4.9.
359 *** Changes in GDB 8.2
361 * The 'set disassembler-options' command now supports specifying options
364 * The 'symbol-file' command now accepts an '-o' option to add a relative
365 offset to all sections.
367 * Similarly, the 'add-symbol-file' command also accepts an '-o' option to add
368 a relative offset to all sections, but it allows to override the load
369 address of individual sections using '-s'.
371 * The 'add-symbol-file' command no longer requires the second argument
372 (address of the text section).
374 * The endianness used with the 'set endian auto' mode in the absence of
375 an executable selected for debugging is now the last endianness chosen
376 either by one of the 'set endian big' and 'set endian little' commands
377 or by inferring from the last executable used, rather than the startup
380 * The pager now allows a "c" response, meaning to disable the pager
381 for the rest of the current command.
383 * The commands 'info variables/functions/types' now show the source line
384 numbers of symbol definitions when available.
386 * 'info proc' now works on running processes on FreeBSD systems and core
387 files created on FreeBSD systems.
389 * C expressions can now use _Alignof, and C++ expressions can now use
392 * Support for SVE on AArch64 Linux. Note that GDB does not detect changes to
393 the vector length while the process is running.
399 Control display of debugging info regarding the FreeBSD native target.
401 set|show varsize-limit
402 This new setting allows the user to control the maximum size of Ada
403 objects being printed when those objects have a variable type,
404 instead of that maximum size being hardcoded to 65536 bytes.
406 set|show record btrace cpu
407 Controls the processor to be used for enabling errata workarounds for
410 maint check libthread-db
411 Run integrity checks on the current inferior's thread debugging
414 maint set check-libthread-db (on|off)
415 maint show check-libthread-db
416 Control whether to run integrity checks on inferior specific thread
417 debugging libraries as they are loaded. The default is not to
422 ** Type alignment is now exposed via the "align" attribute of a gdb.Type.
424 ** The commands attached to a breakpoint can be set by assigning to
425 the breakpoint's "commands" field.
427 ** gdb.execute can now execute multi-line gdb commands.
429 ** The new functions gdb.convenience_variable and
430 gdb.set_convenience_variable can be used to get and set the value
431 of convenience variables.
433 ** A gdb.Parameter will no longer print the "set" help text on an
434 ordinary "set"; instead by default a "set" will be silent unless
435 the get_set_string method returns a non-empty string.
439 RiscV ELF riscv*-*-elf
441 * Removed targets and native configurations
443 m88k running OpenBSD m88*-*-openbsd*
444 SH-5/SH64 ELF sh64-*-elf*, SH-5/SH64 support in sh*
445 SH-5/SH64 running GNU/Linux SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-linux*
446 SH-5/SH64 running OpenBSD SH-5/SH64 support in sh*-*-openbsd*
448 * Aarch64/Linux hardware watchpoints improvements
450 Hardware watchpoints on unaligned addresses are now properly
451 supported when running Linux kernel 4.10 or higher: read and access
452 watchpoints are no longer spuriously missed, and all watchpoints
453 lengths between 1 and 8 bytes are supported. On older kernels,
454 watchpoints set on unaligned addresses are no longer missed, with
455 the tradeoff that there is a possibility of false hits being
460 --enable-codesign=CERT
461 This can be used to invoke "codesign -s CERT" after building gdb.
462 This option is useful on macOS, where code signing is required for
463 gdb to work properly.
465 --disable-gdbcli has been removed
466 This is now silently accepted, but does nothing.
468 *** Changes in GDB 8.1
470 * GDB now supports dynamically creating arbitrary register groups specified
471 in XML target descriptions. This allows for finer grain grouping of
472 registers on systems with a large amount of registers.
474 * The 'ptype' command now accepts a '/o' flag, which prints the
475 offsets and sizes of fields in a struct, like the pahole(1) tool.
477 * New "--readnever" command line option instructs GDB to not read each
478 symbol file's symbolic debug information. This makes startup faster
479 but at the expense of not being able to perform symbolic debugging.
480 This option is intended for use cases where symbolic debugging will
481 not be used, e.g., when you only need to dump the debuggee's core.
483 * GDB now uses the GNU MPFR library, if available, to emulate target
484 floating-point arithmetic during expression evaluation when the target
485 uses different floating-point formats than the host. At least version
486 3.1 of GNU MPFR is required.
488 * GDB now supports access to the guarded-storage-control registers and the
489 software-based guarded-storage broadcast control registers on IBM z14.
491 * On Unix systems, GDB now supports transmitting environment variables
492 that are to be set or unset to GDBserver. These variables will
493 affect the environment to be passed to the remote inferior.
495 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be transmitted to
496 GDBserver, use the "set environment" command. Only user set
497 environment variables are sent to GDBserver.
499 To inform GDB of environment variables that are to be unset before
500 the remote inferior is started by the GDBserver, use the "unset
501 environment" command.
503 * Completion improvements
505 ** GDB can now complete function parameters in linespecs and
506 explicit locations without quoting. When setting breakpoints,
507 quoting around functions names to help with TAB-completion is
508 generally no longer necessary. For example, this now completes
511 (gdb) b function(in[TAB]
512 (gdb) b function(int)
514 Related, GDB is no longer confused with completing functions in
515 C++ anonymous namespaces:
518 (gdb) b (anonymous namespace)::[TAB][TAB]
519 (anonymous namespace)::a_function()
520 (anonymous namespace)::b_function()
522 ** GDB now has much improved linespec and explicit locations TAB
523 completion support, that better understands what you're
524 completing and offers better suggestions. For example, GDB no
525 longer offers data symbols as possible completions when you're
526 setting a breakpoint.
528 ** GDB now TAB-completes label symbol names.
530 ** The "complete" command now mimics TAB completion accurately.
532 * New command line options (gcore)
535 Dump all memory mappings.
537 * Breakpoints on C++ functions are now set on all scopes by default
539 By default, breakpoints on functions/methods are now interpreted as
540 specifying all functions with the given name ignoring missing
541 leading scopes (namespaces and classes).
543 For example, assuming a C++ program with symbols named:
548 both commands "break func()" and "break B::func()" set a breakpoint
551 You can use the new flag "-qualified" to override this. This makes
552 GDB interpret the specified function name as a complete
553 fully-qualified name instead. For example, using the same C++
554 program, the "break -q B::func" command sets a breakpoint on
555 "B::func", only. A parameter has been added to the Python
556 gdb.Breakpoint constructor to achieve the same result when creating
557 a breakpoint from Python.
559 * Breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
561 GDB can now set breakpoints on functions marked with C++ ABI tags
562 (e.g., [abi:cxx11]). See here for a description of ABI tags:
563 https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2015/02/05/gcc5-and-the-c11-abi/
565 Functions with a C++11 abi tag are demangled/displayed like this:
567 function[abi:cxx11](int)
570 You can now set a breakpoint on such functions simply as if they had
573 (gdb) b function(int)
575 Or if you need to disambiguate between tags, like:
577 (gdb) b function[abi:other_tag](int)
579 Tab completion was adjusted accordingly as well.
583 ** New events gdb.new_inferior, gdb.inferior_deleted, and
584 gdb.new_thread are emitted. See the manual for further
585 description of these.
587 ** A new function, "gdb.rbreak" has been added to the Python API.
588 This function allows the setting of a large number of breakpoints
589 via a regex pattern in Python. See the manual for further details.
591 ** Python breakpoints can now accept explicit locations. See the
592 manual for a further description of this feature.
595 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
597 ** GDBserver is now able to start inferior processes with a
598 specified initial working directory.
600 The user can set the desired working directory to be used from
601 GDB using the new "set cwd" command.
603 ** New "--selftest" command line option runs some GDBserver self
604 tests. These self tests are disabled in releases.
606 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now does globbing expansion and variable
607 substitution in inferior command line arguments.
609 This is done by starting inferiors using a shell, like GDB does.
610 See "set startup-with-shell" in the user manual for how to disable
611 this from GDB when using "target extended-remote". When using
612 "target remote", you can disable the startup with shell by using the
613 new "--no-startup-with-shell" GDBserver command line option.
615 ** On Unix systems, GDBserver now supports receiving environment
616 variables that are to be set or unset from GDB. These variables
617 will affect the environment to be passed to the inferior.
619 * When catching an Ada exception raised with a message, GDB now prints
620 the message in the catchpoint hit notification. In GDB/MI mode, that
621 information is provided as an extra field named "exception-message"
622 in the *stopped notification.
624 * Trait objects can now be inspected When debugging Rust code. This
625 requires compiler support which will appear in Rust 1.24.
629 QEnvironmentHexEncoded
630 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be passed to
631 the inferior when starting it.
634 Inform GDBserver of an environment variable that is to be unset
635 before starting the remote inferior.
638 Inform GDBserver that the environment should be reset (i.e.,
639 user-set environment variables should be unset).
642 Indicates whether the inferior must be started with a shell or not.
645 Tell GDBserver that the inferior to be started should use a specific
648 * The "maintenance print c-tdesc" command now takes an optional
649 argument which is the file name of XML target description.
651 * The "maintenance selftest" command now takes an optional argument to
652 filter the tests to be run.
654 * The "enable", and "disable" commands now accept a range of
655 breakpoint locations, e.g. "enable 1.3-5".
660 Set and show the current working directory for the inferior.
663 Set and show compilation command used for compiling and injecting code
664 with the 'compile' commands.
666 set debug separate-debug-file
667 show debug separate-debug-file
668 Control the display of debug output about separate debug file search.
670 set dump-excluded-mappings
671 show dump-excluded-mappings
672 Control whether mappings marked with the VM_DONTDUMP flag should be
673 dumped when generating a core file.
676 List the registered selftests.
679 Start the debugged program stopping at the first instruction.
682 Control display of debugging messages related to OpenRISC targets.
684 set|show print type nested-type-limit
685 Set and show the limit of nesting level for nested types that the
686 type printer will show.
688 * TUI Single-Key mode now supports two new shortcut keys: `i' for stepi and
691 * Safer/improved support for debugging with no debug info
693 GDB no longer assumes functions with no debug information return
696 This means that GDB now refuses to call such functions unless you
697 tell it the function's type, by either casting the call to the
698 declared return type, or by casting the function to a function
699 pointer of the right type, and calling that:
701 (gdb) p getenv ("PATH")
702 'getenv' has unknown return type; cast the call to its declared return type
703 (gdb) p (char *) getenv ("PATH")
704 $1 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
705 (gdb) p ((char * (*) (const char *)) getenv) ("PATH")
706 $2 = 0x7fffffffe "/usr/local/bin:/"...
708 Similarly, GDB no longer assumes that global variables with no debug
709 info have type 'int', and refuses to print the variable's value
710 unless you tell it the variable's type:
713 'var' has unknown type; cast it to its declared type
717 * New native configurations
719 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
720 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
724 FreeBSD/aarch64 aarch64*-*-freebsd*
725 FreeBSD/arm arm*-*-freebsd*
726 OpenRISC ELF or1k*-*-elf
728 * Removed targets and native configurations
730 Solaris 2.0-9 i?86-*-solaris2.[0-9], sparc*-*-solaris2.[0-9]
732 *** Changes in GDB 8.0
734 * GDB now supports access to the PKU register on GNU/Linux. The register is
735 added by the Memory Protection Keys for Userspace feature which will be
736 available in future Intel CPUs.
738 * GDB now supports C++11 rvalue references.
742 ** New functions to start, stop and access a running btrace recording.
743 ** Rvalue references are now supported in gdb.Type.
745 * GDB now supports recording and replaying rdrand and rdseed Intel 64
748 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires a C++11 compiler.
750 For example, GCC 4.8 or later.
752 It is no longer possible to build GDB or GDBserver with a C
753 compiler. The --disable-build-with-cxx configure option has been
756 * Building GDB and GDBserver now requires GNU make >= 3.81.
758 It is no longer supported to build GDB or GDBserver with another
759 implementation of the make program or an earlier version of GNU make.
761 * Native debugging on MS-Windows supports command-line redirection
763 Command-line arguments used for starting programs on MS-Windows can
764 now include redirection symbols supported by native Windows shells,
765 such as '<', '>', '>>', '2>&1', etc. This affects GDB commands such
766 as "run", "start", and "set args", as well as the corresponding MI
769 * Support for thread names on MS-Windows.
771 GDB now catches and handles the special exception that programs
772 running on MS-Windows use to assign names to threads in the
775 * Support for Java programs compiled with gcj has been removed.
777 * User commands now accept an unlimited number of arguments.
778 Previously, only up to 10 was accepted.
780 * The "eval" command now expands user-defined command arguments.
782 This makes it easier to process a variable number of arguments:
787 eval "print $arg%d", $i
792 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for sparc32 and sparc64.
794 * GDB now supports DWARF version 5 (debug information format).
795 Its .debug_names index is not yet supported.
797 * New native configurations
799 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
803 Synopsys ARC arc*-*-elf32
804 FreeBSD/mips mips*-*-freebsd
806 * Removed targets and native configurations
808 Alpha running FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
809 Alpha running GNU/kFreeBSD alpha*-*-kfreebsd*-gnu
814 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target.
816 maint print arc arc-instruction address
817 Print internal disassembler information about instruction at a given address.
821 set disassembler-options
822 show disassembler-options
823 Controls the passing of target specific information to the disassembler.
824 If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
825 multiple options can be placed together into a comma separated list.
826 The default value is the empty string. Currently, the only supported
827 targets are ARM, PowerPC and S/390.
832 Erases all the flash memory regions reported by the target. This is
833 equivalent to the CLI command flash-erase.
835 -file-list-shared-libraries
836 List the shared libraries in the program. This is
837 equivalent to the CLI command "info shared".
840 Catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are
841 handled. This is equivalent to the CLI command "catch handlers".
843 *** Changes in GDB 7.12
845 * GDB and GDBserver now build with a C++ compiler by default.
847 The --enable-build-with-cxx configure option is now enabled by
848 default. One must now explicitly configure with
849 --disable-build-with-cxx in order to build with a C compiler. This
850 option will be removed in a future release.
852 * GDBserver now supports recording btrace without maintaining an active
855 * GDB now supports a negative repeat count in the 'x' command to examine
856 memory backward from the given address. For example:
859 #0 Func1 (n=42, p=0x40061c "hogehoge") at main.cpp:4
860 #1 0x400580 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fffffffe5c8) at main.cpp:8
861 (gdb) x/-5i 0x0000000000400580
862 0x40056a <main(int, char**)+8>: mov %edi,-0x4(%rbp)
863 0x40056d <main(int, char**)+11>: mov %rsi,-0x10(%rbp)
864 0x400571 <main(int, char**)+15>: mov $0x40061c,%esi
865 0x400576 <main(int, char**)+20>: mov $0x2a,%edi
866 0x40057b <main(int, char**)+25>:
867 callq 0x400536 <Func1(int, char const*)>
869 * Fortran: Support structures with fields of dynamic types and
870 arrays of dynamic types.
872 * The symbol dumping maintenance commands have new syntax.
873 maint print symbols [-pc address] [--] [filename]
874 maint print symbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
875 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-pc address] [--] [filename]
876 maint print psymbols [-objfile objfile] [-source source] [--] [filename]
877 maint print msymbols [-objfile objfile] [--] [filename]
879 * GDB now supports multibit bitfields and enums in target register
882 * New Python-based convenience function $_as_string(val), which returns
883 the textual representation of a value. This function is especially
884 useful to obtain the text label of an enum value.
886 * Intel MPX bound violation handling.
888 Segmentation faults caused by a Intel MPX boundary violation
889 now display the kind of violation (upper or lower), the memory
890 address accessed and the memory bounds, along with the usual
891 signal received and code location.
895 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault
896 Upper bound violation while accessing address 0x7fffffffc3b3
897 Bounds: [lower = 0x7fffffffc390, upper = 0x7fffffffc3a3]
898 0x0000000000400d7c in upper () at i386-mpx-sigsegv.c:68
900 * Rust language support.
901 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Rust programming
902 language. See https://www.rust-lang.org/ for more information about
905 * Support for running interpreters on specified input/output devices
907 GDB now supports a new mechanism that allows frontends to provide
908 fully featured GDB console views, as a better alternative to
909 building such views on top of the "-interpreter-exec console"
910 command. See the new "new-ui" command below. With that command,
911 frontends can now start GDB in the traditional command-line mode
912 running in an embedded terminal emulator widget, and create a
913 separate MI interpreter running on a specified i/o device. In this
914 way, GDB handles line editing, history, tab completion, etc. in the
915 console all by itself, and the GUI uses the separate MI interpreter
916 for its own control and synchronization, invisible to the command
919 * The "catch syscall" command catches groups of related syscalls.
921 The "catch syscall" command now supports catching a group of related
922 syscalls using the 'group:' or 'g:' prefix.
927 skip -gfile file-glob-pattern
928 skip -function function
929 skip -rfunction regular-expression
930 A generalized form of the skip command, with new support for
931 glob-style file names and regular expressions for function names.
932 Additionally, a file spec and a function spec may now be combined.
934 maint info line-table REGEXP
935 Display the contents of GDB's internal line table data struture.
938 Run any GDB unit tests that were compiled in.
941 Start a new user interface instance running INTERP as interpreter,
942 using the TTY file for input/output.
946 ** gdb.Breakpoint objects have a new attribute "pending", which
947 indicates whether the breakpoint is pending.
948 ** Three new breakpoint-related events have been added:
949 gdb.breakpoint_created, gdb.breakpoint_modified, and
950 gdb.breakpoint_deleted.
953 Signal ("set") the given MS-Windows event object. This is used in
954 conjunction with the Windows JIT debugging (AeDebug) support, where
955 the OS suspends a crashing process until a debugger can attach to
956 it. Resuming the crashing process, in order to debug it, is done by
959 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on s390-linux and s390x-linux
960 was added in GDBserver, including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's
961 conditional expression bytecode into native code.
963 * Support for various remote target protocols and ROM monitors has
966 target m32rsdi Remote M32R debugging over SDI
967 target mips MIPS remote debugging protocol
968 target pmon PMON ROM monitor
969 target ddb NEC's DDB variant of PMON for Vr4300
970 target rockhopper NEC RockHopper variant of PMON
971 target lsi LSI variant of PMO
973 * Support for tracepoints and fast tracepoints on powerpc-linux,
974 powerpc64-linux, and powerpc64le-linux was added in GDBserver,
975 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression
976 bytecode into native code.
978 * MI async record =record-started now includes the method and format used for
979 recording. For example:
981 =record-started,thread-group="i1",method="btrace",format="bts"
983 * MI async record =thread-selected now includes the frame field. For example:
985 =thread-selected,id="3",frame={level="0",addr="0x00000000004007c0"}
989 Andes NDS32 nds32*-*-elf
991 *** Changes in GDB 7.11
993 * GDB now supports debugging kernel-based threads on FreeBSD.
995 * Per-inferior thread numbers
997 Thread numbers are now per inferior instead of global. If you're
998 debugging multiple inferiors, GDB displays thread IDs using a
999 qualified INF_NUM.THR_NUM form. For example:
1003 1.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8155) (running)
1004 1.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8168) (running)
1005 * 2.1 Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157) (running)
1006 2.2 Thread 0x7ffff7fc1700 (LWP 8190) (running)
1008 As consequence, thread numbers as visible in the $_thread
1009 convenience variable and in Python's InferiorThread.num attribute
1010 are no longer unique between inferiors.
1012 GDB now maintains a second thread ID per thread, referred to as the
1013 global thread ID, which is the new equivalent of thread numbers in
1014 previous releases. See also $_gthread below.
1016 For backwards compatibility, MI's thread IDs always refer to global
1019 * Commands that accept thread IDs now accept the qualified
1020 INF_NUM.THR_NUM form as well. For example:
1023 [Switching to thread 2.1 (Thread 0x7ffff7fc2740 (LWP 8157))] (running)
1026 * In commands that accept a list of thread IDs, you can now refer to
1027 all threads of an inferior using a star wildcard. GDB accepts
1028 "INF_NUM.*", to refer to all threads of inferior INF_NUM, and "*" to
1029 refer to all threads of the current inferior. For example, "info
1032 * You can use "info threads -gid" to display the global thread ID of
1035 * The new convenience variable $_gthread holds the global number of
1038 * The new convenience variable $_inferior holds the number of the
1041 * GDB now displays the ID and name of the thread that hit a breakpoint
1042 or received a signal, if your program is multi-threaded. For
1045 Thread 3 "bar" hit Breakpoint 1 at 0x40087a: file program.c, line 20.
1046 Thread 1 "main" received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
1048 * Record btrace now supports non-stop mode.
1050 * Support for tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver.
1052 * The 'record instruction-history' command now indicates speculative execution
1053 when using the Intel Processor Trace recording format.
1055 * GDB now allows users to specify explicit locations, bypassing
1056 the linespec parser. This feature is also available to GDB/MI
1059 * Multi-architecture debugging is supported on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1060 GDB now is able to debug both AArch64 applications and ARM applications
1063 * Support for fast tracepoints on aarch64-linux was added in GDBserver,
1064 including JIT compiling fast tracepoint's conditional expression bytecode
1067 * GDB now supports displaced stepping on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1069 * "info threads", "info inferiors", "info display", "info checkpoints"
1070 and "maint info program-spaces" now list the corresponding items in
1071 ascending ID order, for consistency with all other "info" commands.
1073 * In Ada, the overloads selection menu has been enhanced to display the
1074 parameter types and the return types for the matching overloaded subprograms.
1078 maint set target-non-stop (on|off|auto)
1079 maint show target-non-stop
1080 Control whether GDB targets always operate in non-stop mode even if
1081 "set non-stop" is "off". The default is "auto", meaning non-stop
1082 mode is enabled if supported by the target.
1084 maint set bfd-sharing
1085 maint show bfd-sharing
1086 Control the reuse of bfd objects.
1089 show debug bfd-cache
1090 Control display of debugging info regarding bfd caching.
1094 Control display of debugging info regarding FreeBSD threads.
1096 set remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1097 show remote multiprocess-extensions-packet
1098 Set/show the use of the remote protocol multiprocess extensions.
1100 set remote thread-events
1101 show remote thread-events
1102 Set/show the use of thread create/exit events.
1104 set ada print-signatures on|off
1105 show ada print-signatures"
1106 Control whether parameter types and return types are displayed in overloads
1107 selection menus. It is activaled (@code{on}) by default.
1111 Controls the maximum size of memory, in bytes, that GDB will
1112 allocate for value contents. Prevents incorrect programs from
1113 causing GDB to allocate overly large buffers. Default is 64k.
1115 * The "disassemble" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1116 It prints mixed source+disassembly like /m with two differences:
1117 - disassembled instructions are now printed in program order, and
1118 - and source for all relevant files is now printed.
1119 The "/m" option is now considered deprecated: its "source-centric"
1120 output hasn't proved useful in practice.
1122 * The "record instruction-history" command accepts a new modifier: /s.
1123 It behaves exactly like /m and prints mixed source+disassembly.
1125 * The "set scheduler-locking" command supports a new mode "replay".
1126 It behaves like "off" in record mode and like "on" in replay mode.
1128 * Support for various ROM monitors has been removed:
1130 target dbug dBUG ROM monitor for Motorola ColdFire
1131 target picobug Motorola picobug monitor
1132 target dink32 DINK32 ROM monitor for PowerPC
1133 target m32r Renesas M32R/D ROM monitor
1134 target mon2000 mon2000 ROM monitor
1135 target ppcbug PPCBUG ROM monitor for PowerPC
1137 * Support for reading/writing memory and extracting values on architectures
1138 whose memory is addressable in units of any integral multiple of 8 bits.
1141 Allows to break when an Ada exception is handled.
1143 * New remote packets
1146 Indicates that an exec system call was executed.
1148 exec-events feature in qSupported
1149 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for exec
1150 events using the new 'gdbfeature' exec-event, and the qSupported
1151 response can contain the corresponding 'stubfeature'. Set and
1152 show commands can be used to display whether these features are enabled.
1155 Equivalent to interrupting with the ^C character, but works in
1158 thread created stop reason (T05 create:...)
1159 Indicates that the thread was just created and is stopped at entry.
1161 thread exit stop reply (w exitcode;tid)
1162 Indicates that the thread has terminated.
1165 Enables/disables thread create and exit event reporting. For
1166 example, this is used in non-stop mode when GDB stops a set of
1167 threads and synchronously waits for the their corresponding stop
1168 replies. Without exit events, if one of the threads exits, GDB
1169 would hang forever not knowing that it should no longer expect a
1170 stop for that same thread.
1173 Indicates that there are no resumed threads left in the target (all
1174 threads are stopped). The remote stub reports support for this stop
1175 reply to GDB's qSupported query.
1178 Enables/disables catching syscalls from the inferior process.
1179 The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's qSupported query.
1181 syscall_entry stop reason
1182 Indicates that a syscall was just called.
1184 syscall_return stop reason
1185 Indicates that a syscall just returned.
1187 * Extended-remote exec events
1189 ** GDB now has support for exec events on extended-remote Linux targets.
1190 For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later, this enables
1191 follow-exec-mode and exec catchpoints.
1193 set remote exec-event-feature-packet
1194 show remote exec-event-feature-packet
1195 Set/show the use of the remote exec event feature.
1197 * Thread names in remote protocol
1199 The reply to qXfer:threads:read may now include a name attribute for each
1202 * Target remote mode fork and exec events
1204 ** GDB now has support for fork and exec events on target remote mode
1205 Linux targets. For such targets with Linux kernels 2.5.46 and later,
1206 this enables follow-fork-mode, detach-on-fork, follow-exec-mode, and
1207 fork and exec catchpoints.
1209 * Remote syscall events
1211 ** GDB now has support for catch syscall on remote Linux targets,
1212 currently enabled on x86/x86_64 architectures.
1214 set remote catch-syscall-packet
1215 show remote catch-syscall-packet
1216 Set/show the use of the remote catch syscall feature.
1220 ** The -var-set-format command now accepts the zero-hexadecimal
1221 format. It outputs data in hexadecimal format with zero-padding on the
1226 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "global_num",
1227 which refers to the thread's global thread ID. The existing
1228 "num" attribute now refers to the thread's per-inferior number.
1229 See "Per-inferior thread numbers" above.
1230 ** gdb.InferiorThread objects have a new attribute "inferior", which
1231 is the Inferior object the thread belongs to.
1233 *** Changes in GDB 7.10
1235 * Support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on aarch64*-linux*
1236 targets has been added. GDB now supports recording of A64 instruction set
1237 including advance SIMD instructions.
1239 * Support for Sun's version of the "stabs" debug file format has been removed.
1241 * GDB now honors the content of the file /proc/PID/coredump_filter
1242 (PID is the process ID) on GNU/Linux systems. This file can be used
1243 to specify the types of memory mappings that will be included in a
1244 corefile. For more information, please refer to the manual page of
1245 "core(5)". GDB also has a new command: "set use-coredump-filter
1246 on|off". It allows to set whether GDB will read the content of the
1247 /proc/PID/coredump_filter file when generating a corefile.
1249 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
1251 "info os cpus" Listing of all cpus/cores on the system
1253 * GDB has two new commands: "set serial parity odd|even|none" and
1254 "show serial parity". These allows to set or show parity for the
1257 * The "info source" command now displays the producer string if it was
1258 present in the debug info. This typically includes the compiler version
1259 and may include things like its command line arguments.
1261 * The "info dll", an alias of the "info sharedlibrary" command,
1262 is now available on all platforms.
1264 * Directory names supplied to the "set sysroot" commands may be
1265 prefixed with "target:" to tell GDB to access shared libraries from
1266 the target system, be it local or remote. This replaces the prefix
1267 "remote:". The default sysroot has been changed from "" to
1268 "target:". "remote:" is automatically converted to "target:" for
1269 backward compatibility.
1271 * The system root specified by "set sysroot" will be prepended to the
1272 filename of the main executable (if reported to GDB as absolute by
1273 the operating system) when starting processes remotely, and when
1274 attaching to already-running local or remote processes.
1276 * GDB now supports automatic location and retrieval of executable
1277 files from remote targets. Remote debugging can now be initiated
1278 using only a "target remote" or "target extended-remote" command
1279 (no "set sysroot" or "file" commands are required). See "New remote
1282 * The "dump" command now supports verilog hex format.
1284 * GDB now supports the vector ABI on S/390 GNU/Linux targets.
1286 * On GNU/Linux, GDB and gdbserver are now able to access executable
1287 and shared library files without a "set sysroot" command when
1288 attaching to processes running in different mount namespaces from
1289 the debugger. This makes it possible to attach to processes in
1290 containers as simply as "gdb -p PID" or "gdbserver --attach PID".
1291 See "New remote packets" below.
1293 * The "tui reg" command now provides completion for all of the
1294 available register groups, including target specific groups.
1296 * The HISTSIZE environment variable is no longer read when determining
1297 the size of GDB's command history. GDB now instead reads the dedicated
1298 GDBHISTSIZE environment variable. Setting GDBHISTSIZE to "-1" or to "" now
1299 disables truncation of command history. Non-numeric values of GDBHISTSIZE
1304 ** Memory ports can now be unbuffered.
1308 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "username",
1309 which is the name of the objfile as specified by the user,
1310 without, for example, resolving symlinks.
1311 ** You can now write frame unwinders in Python.
1312 ** gdb.Type objects have a new method "optimized_out",
1313 returning optimized out gdb.Value instance of this type.
1314 ** gdb.Value objects have new methods "reference_value" and
1315 "const_value" which return a reference to the value and a
1316 "const" version of the value respectively.
1320 maint print symbol-cache
1321 Print the contents of the symbol cache.
1323 maint print symbol-cache-statistics
1324 Print statistics of symbol cache usage.
1326 maint flush-symbol-cache
1327 Flush the contents of the symbol cache.
1331 Start branch trace recording using Branch Trace Store (BTS) format.
1334 Evaluate expression by using the compiler and print result.
1338 Explicit commands for enabling and disabling tui mode.
1341 set mpx bound on i386 and amd64
1342 Support for bound table investigation on Intel MPX enabled applications.
1346 Start branch trace recording using Intel Processor Trace format.
1349 Print information about branch tracing internals.
1351 maint btrace packet-history
1352 Print the raw branch tracing data.
1354 maint btrace clear-packet-history
1355 Discard the stored raw branch tracing data.
1358 Discard all branch tracing data. It will be fetched and processed
1359 anew by the next "record" command.
1364 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-die".
1365 show debug dwarf-die
1366 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-die".
1368 set debug dwarf-read
1369 Renamed from "set debug dwarf2-read".
1370 show debug dwarf-read
1371 Renamed from "show debug dwarf2-read".
1373 maint set dwarf always-disassemble
1374 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1375 maint show dwarf always-disassemble
1376 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 always-disassemble".
1378 maint set dwarf max-cache-age
1379 Renamed from "maint set dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1380 maint show dwarf max-cache-age
1381 Renamed from "maint show dwarf2 max-cache-age".
1383 set debug dwarf-line
1384 show debug dwarf-line
1385 Control display of debugging info regarding DWARF line processing.
1388 show max-completions
1389 Set the maximum number of candidates to be considered during
1390 completion. The default value is 200. This limit allows GDB
1391 to avoid generating large completion lists, the computation of
1392 which can cause the debugger to become temporarily unresponsive.
1394 set history remove-duplicates
1395 show history remove-duplicates
1396 Control the removal of duplicate history entries.
1398 maint set symbol-cache-size
1399 maint show symbol-cache-size
1400 Control the size of the symbol cache.
1402 set|show record btrace bts buffer-size
1403 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1405 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1406 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1408 set debug linux-namespaces
1409 show debug linux-namespaces
1410 Control display of debugging info regarding Linux namespaces.
1412 set|show record btrace pt buffer-size
1413 Set and show the size of the ring buffer used for branch tracing in
1414 Intel Processor Trace format.
1415 The obtained size may differ from the requested size. Use "info
1416 record" to see the obtained buffer size.
1418 maint set|show btrace pt skip-pad
1419 Set and show whether PAD packets are skipped when computing the
1422 * The command 'thread apply all' can now support new option '-ascending'
1423 to call its specified command for all threads in ascending order.
1425 * Python/Guile scripting
1427 ** GDB now supports auto-loading of Python/Guile scripts contained in the
1428 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts'.
1430 * New remote packets
1432 qXfer:btrace-conf:read
1433 Return the branch trace configuration for the current thread.
1435 Qbtrace-conf:bts:size
1436 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in BTS format.
1439 Enable Intel Procesor Trace-based branch tracing for the current
1440 process. The remote stub reports support for this packet to GDB's
1443 Qbtrace-conf:pt:size
1444 Set the requested ring buffer size for branch tracing in Intel Processor
1448 Indicates a memory breakpoint instruction was executed, irrespective
1449 of whether it was GDB that planted the breakpoint or the breakpoint
1450 is hardcoded in the program. This is required for correct non-stop
1454 Indicates the target stopped for a hardware breakpoint. This is
1455 required for correct non-stop mode operation.
1458 Return information about files on the remote system.
1460 qXfer:exec-file:read
1461 Return the full absolute name of the file that was executed to
1462 create a process running on the remote system.
1465 Select the filesystem on which vFile: operations with filename
1466 arguments will operate. This is required for GDB to be able to
1467 access files on remote targets where the remote stub does not
1468 share a common filesystem with the inferior(s).
1471 Indicates that a fork system call was executed.
1474 Indicates that a vfork system call was executed.
1476 vforkdone stop reason
1477 Indicates that a vfork child of the specified process has executed
1478 an exec or exit, allowing the vfork parent to resume execution.
1480 fork-events and vfork-events features in qSupported
1481 The qSupported packet allows GDB to request support for fork and
1482 vfork events using new 'gdbfeatures' fork-events and vfork-events,
1483 and the qSupported response can contain the corresponding
1484 'stubfeatures'. Set and show commands can be used to display
1485 whether these features are enabled.
1487 * Extended-remote fork events
1489 ** GDB now has support for fork events on extended-remote Linux
1490 targets. For targets with Linux kernels 2.5.60 and later, this
1491 enables follow-fork-mode and detach-on-fork for both fork and
1492 vfork, as well as fork and vfork catchpoints.
1494 * The info record command now shows the recording format and the
1495 branch tracing configuration for the current thread when using
1496 the btrace record target.
1497 For the BTS format, it shows the ring buffer size.
1499 * GDB now has support for DTrace USDT (Userland Static Defined
1500 Tracing) probes. The supported targets are x86_64-*-linux-gnu.
1502 * GDB now supports access to vector registers on S/390 GNU/Linux
1505 * Removed command line options
1507 -xdb HP-UX XDB compatibility mode.
1509 * Removed targets and native configurations
1511 HP/PA running HP-UX hppa*-*-hpux*
1512 Itanium running HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
1514 * New configure options
1517 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with support for
1518 Intel Processor Trace (default: auto). This requires libipt.
1520 --with-libipt-prefix=PATH
1521 Specify the path to the version of libipt that GDB should use.
1522 $PATH/include should contain the intel-pt.h header and
1523 $PATH/lib should contain the libipt.so library.
1525 *** Changes in GDB 7.9.1
1529 ** Xmethods can now specify a result type.
1531 *** Changes in GDB 7.9
1533 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on x86 GNU Hurd.
1537 ** You can now access frame registers from Python scripts.
1538 ** New attribute 'producer' for gdb.Symtab objects.
1539 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "progspace",
1540 which is the gdb.Progspace object of the containing program space.
1541 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "owner".
1542 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new attribute "build_id",
1543 which is the build ID generated when the file was built.
1544 ** gdb.Objfile objects have a new method "add_separate_debug_file".
1545 ** A new event "gdb.clear_objfiles" has been added, triggered when
1546 selecting a new file to debug.
1547 ** You can now add attributes to gdb.Objfile and gdb.Progspace objects.
1548 ** New function gdb.lookup_objfile.
1550 New events which are triggered when GDB modifies the state of the
1553 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_pre: Function call is about to be made.
1554 ** gdb.events.inferior_call_post: Function call has just been made.
1555 ** gdb.events.memory_changed: A memory location has been altered.
1556 ** gdb.events.register_changed: A register has been altered.
1558 * New Python-based convenience functions:
1560 ** $_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1561 ** $_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1562 ** $_any_caller_is(name [, number_of_frames])
1563 ** $_any_caller_matches(regexp [, number_of_frames])
1565 * GDB now supports the compilation and injection of source code into
1566 the inferior. GDB will use GCC 5.0 or higher built with libcc1.so
1567 to compile the source code to object code, and if successful, inject
1568 and execute that code within the current context of the inferior.
1569 Currently the C language is supported. The commands used to
1570 interface with this new feature are:
1572 compile code [-raw|-r] [--] [source code]
1573 compile file [-raw|-r] filename
1577 demangle [-l language] [--] name
1578 Demangle "name" in the specified language, or the current language
1579 if elided. This command is renamed from the "maint demangle" command.
1580 The latter is kept as a no-op to avoid "maint demangle" being interpreted
1581 as "maint demangler-warning".
1583 queue-signal signal-name-or-number
1584 Queue a signal to be delivered to the thread when it is resumed.
1586 add-auto-load-scripts-directory directory
1587 Add entries to the list of directories from which to load auto-loaded
1590 maint print user-registers
1591 List all currently available "user" registers.
1593 compile code [-r|-raw] [--] [source code]
1594 Compile, inject, and execute in the inferior the executable object
1595 code produced by compiling the provided source code.
1597 compile file [-r|-raw] filename
1598 Compile and inject into the inferior the executable object code
1599 produced by compiling the source code stored in the filename
1602 * On resume, GDB now always passes the signal the program had stopped
1603 for to the thread the signal was sent to, even if the user changed
1604 threads before resuming. Previously GDB would often (but not
1605 always) deliver the signal to the thread that happens to be current
1608 * Conversely, the "signal" command now consistently delivers the
1609 requested signal to the current thread. GDB now asks for
1610 confirmation if the program had stopped for a signal and the user
1611 switched threads meanwhile.
1613 * "breakpoint always-inserted" modes "off" and "auto" merged.
1615 Now, when 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' is set to "off", GDB
1616 won't remove breakpoints from the target until all threads stop,
1617 even in non-stop mode. The "auto" mode has been removed, and "off"
1618 is now the default mode.
1622 set debug symbol-lookup
1623 show debug symbol-lookup
1624 Control display of debugging info regarding symbol lookup.
1628 ** The -list-thread-groups command outputs an exit-code field for
1629 inferiors that have exited.
1633 MIPS SDE mips*-sde*-elf*
1637 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
1639 Alpha running OSF/1 (or Tru64) alpha*-*-osf*
1640 SGI Irix-5.x mips-*-irix5*
1641 SGI Irix-6.x mips-*-irix6*
1642 VAX running (4.2 - 4.3 Reno) BSD vax-*-bsd*
1643 VAX running Ultrix vax-*-ultrix*
1645 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1646 and "assf"), have been removed. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1647 its alias "share", instead.
1649 *** Changes in GDB 7.8
1651 * New command line options
1654 This is an alias for the --data-directory option.
1656 * GDB supports printing and modifying of variable length automatic arrays
1657 as specified in ISO C99.
1659 * The ARM simulator now supports instruction level tracing
1660 with or without disassembly.
1664 GDB now has support for scripting using Guile. Whether this is
1665 available is determined at configure time.
1666 Guile version 2.0 or greater is required.
1667 Guile version 2.0.9 is well tested, earlier 2.0 versions are not.
1669 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
1673 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Guile interpreter.
1677 Start a Guile interactive prompt (or "repl" for "read-eval-print loop").
1679 info auto-load guile-scripts [regexp]
1680 Print the list of automatically loaded Guile scripts.
1682 * The source command is now capable of sourcing Guile scripts.
1683 This feature is dependent on the debugger being built with Guile support.
1687 set print symbol-loading (off|brief|full)
1688 show print symbol-loading
1689 Control whether to print informational messages when loading symbol
1690 information for a file. The default is "full", but when debugging
1691 programs with large numbers of shared libraries the amount of output
1692 becomes less useful.
1694 set guile print-stack (none|message|full)
1695 show guile print-stack
1696 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Guile script.
1698 set auto-load guile-scripts (on|off)
1699 show auto-load guile-scripts
1700 Control auto-loading of Guile script files.
1702 maint ada set ignore-descriptive-types (on|off)
1703 maint ada show ignore-descriptive-types
1704 Control whether the debugger should ignore descriptive types in Ada
1705 programs. The default is not to ignore the descriptive types. See
1706 the user manual for more details on descriptive types and the intended
1707 usage of this option.
1709 set auto-connect-native-target
1711 Control whether GDB is allowed to automatically connect to the
1712 native target for the run, attach, etc. commands when not connected
1713 to any target yet. See also "target native" below.
1715 set record btrace replay-memory-access (read-only|read-write)
1716 show record btrace replay-memory-access
1717 Control what memory accesses are allowed during replay.
1719 maint set target-async (on|off)
1720 maint show target-async
1721 This controls whether GDB targets operate in synchronous or
1722 asynchronous mode. Normally the default is asynchronous, if it is
1723 available; but this can be changed to more easily debug problems
1724 occurring only in synchronous mode.
1726 set mi-async (on|off)
1728 Control whether MI asynchronous mode is preferred. This supersedes
1729 "set target-async" of previous GDB versions.
1731 * "set target-async" is deprecated as a CLI option and is now an alias
1732 for "set mi-async" (only puts MI into async mode).
1734 * Background execution commands (e.g., "c&", "s&", etc.) are now
1735 possible ``out of the box'' if the target supports them. Previously
1736 the user would need to explicitly enable the possibility with the
1737 "set target-async on" command.
1739 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
1741 ** New option --debug-format=option1[,option2,...] allows one to add
1742 additional text to each output. At present only timestamps
1743 are supported: --debug-format=timestamps.
1744 Timestamps can also be turned on with the
1745 "monitor set debug-format timestamps" command from GDB.
1747 * The 'record instruction-history' command now starts counting instructions
1748 at one. This also affects the instruction ranges reported by the
1749 'record function-call-history' command when given the /i modifier.
1751 * The command 'record function-call-history' supports a new modifier '/c' to
1752 indent the function names based on their call stack depth.
1753 The fields for the '/i' and '/l' modifier have been reordered.
1754 The source line range is now prefixed with 'at'.
1755 The instruction range is now prefixed with 'inst'.
1756 Both ranges are now printed as '<from>, <to>' to allow copy&paste to the
1757 "record instruction-history" and "list" commands.
1759 * The ranges given as arguments to the 'record function-call-history' and
1760 'record instruction-history' commands are now inclusive.
1762 * The btrace record target now supports the 'record goto' command.
1763 For locations inside the execution trace, the back trace is computed
1764 based on the information stored in the execution trace.
1766 * The btrace record target supports limited reverse execution and replay.
1767 The target does not record data and therefore does not allow reading
1768 memory or registers.
1770 * The "catch syscall" command now works on s390*-linux* targets.
1772 * The "compare-sections" command is no longer specific to target
1773 remote. It now works with all targets.
1775 * All native targets are now consistently called "native".
1776 Consequently, the "target child", "target GNU", "target djgpp",
1777 "target procfs" (Solaris/Irix/OSF/AIX) and "target darwin-child"
1778 commands have been replaced with "target native". The QNX/NTO port
1779 leaves the "procfs" target in place and adds a "native" target for
1780 consistency with other ports. The impact on users should be minimal
1781 as these commands previously either throwed an error, or were
1782 no-ops. The target's name is visible in the output of the following
1783 commands: "help target", "info target", "info files", "maint print
1786 * The "target native" command now connects to the native target. This
1787 can be used to launch native programs even when "set
1788 auto-connect-native-target" is set to off.
1790 * GDB now supports access to Intel MPX registers on GNU/Linux.
1792 * Support for Intel AVX-512 registers on GNU/Linux.
1793 Support displaying and modifying Intel AVX-512 registers
1794 $zmm0 - $zmm31 and $k0 - $k7 on GNU/Linux.
1796 * New remote packets
1798 qXfer:btrace:read's annex
1799 The qXfer:btrace:read packet supports a new annex 'delta' to read
1800 branch trace incrementally.
1804 ** Valid Python operations on gdb.Value objects representing
1805 structs/classes invoke the corresponding overloaded operators if
1807 ** New `Xmethods' feature in the Python API. Xmethods are
1808 additional methods or replacements for existing methods of a C++
1809 class. This feature is useful for those cases where a method
1810 defined in C++ source code could be inlined or optimized out by
1811 the compiler, making it unavailable to GDB.
1814 PowerPC64 GNU/Linux little-endian powerpc64le-*-linux*
1816 * The "dll-symbols" command, and its two aliases ("add-shared-symbol-files"
1817 and "assf"), have been deprecated. Use the "sharedlibrary" command, or
1818 its alias "share", instead.
1820 * The commands "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" are no longer
1821 supported. Use "set serial baud" and "show serial baud" (respectively)
1826 ** A new option "-gdb-set mi-async" replaces "-gdb-set
1827 target-async". The latter is left as a deprecated alias of the
1828 former for backward compatibility. If the target supports it,
1829 CLI background execution commands are now always possible by
1830 default, independently of whether the frontend stated a
1831 preference for asynchronous execution with "-gdb-set mi-async".
1832 Previously "-gdb-set target-async off" affected both MI execution
1833 commands and CLI execution commands.
1835 *** Changes in GDB 7.7
1837 * Improved support for process record-replay and reverse debugging on
1838 arm*-linux* targets. Support for thumb32 and syscall instruction
1839 recording has been added.
1841 * GDB now supports SystemTap SDT probes on AArch64 GNU/Linux.
1843 * GDB now supports Fission DWP file format version 2.
1844 http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission
1846 * New convenience function "$_isvoid", to check whether an expression
1847 is void. A void expression is an expression where the type of the
1848 result is "void". For example, some convenience variables may be
1849 "void" when evaluated (e.g., "$_exitcode" before the execution of
1850 the program being debugged; or an undefined convenience variable).
1851 Another example, when calling a function whose return type is
1854 * The "maintenance print objfiles" command now takes an optional regexp.
1856 * The "catch syscall" command now works on arm*-linux* targets.
1858 * GDB now consistently shows "<not saved>" when printing values of
1859 registers the debug info indicates have not been saved in the frame
1860 and there's nowhere to retrieve them from
1861 (callee-saved/call-clobbered registers):
1866 (gdb) info registers rax
1869 Before, the former would print "<optimized out>", and the latter
1870 "*value not available*".
1872 * New script contrib/gdb-add-index.sh for adding .gdb_index sections
1877 ** Frame filters and frame decorators have been added.
1878 ** Temporary breakpoints are now supported.
1879 ** Line tables representation has been added.
1880 ** New attribute 'parent_type' for gdb.Field objects.
1881 ** gdb.Field objects can be used as subscripts on gdb.Value objects.
1882 ** New attribute 'name' for gdb.Type objects.
1886 Nios II ELF nios2*-*-elf
1887 Nios II GNU/Linux nios2*-*-linux
1888 Texas Instruments MSP430 msp430*-*-elf
1890 * Removed native configurations
1892 Support for these a.out NetBSD and OpenBSD obsolete configurations has
1893 been removed. ELF variants of these configurations are kept supported.
1895 arm*-*-netbsd* but arm*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1896 i[34567]86-*-netbsd* but i[34567]86-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1897 i[34567]86-*-openbsd[0-2].* but i[34567]86-*-openbsd* is kept supported.
1898 i[34567]86-*-openbsd3.[0-3]
1899 m68*-*-netbsd* but m68*-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1900 sparc-*-netbsd* but sparc-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1901 vax-*-netbsd* but vax-*-netbsdelf* is kept supported.
1905 Like "catch throw", but catches a re-thrown exception.
1906 maint check-psymtabs
1907 Renamed from old "maint check-symtabs".
1909 Perform consistency checks on symtabs.
1910 maint expand-symtabs
1911 Expand symtabs matching an optional regexp.
1914 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1916 maint set|show per-command
1917 maint set|show per-command space
1918 maint set|show per-command time
1919 maint set|show per-command symtab
1920 Enable display of per-command gdb resource usage.
1922 remove-symbol-file FILENAME
1923 remove-symbol-file -a ADDRESS
1924 Remove a symbol file added via add-symbol-file. The file to remove
1925 can be identified by its filename or by an address that lies within
1926 the boundaries of this symbol file in memory.
1929 info exceptions REGEXP
1930 Display the list of Ada exceptions defined in the program being
1931 debugged. If provided, only the exceptions whose names match REGEXP
1936 set debug symfile off|on
1938 Control display of debugging info regarding reading symbol files and
1939 symbol tables within those files
1941 set print raw frame-arguments
1942 show print raw frame-arguments
1943 Set/show whether to print frame arguments in raw mode,
1944 disregarding any defined pretty-printers.
1946 set remote trace-status-packet
1947 show remote trace-status-packet
1948 Set/show the use of remote protocol qTStatus packet.
1952 Control display of debugging messages related to Nios II targets.
1956 Control whether target-assisted range stepping is enabled.
1958 set startup-with-shell
1959 show startup-with-shell
1960 Specifies whether Unix child processes are started via a shell or
1965 Use the target memory cache for accesses to the code segment. This
1966 improves performance of remote debugging (particularly disassembly).
1968 * You can now use a literal value 'unlimited' for options that
1969 interpret 0 or -1 as meaning "unlimited". E.g., "set
1970 trace-buffer-size unlimited" is now an alias for "set
1971 trace-buffer-size -1" and "set height unlimited" is now an alias for
1974 * The "set debug symtab-create" debugging option of GDB has been changed to
1975 accept a verbosity level. 0 means "off", 1 provides basic debugging
1976 output, and values of 2 or greater provides more verbose output.
1978 * New command-line options
1980 Display the details of GDB configure-time options.
1982 * The command 'tsave' can now support new option '-ctf' to save trace
1983 buffer in Common Trace Format.
1985 * Newly installed $prefix/bin/gcore acts as a shell interface for the
1988 * GDB now implements the the C++ 'typeid' operator.
1990 * The new convenience variable $_exception holds the exception being
1991 thrown or caught at an exception-related catchpoint.
1993 * The exception-related catchpoints, like "catch throw", now accept a
1994 regular expression which can be used to filter exceptions by type.
1996 * The new convenience variable $_exitsignal is automatically set to
1997 the terminating signal number when the program being debugged dies
1998 due to an uncaught signal.
2002 ** All MI commands now accept an optional "--language" option.
2003 Support for this feature can be verified by using the "-list-features"
2004 command, which should contain "language-option".
2006 ** The new command -info-gdb-mi-command allows the user to determine
2007 whether a GDB/MI command is supported or not.
2009 ** The "^error" result record returned when trying to execute an undefined
2010 GDB/MI command now provides a variable named "code" whose content is the
2011 "undefined-command" error code. Support for this feature can be verified
2012 by using the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2013 "undefined-command-error-code".
2015 ** The -trace-save MI command can optionally save trace buffer in Common
2018 ** The new command -dprintf-insert sets a dynamic printf breakpoint.
2020 ** The command -data-list-register-values now accepts an optional
2021 "--skip-unavailable" option. When used, only the available registers
2024 ** The new command -trace-frame-collected dumps collected variables,
2025 computed expressions, tvars, memory and registers in a traceframe.
2027 ** The commands -stack-list-locals, -stack-list-arguments and
2028 -stack-list-variables now accept an option "--skip-unavailable".
2029 When used, only the available locals or arguments are displayed.
2031 ** The -exec-run command now accepts an optional "--start" option.
2032 When used, the command follows the same semantics as the "start"
2033 command, stopping the program's execution at the start of its
2034 main subprogram. Support for this feature can be verified using
2035 the "-list-features" command, which should contain
2036 "exec-run-start-option".
2038 ** The new commands -catch-assert and -catch-exceptions insert
2039 catchpoints stopping the program when Ada exceptions are raised.
2041 ** The new command -info-ada-exceptions provides the equivalent of
2042 the new "info exceptions" command.
2044 * New system-wide configuration scripts
2045 A GDB installation now provides scripts suitable for use as system-wide
2046 configuration scripts for the following systems:
2050 * GDB now supports target-assigned range stepping with remote targets.
2051 This improves the performance of stepping source lines by reducing
2052 the number of control packets from/to GDB. See "New remote packets"
2055 * GDB now understands the element 'tvar' in the XML traceframe info.
2056 It has the id of the collected trace state variables.
2058 * On S/390 targets that provide the transactional-execution feature,
2059 the program interruption transaction diagnostic block (TDB) is now
2060 represented as a number of additional "registers" in GDB.
2062 * New remote packets
2066 The vCont packet supports a new 'r' action, that tells the remote
2067 stub to step through an address range itself, without GDB
2068 involvemement at each single-step.
2070 qXfer:libraries-svr4:read's annex
2071 The previously unused annex of the qXfer:libraries-svr4:read packet
2072 is now used to support passing an argument list. The remote stub
2073 reports support for this argument list to GDB's qSupported query.
2074 The defined arguments are "start" and "prev", used to reduce work
2075 necessary for library list updating, resulting in significant
2078 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
2080 ** GDBserver now supports target-assisted range stepping. Currently
2081 enabled on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux targets.
2083 ** GDBserver now adds element 'tvar' in the XML in the reply to
2084 'qXfer:traceframe-info:read'. It has the id of the collected
2085 trace state variables.
2087 ** GDBserver now supports hardware watchpoints on the MIPS GNU/Linux
2090 * New 'z' formatter for printing and examining memory, this displays the
2091 value as hexadecimal zero padded on the left to the size of the type.
2093 * GDB can now use Windows x64 unwinding data.
2095 * The "set remotebaud" command has been replaced by "set serial baud".
2096 Similarly, "show remotebaud" has been replaced by "show serial baud".
2097 The "set remotebaud" and "show remotebaud" commands are still available
2098 to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2100 *** Changes in GDB 7.6
2102 * Target record has been renamed to record-full.
2103 Record/replay is now enabled with the "record full" command.
2104 This also affects settings that are associated with full record/replay
2105 that have been moved from "set/show record" to "set/show record full":
2107 set|show record full insn-number-max
2108 set|show record full stop-at-limit
2109 set|show record full memory-query
2111 * A new record target "record-btrace" has been added. The new target
2112 uses hardware support to record the control-flow of a process. It
2113 does not support replaying the execution, but it implements the
2114 below new commands for investigating the recorded execution log.
2115 This new recording method can be enabled using:
2119 The "record-btrace" target is only available on Intel Atom processors
2120 and requires a Linux kernel 2.6.32 or later.
2122 * Two new commands have been added for record/replay to give information
2123 about the recorded execution without having to replay the execution.
2124 The commands are only supported by "record btrace".
2126 record instruction-history prints the execution history at
2127 instruction granularity
2129 record function-call-history prints the execution history at
2130 function granularity
2132 * New native configurations
2134 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux-gnu
2135 FreeBSD/powerpc powerpc*-*-freebsd
2136 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2137 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux-gnu
2141 ARM AArch64 aarch64*-*-elf
2142 ARM AArch64 GNU/Linux aarch64*-*-linux
2143 Lynx 178 PowerPC powerpc-*-lynx*178
2144 x86_64/Cygwin x86_64-*-cygwin*
2145 Tilera TILE-Gx GNU/Linux tilegx*-*-linux
2147 * If the configured location of system.gdbinit file (as given by the
2148 --with-system-gdbinit option at configure time) is in the
2149 data-directory (as specified by --with-gdb-datadir at configure
2150 time) or in one of its subdirectories, then GDB will look for the
2151 system-wide init file in the directory specified by the
2152 --data-directory command-line option.
2154 * New command line options:
2156 -nh Disables auto-loading of ~/.gdbinit, but still executes all the
2157 other initialization files, unlike -nx which disables all of them.
2159 * Removed command line options
2161 -epoch This was used by the gdb mode in Epoch, an ancient fork of
2164 * The 'ptype' and 'whatis' commands now accept an argument to control
2167 * 'info proc' now works on some core files.
2171 ** Vectors can be created with gdb.Type.vector.
2173 ** Python's atexit.register now works in GDB.
2175 ** Types can be pretty-printed via a Python API.
2177 ** Python 3 is now supported (in addition to Python 2.4 or later)
2179 ** New class gdb.Architecture exposes GDB's internal representation
2180 of architecture in the Python API.
2182 ** New method Frame.architecture returns the gdb.Architecture object
2183 corresponding to the frame's architecture.
2185 * New Python-based convenience functions:
2187 ** $_memeq(buf1, buf2, length)
2188 ** $_streq(str1, str2)
2190 ** $_regex(str, regex)
2192 * The 'cd' command now defaults to using '~' (the home directory) if not
2195 * The C++ ABI now defaults to the GNU v3 ABI. This has been the
2196 default for GCC since November 2000.
2198 * The command 'forward-search' can now be abbreviated as 'fo'.
2200 * The command 'info tracepoints' can now display 'installed on target'
2201 or 'not installed on target' for each non-pending location of tracepoint.
2203 * New configure options
2205 --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck
2206 By default, development versions are built with -lmcheck on hosts
2207 that support it, in order to help track memory corruption issues.
2208 Release versions, on the other hand, are built without -lmcheck
2209 by default. The --enable-libmcheck/--disable-libmcheck configure
2210 options allow the user to override that default.
2211 --with-babeltrace/--with-babeltrace-include/--with-babeltrace-lib
2212 This configure option allows the user to build GDB with
2213 libbabeltrace using which GDB can read Common Trace Format data.
2215 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
2218 Catch signals. This is similar to "handle", but allows commands and
2219 conditions to be attached.
2222 List the BFDs known to GDB.
2224 python-interactive [command]
2226 Start a Python interactive prompt, or evaluate the optional command
2227 and print the result of expressions.
2230 "py" is a new alias for "python".
2232 enable type-printer [name]...
2233 disable type-printer [name]...
2234 Enable or disable type printers.
2238 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been removed
2239 (has been deprecated in GDB 7.5), and "info all-registers" should be used
2244 set print type methods (on|off)
2245 show print type methods
2246 Control whether method declarations are displayed by "ptype".
2247 The default is to show them.
2249 set print type typedefs (on|off)
2250 show print type typedefs
2251 Control whether typedef definitions are displayed by "ptype".
2252 The default is to show them.
2254 set filename-display basename|relative|absolute
2255 show filename-display
2256 Control the way in which filenames is displayed.
2257 The default is "relative", which preserves previous behavior.
2259 set trace-buffer-size
2260 show trace-buffer-size
2261 Request target to change the size of trace buffer.
2263 set remote trace-buffer-size-packet auto|on|off
2264 show remote trace-buffer-size-packet
2265 Control the use of the remote protocol `QTBuffer:size' packet.
2269 Control display of debugging messages related to ARM AArch64.
2272 set debug coff-pe-read
2273 show debug coff-pe-read
2274 Control display of debugging messages related to reading of COFF/PE
2279 Control display of debugging messages related to Mach-O symbols
2282 set debug notification
2283 show debug notification
2284 Control display of debugging info for async remote notification.
2288 ** Command parameter changes are now notified using new async record
2289 "=cmd-param-changed".
2290 ** Trace frame changes caused by command "tfind" are now notified using
2291 new async record "=traceframe-changed".
2292 ** The creation, deletion and modification of trace state variables
2293 are now notified using new async records "=tsv-created",
2294 "=tsv-deleted" and "=tsv-modified".
2295 ** The start and stop of process record are now notified using new
2296 async record "=record-started" and "=record-stopped".
2297 ** Memory changes are now notified using new async record
2299 ** The data-disassemble command response will include a "fullname" field
2300 containing the absolute file name when source has been requested.
2301 ** New optional parameter COUNT added to the "-data-write-memory-bytes"
2302 command, to allow pattern filling of memory areas.
2303 ** New commands "-catch-load"/"-catch-unload" added for intercepting
2304 library load/unload events.
2305 ** The response to breakpoint commands and breakpoint async records
2306 includes an "installed" field containing a boolean state about each
2307 non-pending tracepoint location is whether installed on target or not.
2308 ** Output of the "-trace-status" command includes a "trace-file" field
2309 containing the name of the trace file being examined. This field is
2310 optional, and only present when examining a trace file.
2311 ** The "fullname" field is now always present along with the "file" field,
2312 even if the file cannot be found by GDB.
2314 * GDB now supports the "mini debuginfo" section, .gnu_debugdata.
2315 You must have the LZMA library available when configuring GDB for this
2316 feature to be enabled. For more information, see:
2317 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MiniDebugInfo
2319 * New remote packets
2322 Set the size of trace buffer. The remote stub reports support for this
2323 packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2326 Enable Branch Trace Store (BTS)-based branch tracing for the current
2327 thread. The remote stub reports support for this packet to gdb's
2331 Disable branch tracing for the current thread. The remote stub reports
2332 support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2335 Read the traced branches for the current thread. The remote stub
2336 reports support for this packet to gdb's qSupported query.
2338 *** Changes in GDB 7.5
2340 * GDB now supports x32 ABI. Visit <http://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/>
2341 for more x32 ABI info.
2343 * GDB now supports access to MIPS DSP registers on Linux targets.
2345 * GDB now supports debugging microMIPS binaries.
2347 * The "info os" command on GNU/Linux can now display information on
2348 several new classes of objects managed by the operating system:
2349 "info os procgroups" lists process groups
2350 "info os files" lists file descriptors
2351 "info os sockets" lists internet-domain sockets
2352 "info os shm" lists shared-memory regions
2353 "info os semaphores" lists semaphores
2354 "info os msg" lists message queues
2355 "info os modules" lists loaded kernel modules
2357 * GDB now has support for SDT (Static Defined Tracing) probes. Currently,
2358 the only implemented backend is for SystemTap probes (<sys/sdt.h>). You
2359 can set a breakpoint using the new "-probe, "-pstap" or "-probe-stap"
2360 options and inspect the probe arguments using the new $_probe_arg family
2361 of convenience variables. You can obtain more information about SystemTap
2362 in <http://sourceware.org/systemtap/>.
2364 * GDB now supports reversible debugging on ARM, it allows you to
2365 debug basic ARM and THUMB instructions, and provides
2366 record/replay support.
2368 * The option "symbol-reloading" has been deleted as it is no longer used.
2372 ** GDB commands implemented in Python can now be put in command class
2375 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" is now deleted.
2377 ** A new class, gdb.printing.FlagEnumerationPrinter, can be used to
2378 apply "flag enum"-style pretty-printing to any enum.
2380 ** gdb.lookup_symbol can now work when there is no current frame.
2382 ** gdb.Symbol now has a 'line' attribute, holding the line number in
2383 the source at which the symbol was defined.
2385 ** gdb.Symbol now has the new attribute 'needs_frame' and the new
2386 method 'value'. The former indicates whether the symbol needs a
2387 frame in order to compute its value, and the latter computes the
2390 ** A new method 'referenced_value' on gdb.Value objects which can
2391 dereference pointer as well as C++ reference values.
2393 ** New methods 'global_block' and 'static_block' on gdb.Symtab objects
2394 which return the global and static blocks (as gdb.Block objects),
2395 of the underlying symbol table, respectively.
2397 ** New function gdb.find_pc_line which returns the gdb.Symtab_and_line
2398 object associated with a PC value.
2400 ** gdb.Symtab_and_line has new attribute 'last' which holds the end
2401 of the address range occupied by code for the current source line.
2403 * Go language support.
2404 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the Go programming
2407 * GDBserver now supports stdio connections.
2408 E.g. (gdb) target remote | ssh myhost gdbserver - hello
2410 * The binary "gdbtui" can no longer be built or installed.
2411 Use "gdb -tui" instead.
2413 * GDB will now print "flag" enums specially. A flag enum is one where
2414 all the enumerator values have no bits in common when pairwise
2415 "and"ed. When printing a value whose type is a flag enum, GDB will
2416 show all the constants, e.g., for enum E { ONE = 1, TWO = 2}:
2417 (gdb) print (enum E) 3
2420 * The filename part of a linespec will now match trailing components
2421 of a source file name. For example, "break gcc/expr.c:1000" will
2422 now set a breakpoint in build/gcc/expr.c, but not
2423 build/libcpp/expr.c.
2425 * The "info proc" and "generate-core-file" commands will now also
2426 work on remote targets connected to GDBserver on Linux.
2428 * The command "info catch" has been removed. It has been disabled
2429 since December 2007.
2431 * The "catch exception" and "catch assert" commands now accept
2432 a condition at the end of the command, much like the "break"
2433 command does. For instance:
2435 (gdb) catch exception Constraint_Error if Barrier = True
2437 Previously, it was possible to add a condition to such catchpoints,
2438 but it had to be done as a second step, after the catchpoint had been
2439 created, using the "condition" command.
2441 * The "info static-tracepoint-marker" command will now also work on
2442 native Linux targets with in-process agent.
2444 * GDB can now set breakpoints on inlined functions.
2446 * The .gdb_index section has been updated to include symbols for
2447 inlined functions. GDB will ignore older .gdb_index sections by
2448 default, which could cause symbol files to be loaded more slowly
2449 until their .gdb_index sections can be recreated. The new command
2450 "set use-deprecated-index-sections on" will cause GDB to use any older
2451 .gdb_index sections it finds. This will restore performance, but the
2452 ability to set breakpoints on inlined functions will be lost in symbol
2453 files with older .gdb_index sections.
2455 The .gdb_index section has also been updated to record more information
2456 about each symbol. This speeds up the "info variables", "info functions"
2457 and "info types" commands when used with programs having the .gdb_index
2458 section, as well as speeding up debugging with shared libraries using
2459 the .gdb_index section.
2461 * Ada support for GDB/MI Variable Objects has been added.
2463 * GDB can now support 'breakpoint always-inserted mode' in 'record'
2468 ** New command -info-os is the MI equivalent of "info os".
2470 ** Output logs ("set logging" and related) now include MI output.
2474 ** "set use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2475 "show use-deprecated-index-sections on|off"
2476 Controls the use of deprecated .gdb_index sections.
2478 ** "catch load" and "catch unload" can be used to stop when a shared
2479 library is loaded or unloaded, respectively.
2481 ** "enable count" can be used to auto-disable a breakpoint after
2484 ** "info vtbl" can be used to show the virtual method tables for
2485 C++ and Java objects.
2487 ** "explore" and its sub commands "explore value" and "explore type"
2488 can be used to recursively explore values and types of
2489 expressions. These commands are available only if GDB is
2490 configured with '--with-python'.
2492 ** "info auto-load" shows status of all kinds of auto-loaded files,
2493 "info auto-load gdb-scripts" shows status of auto-loading GDB canned
2494 sequences of commands files, "info auto-load python-scripts"
2495 shows status of auto-loading Python script files,
2496 "info auto-load local-gdbinit" shows status of loading init file
2497 (.gdbinit) from current directory and "info auto-load libthread-db" shows
2498 status of inferior specific thread debugging shared library loading.
2500 ** "info auto-load-scripts", "set auto-load-scripts on|off"
2501 and "show auto-load-scripts" commands have been deprecated, use their
2502 "info auto-load python-scripts", "set auto-load python-scripts on|off"
2503 and "show auto-load python-scripts" counterparts instead.
2505 ** "dprintf location,format,args..." creates a dynamic printf, which
2506 is basically a breakpoint that does a printf and immediately
2507 resumes your program's execution, so it is like a printf that you
2508 can insert dynamically at runtime instead of at compiletime.
2510 ** "set print symbol"
2512 Controls whether GDB attempts to display the symbol, if any,
2513 corresponding to addresses it prints. This defaults to "on", but
2514 you can set it to "off" to restore GDB's previous behavior.
2516 * Deprecated commands
2518 ** For the Renesas Super-H architecture, the "regs" command has been
2519 deprecated, and "info all-registers" should be used instead.
2523 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2524 HP OpenVMS ia64 ia64-hp-openvms*
2526 * GDBserver supports evaluation of breakpoint conditions. When
2527 support is advertised by GDBserver, GDB may be told to send the
2528 breakpoint conditions in bytecode form to GDBserver. GDBserver
2529 will only report the breakpoint trigger to GDB when its condition
2534 set mips compression
2535 show mips compression
2536 Select the compressed ISA encoding used in functions that have no symbol
2537 information available. The encoding can be set to either of:
2540 and is updated automatically from ELF file flags if available.
2542 set breakpoint condition-evaluation
2543 show breakpoint condition-evaluation
2544 Control whether breakpoint conditions are evaluated by GDB ("host") or by
2545 GDBserver ("target"). Default option "auto" chooses the most efficient
2547 This option can improve debugger efficiency depending on the speed of the
2551 Disable auto-loading globally.
2554 Show auto-loading setting of all kinds of auto-loaded files.
2556 set auto-load gdb-scripts on|off
2557 show auto-load gdb-scripts
2558 Control auto-loading of GDB canned sequences of commands files.
2560 set auto-load python-scripts on|off
2561 show auto-load python-scripts
2562 Control auto-loading of Python script files.
2564 set auto-load local-gdbinit on|off
2565 show auto-load local-gdbinit
2566 Control loading of init file (.gdbinit) from current directory.
2568 set auto-load libthread-db on|off
2569 show auto-load libthread-db
2570 Control auto-loading of inferior specific thread debugging shared library.
2572 set auto-load scripts-directory <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2573 show auto-load scripts-directory
2574 Set a list of directories from which to load auto-loaded scripts.
2575 Automatically loaded Python scripts and GDB scripts are located in one
2576 of the directories listed by this option.
2577 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2579 set auto-load safe-path <dir1>[:<dir2>...]
2580 show auto-load safe-path
2581 Set a list of directories from which it is safe to auto-load files.
2582 The delimiter (':' above) may differ according to the host platform.
2584 set debug auto-load on|off
2585 show debug auto-load
2586 Control display of debugging info for auto-loading the files above.
2588 set dprintf-style gdb|call|agent
2590 Control the way in which a dynamic printf is performed; "gdb"
2591 requests a GDB printf command, while "call" causes dprintf to call a
2592 function in the inferior. "agent" requests that the target agent
2593 (such as GDBserver) do the printing.
2595 set dprintf-function <expr>
2596 show dprintf-function
2597 set dprintf-channel <expr>
2598 show dprintf-channel
2599 Set the function and optional first argument to the call when using
2600 the "call" style of dynamic printf.
2602 set disconnected-dprintf on|off
2603 show disconnected-dprintf
2604 Control whether agent-style dynamic printfs continue to be in effect
2605 after GDB disconnects.
2607 * New configure options
2609 --with-auto-load-dir
2610 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load scripts-directory'
2611 setting above. It defaults to '$debugdir:$datadir/auto-load',
2612 $debugdir representing global debugging info directories (available
2613 via 'show debug-file-directory') and $datadir representing GDB's data
2614 directory (available via 'show data-directory').
2616 --with-auto-load-safe-path
2617 Configure default value for the 'set auto-load safe-path' setting
2618 above. It defaults to the --with-auto-load-dir setting.
2620 --without-auto-load-safe-path
2621 Set 'set auto-load safe-path' to '/', effectively disabling this
2624 * New remote packets
2626 z0/z1 conditional breakpoints extension
2628 The z0/z1 breakpoint insertion packets have been extended to carry
2629 a list of conditional expressions over to the remote stub depending on the
2630 condition evaluation mode. The use of this extension can be controlled
2631 via the "set remote conditional-breakpoints-packet" command.
2635 Specify the signals which the remote stub may pass to the debugged
2636 program without GDB involvement.
2638 * New command line options
2640 --init-command=FILE, -ix Like --command, -x but execute it
2641 before loading inferior.
2642 --init-eval-command=COMMAND, -iex Like --eval-command=COMMAND, -ex but
2643 execute it before loading inferior.
2645 *** Changes in GDB 7.4
2647 * GDB now handles ambiguous linespecs more consistently; the existing
2648 FILE:LINE support has been expanded to other types of linespecs. A
2649 breakpoint will now be set on all matching locations in all
2650 inferiors, and locations will be added or removed according to
2653 * GDB now allows you to skip uninteresting functions and files when
2654 stepping with the "skip function" and "skip file" commands.
2656 * GDB has two new commands: "set remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit"
2657 and "show remote hardware-watchpoint-length-limit". These allows to
2658 set or show the maximum length limit (in bytes) of a remote
2659 target hardware watchpoint.
2661 This allows e.g. to use "unlimited" hardware watchpoints with the
2662 gdbserver integrated in Valgrind version >= 3.7.0. Such Valgrind
2663 watchpoints are slower than real hardware watchpoints but are
2664 significantly faster than gdb software watchpoints.
2668 ** The register_pretty_printer function in module gdb.printing now takes
2669 an optional `replace' argument. If True, the new printer replaces any
2672 ** The "maint set python print-stack on|off" command has been
2673 deprecated and will be deleted in GDB 7.5.
2674 A new command: "set python print-stack none|full|message" has
2675 replaced it. Additionally, the default for "print-stack" is
2676 now "message", which just prints the error message without
2679 ** A prompt substitution hook (prompt_hook) is now available to the
2682 ** A new Python module, gdb.prompt has been added to the GDB Python
2683 modules library. This module provides functionality for
2684 escape sequences in prompts (used by set/show
2685 extended-prompt). These escape sequences are replaced by their
2686 corresponding value.
2688 ** Python commands and convenience-functions located in
2689 'data-directory'/python/gdb/command and
2690 'data-directory'/python/gdb/function are now automatically loaded
2693 ** Blocks now provide four new attributes. global_block and
2694 static_block will return the global and static blocks
2695 respectively. is_static and is_global are boolean attributes
2696 that indicate if the block is one of those two types.
2698 ** Symbols now provide the "type" attribute, the type of the symbol.
2700 ** The "gdb.breakpoint" function has been deprecated in favor of
2703 ** A new class "gdb.FinishBreakpoint" is provided to catch the return
2704 of a function. This class is based on the "finish" command
2705 available in the CLI.
2707 ** Type objects for struct and union types now allow access to
2708 the fields using standard Python dictionary (mapping) methods.
2709 For example, "some_type['myfield']" now works, as does
2710 "some_type.items()".
2712 ** A new event "gdb.new_objfile" has been added, triggered by loading a
2715 ** A new function, "deep_items" has been added to the gdb.types
2716 module in the GDB Python modules library. This function returns
2717 an iterator over the fields of a struct or union type. Unlike
2718 the standard Python "iteritems" method, it will recursively traverse
2719 any anonymous fields.
2723 ** "*stopped" events can report several new "reason"s, such as
2726 ** Breakpoint changes are now notified using new async records, like
2727 "=breakpoint-modified".
2729 ** New command -ada-task-info.
2731 * libthread-db-search-path now supports two special values: $sdir and $pdir.
2732 $sdir specifies the default system locations of shared libraries.
2733 $pdir specifies the directory where the libpthread used by the application
2736 GDB no longer looks in $sdir and $pdir after it has searched the directories
2737 mentioned in libthread-db-search-path. If you want to search those
2738 directories, they must be specified in libthread-db-search-path.
2739 The default value of libthread-db-search-path on GNU/Linux and Solaris
2740 systems is now "$sdir:$pdir".
2742 $pdir is not supported by gdbserver, it is currently ignored.
2743 $sdir is supported by gdbserver.
2745 * New configure option --with-iconv-bin.
2746 When using the internationalization support like the one in the GNU C
2747 library, GDB will invoke the "iconv" program to get a list of supported
2748 character sets. If this program lives in a non-standard location, one can
2749 use this option to specify where to find it.
2751 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
2752 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports masked hardware
2753 watchpoints, which specify a mask in addition to an address to watch.
2754 The mask specifies that some bits of an address (the bits which are
2755 reset in the mask) should be ignored when matching the address accessed
2756 by the inferior against the watchpoint address. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
2757 section in the user manual for more details.
2759 * The new option --once causes GDBserver to stop listening for connections once
2760 the first connection is made. The listening port used by GDBserver will
2761 become available after that.
2763 * New commands "info macros" and "alias" have been added.
2765 * New function parameters suffix @entry specifies value of function parameter
2766 at the time the function got called. Entry values are available only since
2772 "!" is now an alias of the "shell" command.
2773 Note that no space is needed between "!" and SHELL COMMAND.
2777 watch EXPRESSION mask MASK_VALUE
2778 The watch command now supports the mask argument which allows creation
2779 of masked watchpoints, if the current architecture supports this feature.
2781 info auto-load-scripts [REGEXP]
2782 This command was formerly named "maintenance print section-scripts".
2783 It is now generally useful and is no longer a maintenance-only command.
2785 info macro [-all] [--] MACRO
2786 The info macro command has new options `-all' and `--'. The first for
2787 printing all definitions of a macro. The second for explicitly specifying
2788 the end of arguments and the beginning of the macro name in case the macro
2789 name starts with a hyphen.
2791 collect[/s] EXPRESSIONS
2792 The tracepoint collect command now takes an optional modifier "/s"
2793 that directs it to dereference pointer-to-character types and
2794 collect the bytes of memory up to a zero byte. The behavior is
2795 similar to what you see when you use the regular print command on a
2796 string. An optional integer following the "/s" sets a bound on the
2797 number of bytes that will be collected.
2800 The trace start command now interprets any supplied arguments as a
2801 note to be recorded with the trace run, with an effect similar to
2802 setting the variable trace-notes.
2805 The trace stop command now interprets any arguments as a note to be
2806 mentioned along with the tstatus report that the trace was stopped
2807 with a command. The effect is similar to setting the variable
2810 * Tracepoints can now be enabled and disabled at any time after a trace
2811 experiment has been started using the standard "enable" and "disable"
2812 commands. It is now possible to start a trace experiment with no enabled
2813 tracepoints; GDB will display a warning, but will allow the experiment to
2814 begin, assuming that tracepoints will be enabled as needed while the trace
2817 * Fast tracepoints on 32-bit x86-architectures can now be placed at
2818 locations with 4-byte instructions, when they were previously
2819 limited to locations with instructions of 5 bytes or longer.
2823 set debug dwarf2-read
2824 show debug dwarf2-read
2825 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to reading
2826 DWARF debug info. The default is off.
2828 set debug symtab-create
2829 show debug symtab-create
2830 Turns on or off display of debugging messages related to symbol table
2831 creation. The default is off.
2834 show extended-prompt
2835 Set the GDB prompt, and allow escape sequences to be inserted to
2836 display miscellaneous information (see 'help set extended-prompt'
2837 for the list of sequences). This prompt (and any information
2838 accessed through the escape sequences) is updated every time the
2839 prompt is displayed.
2841 set print entry-values (both|compact|default|if-needed|no|only|preferred)
2842 show print entry-values
2843 Set printing of frame argument values at function entry. In some cases
2844 GDB can determine the value of function argument which was passed by the
2845 function caller, even if the value was modified inside the called function.
2847 set debug entry-values
2848 show debug entry-values
2849 Control display of debugging info for determining frame argument values at
2850 function entry and virtual tail call frames.
2852 set basenames-may-differ
2853 show basenames-may-differ
2854 Set whether a source file may have multiple base names.
2855 (A "base name" is the name of a file with the directory part removed.
2856 Example: The base name of "/home/user/hello.c" is "hello.c".)
2857 If set, GDB will canonicalize file names (e.g., expand symlinks)
2858 before comparing them. Canonicalization is an expensive operation,
2859 but it allows the same file be known by more than one base name.
2860 If not set (the default), all source files are assumed to have just
2861 one base name, and gdb will do file name comparisons more efficiently.
2867 Set a user name and notes for the current and any future trace runs.
2868 This is useful for long-running and/or disconnected traces, to
2869 inform others (or yourself) as to who is running the trace, supply
2870 contact information, or otherwise explain what is going on.
2872 set trace-stop-notes
2873 show trace-stop-notes
2874 Set a note attached to the trace run, that is displayed when the
2875 trace has been stopped by a tstop command. This is useful for
2876 instance as an explanation, if you are stopping a trace run that was
2877 started by someone else.
2879 * New remote packets
2883 Dynamically enable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2887 Dynamically disable a tracepoint in a started trace experiment.
2891 Set the user and notes of the trace run.
2895 Query the current status of a tracepoint.
2899 Query the minimum length of instruction at which a fast tracepoint may
2902 * Dcache size (number of lines) and line-size are now runtime-configurable
2903 via "set dcache line" and "set dcache line-size" commands.
2907 Texas Instruments TMS320C6x tic6x-*-*
2911 Renesas RL78 rl78-*-elf
2913 *** Changes in GDB 7.3.1
2915 * The build failure for NetBSD and OpenBSD targets have now been fixed.
2917 *** Changes in GDB 7.3
2919 * GDB has a new command: "thread find [REGEXP]".
2920 It finds the thread id whose name, target id, or thread extra info
2921 matches the given regular expression.
2923 * The "catch syscall" command now works on mips*-linux* targets.
2925 * The -data-disassemble MI command now supports modes 2 and 3 for
2926 dumping the instruction opcodes.
2928 * New command line options
2930 -data-directory DIR Specify DIR as the "data-directory".
2931 This is mostly for testing purposes.
2933 * The "maint set python auto-load on|off" command has been renamed to
2934 "set auto-load-scripts on|off".
2936 * GDB has a new command: "set directories".
2937 It is like the "dir" command except that it replaces the
2938 source path list instead of augmenting it.
2940 * GDB now understands thread names.
2942 On GNU/Linux, "info threads" will display the thread name as set by
2943 prctl or pthread_setname_np.
2945 There is also a new command, "thread name", which can be used to
2946 assign a name internally for GDB to display.
2949 Initial support for the OpenCL C language (http://www.khronos.org/opencl)
2950 has been integrated into GDB.
2954 ** The function gdb.Write now accepts an optional keyword 'stream'.
2955 This keyword, when provided, will direct the output to either
2956 stdout, stderr, or GDB's logging output.
2958 ** Parameters can now be be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2959 you may implement the get_set_doc and get_show_doc functions.
2960 This improves how Parameter set/show documentation is processed
2961 and allows for more dynamic content.
2963 ** Symbols, Symbol Table, Symbol Table and Line, Object Files,
2964 Inferior, Inferior Thread, Blocks, and Block Iterator APIs now
2965 have an is_valid method.
2967 ** Breakpoints can now be sub-classed in Python, and in particular
2968 you may implement a 'stop' function that is executed each time
2969 the inferior reaches that breakpoint.
2971 ** New function gdb.lookup_global_symbol looks up a global symbol.
2973 ** GDB values in Python are now callable if the value represents a
2974 function. For example, if 'some_value' represents a function that
2975 takes two integer parameters and returns a value, you can call
2976 that function like so:
2978 result = some_value (10,20)
2980 ** Module gdb.types has been added.
2981 It contains a collection of utilities for working with gdb.Types objects:
2982 get_basic_type, has_field, make_enum_dict.
2984 ** Module gdb.printing has been added.
2985 It contains utilities for writing and registering pretty-printers.
2986 New classes: PrettyPrinter, SubPrettyPrinter,
2987 RegexpCollectionPrettyPrinter.
2988 New function: register_pretty_printer.
2990 ** New commands "info pretty-printers", "enable pretty-printer" and
2991 "disable pretty-printer" have been added.
2993 ** gdb.parameter("directories") is now available.
2995 ** New function gdb.newest_frame returns the newest frame in the
2998 ** The gdb.InferiorThread class has a new "name" attribute. This
2999 holds the thread's name.
3001 ** Python Support for Inferior events.
3002 Python scripts can add observers to be notified of events
3003 occurring in the process being debugged.
3004 The following events are currently supported:
3005 - gdb.events.cont Continue event.
3006 - gdb.events.exited Inferior exited event.
3007 - gdb.events.stop Signal received, and Breakpoint hit events.
3011 ** GDB now puts template parameters in scope when debugging in an
3012 instantiation. For example, if you have:
3014 template<int X> int func (void) { return X; }
3016 then if you step into func<5>, "print X" will show "5". This
3017 feature requires proper debuginfo support from the compiler; it
3018 was added to GCC 4.5.
3020 ** The motion commands "next", "finish", "until", and "advance" now
3021 work better when exceptions are thrown. In particular, GDB will
3022 no longer lose control of the inferior; instead, the GDB will
3023 stop the inferior at the point at which the exception is caught.
3024 This functionality requires a change in the exception handling
3025 code that was introduced in GCC 4.5.
3027 * GDB now follows GCC's rules on accessing volatile objects when
3028 reading or writing target state during expression evaluation.
3029 One notable difference to prior behavior is that "print x = 0"
3030 no longer generates a read of x; the value of the assignment is
3031 now always taken directly from the value being assigned.
3033 * GDB now has some support for using labels in the program's source in
3034 linespecs. For instance, you can use "advance label" to continue
3035 execution to a label.
3037 * GDB now has support for reading and writing a new .gdb_index
3038 section. This section holds a fast index of DWARF debugging
3039 information and can be used to greatly speed up GDB startup and
3040 operation. See the documentation for `save gdb-index' for details.
3042 * The "watch" command now accepts an optional "-location" argument.
3043 When used, this causes GDB to watch the memory referred to by the
3044 expression. Such a watchpoint is never deleted due to it going out
3047 * GDB now supports thread debugging of core dumps on GNU/Linux.
3049 GDB now activates thread debugging using the libthread_db library
3050 when debugging GNU/Linux core dumps, similarly to when debugging
3051 live processes. As a result, when debugging a core dump file, GDB
3052 is now able to display pthread_t ids of threads. For example, "info
3053 threads" shows the same output as when debugging the process when it
3054 was live. In earlier releases, you'd see something like this:
3057 * 1 LWP 6780 main () at main.c:10
3059 While now you see this:
3062 * 1 Thread 0x7f0f5712a700 (LWP 6780) main () at main.c:10
3064 It is also now possible to inspect TLS variables when debugging core
3067 When debugging a core dump generated on a machine other than the one
3068 used to run GDB, you may need to point GDB at the correct
3069 libthread_db library with the "set libthread-db-search-path"
3070 command. See the user manual for more details on this command.
3072 * When natively debugging programs on PowerPC BookE processors running
3073 a Linux kernel version 2.6.34 or later, GDB supports ranged breakpoints,
3074 which stop execution of the inferior whenever it executes an instruction
3075 at any address within the specified range. See the "PowerPC Embedded"
3076 section in the user manual for more details.
3078 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3080 ** GDBserver is now supported on PowerPC LynxOS (versions 4.x and 5.x),
3081 and i686 LynxOS (version 5.x).
3083 ** GDBserver is now supported on Blackfin Linux.
3085 * New native configurations
3087 ia64 HP-UX ia64-*-hpux*
3091 Analog Devices, Inc. Blackfin Processor bfin-*
3093 * Ada task switching is now supported on sparc-elf targets when
3094 debugging a program using the Ravenscar Profile. For more information,
3095 see the "Tasking Support when using the Ravenscar Profile" section
3096 in the GDB user manual.
3098 * Guile support was removed.
3100 * New features in the GNU simulator
3102 ** The --map-info flag lists all known core mappings.
3104 ** CFI flashes may be simulated via the "cfi" device.
3106 *** Changes in GDB 7.2
3108 * Shared library support for remote targets by default
3110 When GDB is configured for a generic, non-OS specific target, like
3111 for example, --target=arm-eabi or one of the many *-*-elf targets,
3112 GDB now queries remote stubs for loaded shared libraries using the
3113 `qXfer:libraries:read' packet. Previously, shared library support
3114 was always disabled for such configurations.
3118 ** Argument Dependent Lookup (ADL)
3120 In C++ ADL lookup directs function search to the namespaces of its
3121 arguments even if the namespace has not been imported.
3131 Here the compiler will search for `foo' in the namespace of 'b'
3132 and find A::foo. GDB now supports this. This construct is commonly
3133 used in the Standard Template Library for operators.
3135 ** Improved User Defined Operator Support
3137 In addition to member operators, GDB now supports lookup of operators
3138 defined in a namespace and imported with a `using' directive, operators
3139 defined in the global scope, operators imported implicitly from an
3140 anonymous namespace, and the ADL operators mentioned in the previous
3142 GDB now also supports proper overload resolution for all the previously
3143 mentioned flavors of operators.
3145 ** static const class members
3147 Printing of static const class members that are initialized in the
3148 class definition has been fixed.
3150 * Windows Thread Information Block access.
3152 On Windows targets, GDB now supports displaying the Windows Thread
3153 Information Block (TIB) structure. This structure is visible either
3154 by using the new command `info w32 thread-information-block' or, by
3155 dereferencing the new convenience variable named `$_tlb', a
3156 thread-specific pointer to the TIB. This feature is also supported
3157 when remote debugging using GDBserver.
3159 * Static tracepoints
3161 Static tracepoints are calls in the user program into a tracing
3162 library. One such library is a port of the LTTng kernel tracer to
3163 userspace --- UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer, http://lttng.org/ust).
3164 When debugging with GDBserver, GDB now supports combining the GDB
3165 tracepoint machinery with such libraries. For example: the user can
3166 use GDB to probe a static tracepoint marker (a call from the user
3167 program into the tracing library) with the new "strace" command (see
3168 "New commands" below). This creates a "static tracepoint" in the
3169 breakpoint list, that can be manipulated with the same feature set
3170 as fast and regular tracepoints. E.g., collect registers, local and
3171 global variables, collect trace state variables, and define
3172 tracepoint conditions. In addition, the user can collect extra
3173 static tracepoint marker specific data, by collecting the new
3174 $_sdata internal variable. When analyzing the trace buffer, you can
3175 inspect $_sdata like any other variable available to GDB. For more
3176 information, see the "Tracepoints" chapter in GDB user manual. New
3177 remote packets have been defined to support static tracepoints, see
3178 the "New remote packets" section below.
3180 * Better reconstruction of tracepoints after disconnected tracing
3182 GDB will attempt to download the original source form of tracepoint
3183 definitions when starting a trace run, and then will upload these
3184 upon reconnection to the target, resulting in a more accurate
3185 reconstruction of the tracepoints that are in use on the target.
3189 You can now exercise direct control over the ways that GDB can
3190 affect your program. For instance, you can disallow the setting of
3191 breakpoints, so that the program can run continuously (assuming
3192 non-stop mode). In addition, the "observer" variable is available
3193 to switch all of the different controls; in observer mode, GDB
3194 cannot affect the target's behavior at all, which is useful for
3195 tasks like diagnosing live systems in the field.
3197 * The new convenience variable $_thread holds the number of the
3200 * New remote packets
3204 Return the address of the Windows Thread Information Block of a given thread.
3208 In response to several of the tracepoint packets, the target may now
3209 also respond with a number of intermediate `qRelocInsn' request
3210 packets before the final result packet, to have GDB handle
3211 relocating an instruction to execute at a different address. This
3212 is particularly useful for stubs that support fast tracepoints. GDB
3213 reports support for this feature in the qSupported packet.
3217 List static tracepoint markers in the target program.
3221 List static tracepoint markers at a given address in the target
3224 qXfer:statictrace:read
3226 Read the static trace data collected (by a `collect $_sdata'
3227 tracepoint action). The remote stub reports support for this packet
3228 to gdb's qSupported query.
3232 Send the current settings of GDB's permission flags.
3236 Send part of the source (textual) form of a tracepoint definition,
3237 which includes location, conditional, and action list.
3239 * The source command now accepts a -s option to force searching for the
3240 script in the source search path even if the script name specifies
3243 * New features in the GDB remote stub, GDBserver
3245 - GDBserver now support tracepoints (including fast tracepoints, and
3246 static tracepoints). The feature is currently supported by the
3247 i386-linux and amd64-linux builds. See the "Tracepoints support
3248 in gdbserver" section in the manual for more information.
3250 GDBserver JIT compiles the tracepoint's conditional agent
3251 expression bytecode into native code whenever possible for low
3252 overhead dynamic tracepoints conditionals. For such tracepoints,
3253 an expression that examines program state is evaluated when the
3254 tracepoint is reached, in order to determine whether to capture
3255 trace data. If the condition is simple and false, processing the
3256 tracepoint finishes very quickly and no data is gathered.
3258 GDBserver interfaces with the UST (LTTng Userspace Tracer) library
3259 for static tracepoints support.
3261 - GDBserver now supports x86_64 Windows 64-bit debugging.
3263 * GDB now sends xmlRegisters= in qSupported packet to indicate that
3264 it understands register description.
3266 * The --batch flag now disables pagination and queries.
3268 * X86 general purpose registers
3270 GDB now supports reading/writing byte, word and double-word x86
3271 general purpose registers directly. This means you can use, say,
3272 $ah or $ax to refer, respectively, to the byte register AH and
3273 16-bit word register AX that are actually portions of the 32-bit
3274 register EAX or 64-bit register RAX.
3276 * The `commands' command now accepts a range of breakpoints to modify.
3277 A plain `commands' following a command that creates multiple
3278 breakpoints affects all the breakpoints set by that command. This
3279 applies to breakpoints set by `rbreak', and also applies when a
3280 single `break' command creates multiple breakpoints (e.g.,
3281 breakpoints on overloaded c++ functions).
3283 * The `rbreak' command now accepts a filename specification as part of
3284 its argument, limiting the functions selected by the regex to those
3285 in the specified file.
3287 * Support for remote debugging Windows and SymbianOS shared libraries
3288 from Unix hosts has been improved. Non Windows GDB builds now can
3289 understand target reported file names that follow MS-DOS based file
3290 system semantics, such as file names that include drive letters and
3291 use the backslash character as directory separator. This makes it
3292 possible to transparently use the "set sysroot" and "set
3293 solib-search-path" on Unix hosts to point as host copies of the
3294 target's shared libraries. See the new command "set
3295 target-file-system-kind" described below, and the "Commands to
3296 specify files" section in the user manual for more information.
3300 eval template, expressions...
3301 Convert the values of one or more expressions under the control
3302 of the string template to a command line, and call it.
3304 set target-file-system-kind unix|dos-based|auto
3305 show target-file-system-kind
3306 Set or show the assumed file system kind for target reported file
3309 save breakpoints <filename>
3310 Save all current breakpoint definitions to a file suitable for use
3311 in a later debugging session. To read the saved breakpoint
3312 definitions, use the `source' command.
3314 `save tracepoints' is a new alias for `save-tracepoints'. The latter
3317 info static-tracepoint-markers
3318 Display information about static tracepoint markers in the target.
3320 strace FN | FILE:LINE | *ADDR | -m MARKER_ID
3321 Define a static tracepoint by probing a marker at the given
3322 function, line, address, or marker ID.
3326 Enable and disable observer mode.
3328 set may-write-registers on|off
3329 set may-write-memory on|off
3330 set may-insert-breakpoints on|off
3331 set may-insert-tracepoints on|off
3332 set may-insert-fast-tracepoints on|off
3333 set may-interrupt on|off
3334 Set individual permissions for GDB effects on the target. Note that
3335 some of these settings can have undesirable or surprising
3336 consequences, particularly when changed in the middle of a session.
3337 For instance, disabling the writing of memory can prevent
3338 breakpoints from being inserted, cause single-stepping to fail, or
3339 even crash your program, if you disable after breakpoints have been
3340 inserted. However, GDB should not crash.
3342 set record memory-query on|off
3343 show record memory-query
3344 Control whether to stop the inferior if memory changes caused
3345 by an instruction cannot be recorded.
3350 The disassemble command now supports "start,+length" form of two arguments.
3354 ** GDB now provides a new directory location, called the python directory,
3355 where Python scripts written for GDB can be installed. The location
3356 of that directory is <data-directory>/python, where <data-directory>
3357 is the GDB data directory. For more details, see section `Scripting
3358 GDB using Python' in the manual.
3360 ** The GDB Python API now has access to breakpoints, symbols, symbol
3361 tables, program spaces, inferiors, threads and frame's code blocks.
3362 Additionally, GDB Parameters can now be created from the API, and
3363 manipulated via set/show in the CLI.
3365 ** New functions gdb.target_charset, gdb.target_wide_charset,
3366 gdb.progspaces, gdb.current_progspace, and gdb.string_to_argv.
3368 ** New exception gdb.GdbError.
3370 ** Pretty-printers are now also looked up in the current program space.
3372 ** Pretty-printers can now be individually enabled and disabled.
3374 ** GDB now looks for names of Python scripts to auto-load in a
3375 special section named `.debug_gdb_scripts', in addition to looking
3376 for a OBJFILE-gdb.py script when OBJFILE is read by the debugger.
3378 * Tracepoint actions were unified with breakpoint commands. In particular,
3379 there are no longer differences in "info break" output for breakpoints and
3380 tracepoints and the "commands" command can be used for both tracepoints and
3381 regular breakpoints.
3385 ARM Symbian arm*-*-symbianelf*
3387 * D language support.
3388 GDB now supports debugging programs written in the D programming
3391 * GDB now supports the extended ptrace interface for PowerPC which is
3392 available since Linux kernel version 2.6.34. This automatically enables
3393 any hardware breakpoints and additional hardware watchpoints available in
3394 the processor. The old ptrace interface exposes just one hardware
3395 watchpoint and no hardware breakpoints.
3397 * GDB is now able to use the Data Value Compare (DVC) register available on
3398 embedded PowerPC processors to implement in hardware simple watchpoint
3399 conditions of the form:
3401 watch ADDRESS|VARIABLE if ADDRESS|VARIABLE == CONSTANT EXPRESSION
3403 This works in native GDB running on Linux kernels with the extended ptrace
3404 interface mentioned above.
3406 *** Changes in GDB 7.1
3410 ** Namespace Support
3412 GDB now supports importing of namespaces in C++. This enables the
3413 user to inspect variables from imported namespaces. Support for
3414 namepace aliasing has also been added. So, if a namespace is
3415 aliased in the current scope (e.g. namepace C=A; ) the user can
3416 print variables using the alias (e.g. (gdb) print C::x).
3420 All known bugs relating to the printing of virtual base class were
3421 fixed. It is now possible to call overloaded static methods using a
3426 The C++ cast operators static_cast<>, dynamic_cast<>, const_cast<>,
3427 and reinterpret_cast<> are now handled by the C++ expression parser.
3431 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
3436 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
3439 * Multi-program debugging.
3441 GDB now has support for multi-program (a.k.a. multi-executable or
3442 multi-exec) debugging. This allows for debugging multiple inferiors
3443 simultaneously each running a different program under the same GDB
3444 session. See "Debugging Multiple Inferiors and Programs" in the
3445 manual for more information. This implied some user visible changes
3446 in the multi-inferior support. For example, "info inferiors" now
3447 lists inferiors that are not running yet or that have exited
3448 already. See also "New commands" and "New options" below.
3450 * New tracing features
3452 GDB's tracepoint facility now includes several new features:
3454 ** Trace state variables
3456 GDB tracepoints now include support for trace state variables, which
3457 are variables managed by the target agent during a tracing
3458 experiment. They are useful for tracepoints that trigger each
3459 other, so for instance one tracepoint can count hits in a variable,
3460 and then a second tracepoint has a condition that is true when the
3461 count reaches a particular value. Trace state variables share the
3462 $-syntax of GDB convenience variables, and can appear in both
3463 tracepoint actions and condition expressions. Use the "tvariable"
3464 command to create, and "info tvariables" to view; see "Trace State
3465 Variables" in the manual for more detail.
3469 GDB now includes an option for defining fast tracepoints, which
3470 targets may implement more efficiently, such as by installing a jump
3471 into the target agent rather than a trap instruction. The resulting
3472 speedup can be by two orders of magnitude or more, although the
3473 tradeoff is that some program locations on some target architectures
3474 might not allow fast tracepoint installation, for instance if the
3475 instruction to be replaced is shorter than the jump. To request a
3476 fast tracepoint, use the "ftrace" command, with syntax identical to
3477 the regular trace command.
3479 ** Disconnected tracing
3481 It is now possible to detach GDB from the target while it is running
3482 a trace experiment, then reconnect later to see how the experiment
3483 is going. In addition, a new variable disconnected-tracing lets you
3484 tell the target agent whether to continue running a trace if the
3485 connection is lost unexpectedly.
3489 GDB now has the ability to save the trace buffer into a file, and
3490 then use that file as a target, similarly to you can do with
3491 corefiles. You can select trace frames, print data that was
3492 collected in them, and use tstatus to display the state of the
3493 tracing run at the moment that it was saved. To create a trace
3494 file, use "tsave <filename>", and to use it, do "target tfile
3497 ** Circular trace buffer
3499 You can ask the target agent to handle the trace buffer as a
3500 circular buffer, discarding the oldest trace frames to make room for
3501 newer ones, by setting circular-trace-buffer to on. This feature may
3502 not be available for all target agents.
3507 The disassemble command, when invoked with two arguments, now requires
3508 the arguments to be comma-separated.
3511 The info variables command now displays variable definitions. Files
3512 which only declare a variable are not shown.
3515 The source command is now capable of sourcing Python scripts.
3516 This feature is dependent on the debugger being build with Python
3519 Related to this enhancement is also the introduction of a new command
3520 "set script-extension" (see below).
3522 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3524 record save [<FILENAME>]
3525 Save a file (in core file format) containing the process record
3526 execution log for replay debugging at a later time.
3528 record restore <FILENAME>
3529 Restore the process record execution log that was saved at an
3530 earlier time, for replay debugging.
3532 add-inferior [-copies <N>] [-exec <FILENAME>]
3535 clone-inferior [-copies <N>] [ID]
3536 Make a new inferior ready to execute the same program another
3537 inferior has loaded.
3542 maint info program-spaces
3543 List the program spaces loaded into GDB.
3545 set remote interrupt-sequence [Ctrl-C | BREAK | BREAK-g]
3546 show remote interrupt-sequence
3547 Allow the user to select one of ^C, a BREAK signal or BREAK-g
3548 as the sequence to the remote target in order to interrupt the execution.
3549 Ctrl-C is a default. Some system prefers BREAK which is high level of
3550 serial line for some certain time. Linux kernel prefers BREAK-g, a.k.a
3551 Magic SysRq g. It is BREAK signal and character 'g'.
3553 set remote interrupt-on-connect [on | off]
3554 show remote interrupt-on-connect
3555 When interrupt-on-connect is ON, gdb sends interrupt-sequence to
3556 remote target when gdb connects to it. This is needed when you debug
3559 set remotebreak [on | off]
3561 Deprecated. Use "set/show remote interrupt-sequence" instead.
3563 tvariable $NAME [ = EXP ]
3564 Create or modify a trace state variable.
3567 List trace state variables and their values.
3569 delete tvariable $NAME ...
3570 Delete one or more trace state variables.
3573 Evaluate the given expressions without collecting anything into the
3574 trace buffer. (Valid in tracepoint actions only.)
3576 ftrace FN / FILE:LINE / *ADDR
3577 Define a fast tracepoint at the given function, line, or address.
3579 * New expression syntax
3581 GDB now parses the 0b prefix of binary numbers the same way as GCC does.
3582 GDB now parses 0b101010 identically with 42.
3586 set follow-exec-mode new|same
3587 show follow-exec-mode
3588 Control whether GDB reuses the same inferior across an exec call or
3589 creates a new one. This is useful to be able to restart the old
3590 executable after the inferior having done an exec call.
3592 set default-collect EXPR, ...
3593 show default-collect
3594 Define a list of expressions to be collected at each tracepoint.
3595 This is a useful way to ensure essential items are not overlooked,
3596 such as registers or a critical global variable.
3598 set disconnected-tracing
3599 show disconnected-tracing
3600 If set to 1, the target is instructed to continue tracing if it
3601 loses its connection to GDB. If 0, the target is to stop tracing
3604 set circular-trace-buffer
3605 show circular-trace-buffer
3606 If set to on, the target is instructed to use a circular trace buffer
3607 and discard the oldest trace frames instead of stopping the trace due
3608 to a full trace buffer. If set to off, the trace stops when the buffer
3609 fills up. Some targets may not support this.
3611 set script-extension off|soft|strict
3612 show script-extension
3613 If set to "off", the debugger does not perform any script language
3614 recognition, and all sourced files are assumed to be GDB scripts.
3615 If set to "soft" (the default), files are sourced according to
3616 filename extension, falling back to GDB scripts if the first
3618 If set to "strict", files are sourced according to filename extension.
3620 set ada trust-PAD-over-XVS on|off
3621 show ada trust-PAD-over-XVS
3622 If off, activate a workaround against a bug in the debugging information
3623 generated by the compiler for PAD types (see gcc/exp_dbug.ads in
3624 the GCC sources for more information about the GNAT encoding and
3625 PAD types in particular). It is always safe to set this option to
3626 off, but this introduces a slight performance penalty. The default
3629 * Python API Improvements
3631 ** GDB provides the new class gdb.LazyString. This is useful in
3632 some pretty-printing cases. The new method gdb.Value.lazy_string
3633 provides a simple way to create objects of this type.
3635 ** The fields returned by gdb.Type.fields now have an
3636 `is_base_class' attribute.
3638 ** The new method gdb.Type.range returns the range of an array type.
3640 ** The new method gdb.parse_and_eval can be used to parse and
3641 evaluate an expression.
3643 * New remote packets
3646 Define a trace state variable.
3649 Get the current value of a trace state variable.
3652 Set desired tracing behavior upon disconnection.
3655 Set the trace buffer to be linear or circular.
3658 Get data about the tracepoints currently in use.
3662 Process record now works correctly with hardware watchpoints.
3664 Multiple bug fixes have been made to the mips-irix port, making it
3665 much more reliable. In particular:
3666 - Debugging threaded applications is now possible again. Previously,
3667 GDB would hang while starting the program, or while waiting for
3668 the program to stop at a breakpoint.
3669 - Attaching to a running process no longer hangs.
3670 - An error occurring while loading a core file has been fixed.
3671 - Changing the value of the PC register now works again. This fixes
3672 problems observed when using the "jump" command, or when calling
3673 a function from GDB, or even when assigning a new value to $pc.
3674 - With the "finish" and "return" commands, the return value for functions
3675 returning a small array is now correctly printed.
3676 - It is now possible to break on shared library code which gets executed
3677 during a shared library init phase (code executed while executing
3678 their .init section). Previously, the breakpoint would have no effect.
3679 - GDB is now able to backtrace through the signal handler for
3680 non-threaded programs.
3682 PIE (Position Independent Executable) programs debugging is now supported.
3683 This includes debugging execution of PIC (Position Independent Code) shared
3684 libraries although for that, it should be possible to run such libraries as an
3687 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
3689 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
3690 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
3691 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
3692 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
3693 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
3695 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
3696 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
3697 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
3698 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
3699 for tracepoint actions.
3701 * The disassemble command now supports: an optional /r modifier, print the
3702 raw instructions in hex as well as in symbolic form, and an optional /m
3703 modifier to print mixed source+assembly.
3705 * Process record and replay
3707 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
3708 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
3709 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
3712 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
3713 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
3714 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
3717 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
3718 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
3721 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
3722 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
3723 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
3724 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
3725 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
3726 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
3727 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
3728 the installation instructions for more information.
3730 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
3731 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
3732 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
3733 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
3735 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
3736 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
3738 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
3739 now complete on file names.
3741 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
3742 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
3743 For instance, consider:
3745 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
3746 # struct example variable;
3749 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
3750 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
3752 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
3753 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
3755 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
3756 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
3759 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
3760 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
3761 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
3763 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
3764 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
3765 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
3766 and simulator targets may also provide them.
3768 * New remote packets
3771 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3774 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
3775 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
3776 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
3779 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
3780 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
3783 Obtains additional operating system information
3787 Read or write additional signal information.
3789 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
3791 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
3792 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
3793 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
3795 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
3796 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
3798 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
3799 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
3800 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
3802 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
3803 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
3805 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
3807 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
3809 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
3810 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
3812 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
3813 list of section offsets.
3815 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
3816 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
3817 have also been fixed.
3819 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
3820 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
3821 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
3823 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
3826 template<typename T> class C { };
3829 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
3831 ptype C<char const *>
3832 ptype C<char const*>
3833 ptype C<const char *>
3834 ptype C<const char*>
3836 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
3838 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
3839 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
3841 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
3842 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3843 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
3845 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
3846 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
3848 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
3851 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
3852 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
3854 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
3855 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
3860 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
3861 available is determined at configure time.
3863 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
3865 * Ada tasking support
3867 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
3871 Print the list of Ada tasks.
3873 Print detailed information about task number N.
3875 Print the task number of the current task.
3877 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
3879 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
3880 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
3882 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
3884 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
3885 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
3886 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
3887 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
3888 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
3889 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
3892 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
3893 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
3896 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
3897 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
3898 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
3899 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
3902 * Multi-architecture debugging.
3904 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
3905 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
3906 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
3907 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
3908 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
3910 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
3911 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
3912 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
3913 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
3914 --enable-targets configure option.
3916 * Non-stop mode debugging.
3918 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
3919 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
3920 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
3921 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
3922 section in the user manual for more information.
3924 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
3925 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
3926 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
3927 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
3928 extensions on linux targets.
3930 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
3932 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
3933 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
3934 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
3935 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
3936 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
3937 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
3938 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
3939 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
3940 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
3942 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
3944 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
3946 maint set python print-stack
3947 maint show python print-stack
3948 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
3951 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
3956 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
3960 Show operating system information about processes.
3963 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
3966 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
3969 Detach from inferior number NUM.
3972 Kill inferior number NUM.
3976 set spu stop-on-load
3977 show spu stop-on-load
3978 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3980 set spu auto-flush-cache
3981 show spu auto-flush-cache
3982 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
3983 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
3985 set sh calling-convention
3986 show sh calling-convention
3987 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
3990 show debug timestamp
3991 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
3993 set disassemble-next-line
3994 show disassemble-next-line
3995 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
3998 set remote noack-packet
3999 show remote noack-packet
4000 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
4001 under "New remote packets."
4003 set remote query-attached-packet
4004 show remote query-attached-packet
4005 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
4007 set remote read-siginfo-object
4008 show remote read-siginfo-object
4009 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
4012 set remote write-siginfo-object
4013 show remote write-siginfo-object
4014 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
4017 set remote reverse-continue
4018 show remote reverse-continue
4019 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
4021 set remote reverse-step
4022 show remote reverse-step
4023 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
4025 set displaced-stepping
4026 show displaced-stepping
4027 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
4028 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
4029 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
4032 show debug displaced
4033 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
4035 maint set internal-error
4036 maint show internal-error
4037 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
4039 maint set internal-warning
4040 maint show internal-warning
4041 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
4046 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
4048 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
4049 show multiple-symbols
4050 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
4051 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
4052 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
4054 set breakpoint always-inserted
4055 show breakpoint always-inserted
4056 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
4057 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
4058 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
4060 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4061 show arm fallback-mode
4062 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
4064 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
4065 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
4066 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
4067 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
4069 set disable-randomization
4070 show disable-randomization
4071 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
4072 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
4073 multiple debugging sessions.
4077 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
4082 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
4083 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
4084 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
4085 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
4087 set target-wide-charset
4088 show target-wide-charset
4089 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
4090 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
4092 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
4094 set tcp connect-timeout
4095 show tcp connect-timeout
4096 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
4097 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
4098 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
4100 set libthread-db-search-path
4101 show libthread-db-search-path
4102 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
4105 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
4106 show schedule-multiple
4107 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
4108 the current process.
4112 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
4113 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
4114 affecting correctness.
4116 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
4117 show interactive-mode
4118 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
4119 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
4120 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
4121 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
4122 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
4127 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
4128 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
4129 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
4133 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
4134 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
4135 alias for the `fork' command.
4138 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
4139 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
4140 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
4143 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
4144 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
4145 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
4149 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
4150 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
4151 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
4154 * New native configurations
4156 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
4158 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
4162 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
4163 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
4164 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
4167 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
4168 (mingw32ce) debugging.
4174 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
4176 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
4178 * New native configurations
4180 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
4181 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
4185 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
4186 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
4188 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
4190 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
4191 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
4192 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
4193 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
4195 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
4196 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
4198 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
4201 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
4202 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
4203 and in inlined functions.
4205 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
4206 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
4207 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
4209 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
4211 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
4212 registers on PowerPC targets.
4214 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
4215 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
4217 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
4218 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
4220 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
4221 extended-remote mode.
4223 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
4224 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
4225 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
4226 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
4228 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
4229 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
4230 target architectures.
4232 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
4233 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
4234 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
4235 stored in two consecutive float registers.
4237 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
4240 * Improved support for debugging Ada
4241 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
4243 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
4244 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
4245 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
4246 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
4248 - Improved command completion in Ada
4251 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
4256 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
4257 show print frame-arguments
4258 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
4259 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
4264 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4271 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
4273 * New remote packets
4280 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
4283 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
4287 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
4289 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
4291 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
4292 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
4293 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
4295 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
4296 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
4297 -Bsymbolic linker option.
4299 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
4300 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
4303 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
4304 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
4306 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
4307 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
4309 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
4311 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
4312 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
4313 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
4315 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
4316 automatically displayed as character or string data.
4318 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
4319 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
4322 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
4323 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
4324 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
4326 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
4329 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
4330 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
4331 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
4333 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
4335 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
4337 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
4338 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
4339 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
4341 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
4342 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
4344 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
4345 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
4346 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
4347 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
4348 Windows and SymbianOS).
4350 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
4351 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
4353 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
4354 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
4360 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
4361 when debugging using remote targets.
4363 set mem inaccessible-by-default
4364 show mem inaccessible-by-default
4365 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4366 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4367 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
4368 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
4369 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
4371 set breakpoint auto-hw
4372 show breakpoint auto-hw
4373 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
4374 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
4375 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
4376 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
4377 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
4378 including "next" and "finish".
4381 catch exception unhandled
4382 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
4385 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
4389 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
4390 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
4391 an alias to "set sysroot".
4394 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
4395 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
4398 * New native configurations
4400 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
4403 unset tdesc filename
4405 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
4406 not query the target for its built-in description.
4410 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
4411 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
4412 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
4414 * New remote packets
4417 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
4418 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
4420 qXfer:features:read:
4421 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
4426 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
4427 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
4429 qXfer:libraries:read:
4430 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
4431 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
4432 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
4433 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
4437 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
4445 i[34567]86-*-lynxos*
4446 i[34567]86-*-netware*
4447 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
4448 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
4450 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
4453 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
4454 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
4463 * Other removed features
4470 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
4477 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
4482 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
4483 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
4488 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
4489 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
4491 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
4493 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
4494 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
4495 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
4496 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
4498 MIPS ".pdr" sections
4500 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
4501 in debugging information.
4505 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
4506 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
4508 set mips stack-arg-size
4509 set mips saved-gpreg-size
4511 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
4513 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
4518 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
4520 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
4521 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
4522 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
4524 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
4525 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
4528 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
4529 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
4531 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
4532 stub provides the required support.
4534 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
4535 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
4540 unset substitute-path
4541 show substitute-path
4542 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
4543 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
4544 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
4545 between compilation and debugging.
4549 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
4550 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
4551 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
4555 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
4557 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
4558 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
4560 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
4562 * New remote packets
4565 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
4566 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
4567 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
4568 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
4572 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
4573 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
4575 qXfer:memory-map:read:
4576 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
4577 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
4582 Erase and program a flash memory device.
4584 * Removed remote packets
4587 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
4588 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
4590 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
4594 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
4596 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4600 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
4601 only if it doesn't already have a value.
4603 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
4605 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
4607 restart <n> Return the program state to a
4608 previously saved state.
4610 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
4612 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
4614 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
4615 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
4617 info forks List forks of the user program that
4618 are available to be debugged.
4620 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
4621 forks of the user program that are
4622 available to be debugged.
4624 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4625 that are available to be debugged (and
4626 kill the forked process).
4628 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
4629 that are available to be debugged (and
4630 allow the process to continue).
4634 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
4636 * Improved Windows host support
4638 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
4639 native console support, and remote communications using either
4640 network sockets or serial ports.
4642 * Improved Modula-2 language support
4644 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
4645 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
4646 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
4647 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
4648 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
4649 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
4653 The ARM rdi-share module.
4655 The Netware NLM debug server.
4657 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
4659 * New native configurations
4661 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
4662 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
4666 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
4668 * New command line options
4670 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
4671 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
4672 the child (debugged) program exited with.
4673 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
4674 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
4675 specified multiple times and in conjunction
4676 with the --command (-x) option.
4678 * Deprecated commands removed
4680 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
4684 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
4685 othernames set arm disassembler
4686 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
4687 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
4688 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
4691 * New BSD user-level threads support
4693 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
4694 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
4697 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4698 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
4699 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
4701 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
4702 are not yet supported.
4704 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
4705 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
4707 * REMOVED configurations and files
4709 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
4710 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
4711 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
4713 * New "set print array-indexes" command
4715 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
4716 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
4719 * VAX floating point support
4721 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
4723 * User-defined command support
4725 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
4726 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
4727 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
4729 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
4731 * New command line option
4733 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
4736 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
4738 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
4739 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
4740 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
4741 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
4742 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
4744 * Internationalization
4746 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
4747 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
4748 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
4752 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
4753 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
4754 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
4756 * New native configurations
4758 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
4762 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
4763 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
4765 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
4767 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4768 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
4769 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
4772 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
4773 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
4774 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
4784 powerpc bdm protocol
4786 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4787 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
4789 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
4791 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
4792 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
4793 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
4794 permanently REMOVED.
4803 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
4805 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
4807 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
4808 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
4811 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
4813 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
4814 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
4815 IRIX long double values).
4819 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
4820 command. This problem has been fixed.
4822 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
4824 * Fix for ``many threads''
4826 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
4827 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
4830 ptrace: No such process.
4831 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
4833 This problem has been fixed.
4835 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
4837 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
4840 * New ``start'' command.
4842 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
4844 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
4846 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
4847 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
4848 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
4850 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
4851 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
4852 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
4853 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
4854 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
4855 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
4856 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
4857 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
4858 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
4860 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
4862 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
4863 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
4864 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
4865 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
4866 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
4868 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
4869 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
4870 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
4872 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
4874 * New native configurations
4876 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
4877 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
4878 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
4879 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
4880 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
4881 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
4882 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
4884 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
4886 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
4887 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
4888 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
4889 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
4890 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
4891 work, was also included.
4893 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
4894 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
4904 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
4905 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
4907 * REMOVED configurations and files
4909 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
4910 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
4911 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
4912 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
4913 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
4914 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
4915 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
4916 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
4917 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
4918 sonymips mips-sony-*
4919 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
4921 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
4923 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
4925 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
4926 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
4927 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
4928 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
4931 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
4933 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
4934 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
4935 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
4936 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
4937 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
4938 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
4941 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
4943 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
4945 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
4946 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
4947 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
4949 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
4951 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
4952 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
4954 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
4956 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
4957 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
4958 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
4960 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
4962 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
4963 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
4965 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
4967 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
4968 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
4969 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
4971 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
4973 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
4974 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
4975 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
4977 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
4979 * Removed --with-mmalloc
4981 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
4982 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
4984 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
4986 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
4987 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
4988 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
4989 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
4991 * Revised SPARC target
4993 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
4994 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
4995 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
4996 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
4997 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
5001 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
5002 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
5003 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
5006 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5008 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
5009 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
5012 * C++ nested types and namespaces
5014 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
5015 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
5016 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
5017 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
5018 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
5019 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
5020 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
5021 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
5022 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
5024 * New native configurations
5026 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
5027 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
5028 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
5029 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
5030 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
5032 * New debugging protocols
5034 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
5036 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
5038 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
5039 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
5040 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
5042 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5044 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5045 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5046 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5047 permanently REMOVED.
5049 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
5050 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
5051 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
5052 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
5053 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
5054 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
5055 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
5056 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
5057 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
5058 sonymips mips-sony-*
5059 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
5061 * REMOVED configurations and files
5063 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
5064 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
5065 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5066 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5067 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5068 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5069 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5070 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5071 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5072 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
5073 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5074 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5075 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5076 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
5077 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
5078 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5079 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5081 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
5085 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
5086 integrated into GDB.
5088 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
5090 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
5091 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
5092 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
5095 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
5096 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
5097 DWARF 2 CFI support.
5101 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
5102 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
5103 remote protocol documentation for details.
5105 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
5107 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
5108 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
5109 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
5112 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
5114 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
5115 per-thread variables.
5117 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
5119 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
5120 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
5122 * Separate debug info.
5124 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
5125 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
5126 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
5127 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
5128 and optional debug files.
5130 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
5132 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
5133 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
5136 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
5137 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
5141 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
5142 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
5143 considered "useable".
5145 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
5147 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
5148 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
5151 * GDB supports logging output to a file
5153 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
5154 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
5156 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
5158 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
5159 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
5162 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
5164 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
5165 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
5169 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
5170 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
5171 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
5172 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
5173 data, for more informative profiling results.
5175 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
5177 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
5178 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
5179 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
5181 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
5184 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
5185 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
5186 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
5187 in a subsequent -var-update.
5189 * New native configurations.
5191 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
5193 * Multi-arched targets.
5195 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
5196 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5198 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5200 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5201 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5202 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5203 permanently REMOVED.
5205 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
5206 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5207 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
5208 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
5209 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
5210 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
5211 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
5212 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
5213 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
5214 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
5215 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5216 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
5218 * REMOVED configurations and files
5221 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5222 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5223 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5224 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5225 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5226 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5228 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5229 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5230 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5231 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5232 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5233 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5235 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
5237 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
5238 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
5239 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
5240 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
5241 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
5243 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
5245 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
5247 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
5248 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
5249 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
5250 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
5251 shared libs like mad''.
5253 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
5255 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
5256 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
5257 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
5258 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
5260 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
5262 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
5263 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
5266 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
5267 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
5269 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
5270 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
5272 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
5273 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
5274 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
5275 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
5277 * Multi-arched targets.
5279 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
5280 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
5282 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
5283 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
5284 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
5288 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
5291 * New native configurations
5293 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
5294 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
5295 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
5296 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
5298 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5300 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5301 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5302 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5303 permanently REMOVED.
5305 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5306 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
5307 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
5308 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5309 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
5310 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5311 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
5312 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
5313 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
5314 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
5316 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
5317 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
5319 * OBSOLETE languages
5321 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
5323 * REMOVED configurations and files
5325 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5326 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5327 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5328 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5329 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5331 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5333 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
5335 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
5336 commands. The default is 1024.
5338 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
5340 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
5342 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
5344 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
5345 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
5346 from a file into memory (restore).
5348 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
5350 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
5351 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
5352 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
5354 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
5362 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
5363 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
5364 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
5366 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
5367 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
5368 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
5370 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
5371 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
5372 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
5374 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
5375 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
5376 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
5378 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
5380 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
5382 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
5383 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
5384 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
5385 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
5386 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
5387 (notably embedded) targets.
5389 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
5391 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
5392 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
5393 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
5394 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
5396 * New command line option
5398 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
5400 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
5402 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
5403 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
5404 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
5405 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
5406 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
5407 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
5408 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
5409 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
5410 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
5411 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
5413 * Changes in ARM configurations.
5415 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
5416 configuration is fully multi-arch.
5418 * New native configurations
5420 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
5421 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
5422 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
5423 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
5427 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
5429 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5431 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5432 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5433 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5434 permanently REMOVED.
5436 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
5437 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
5438 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
5439 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
5440 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
5442 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
5444 * REMOVED configurations and files
5446 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5448 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5449 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5450 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5451 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5452 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5453 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5454 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5455 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5456 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5457 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5458 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
5460 * Changes to command line processing
5462 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
5463 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
5465 * Changes to key bindings
5467 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
5469 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
5471 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
5473 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
5476 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
5478 Numerous documentation fixes.
5480 Numerous testsuite fixes.
5482 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
5484 * New native configurations
5486 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
5487 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
5488 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
5489 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5490 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
5491 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
5495 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
5497 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
5499 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
5501 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
5502 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
5503 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
5504 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
5505 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5507 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
5508 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5509 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
5510 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
5511 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
5512 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
5513 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
5514 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
5516 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
5517 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
5519 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
5520 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
5521 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
5522 permanently REMOVED.
5524 * REMOVED configurations and files
5526 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5527 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5529 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5533 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
5535 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
5536 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
5541 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
5543 * The MI enabled by default.
5545 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
5546 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
5547 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
5548 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
5549 which is now deprecated.
5551 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
5553 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
5554 main features are supported:
5556 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
5558 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
5561 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
5563 - a Pascal expression parser.
5565 However, some important features are not yet supported.
5567 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
5569 - there are some problems with boolean types;
5571 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
5572 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
5574 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
5576 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
5578 * Changes in completion.
5580 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
5581 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
5582 users expect at the shell prompt.
5584 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
5585 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
5586 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
5587 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
5588 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
5589 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
5590 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
5592 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
5594 * New platform-independent commands:
5596 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
5597 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
5598 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
5600 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
5602 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
5603 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
5604 many threads as your system allows you to have.
5606 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
5608 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
5609 multi-threaded programs though.
5611 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
5613 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
5615 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
5616 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
5619 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
5621 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
5622 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
5623 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
5624 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
5625 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
5628 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
5629 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
5630 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
5632 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
5634 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
5635 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
5637 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
5638 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
5641 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
5642 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
5643 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
5644 a given linear address.
5646 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
5647 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
5648 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
5650 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
5652 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
5654 * Changes in documentation.
5656 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
5657 Documentation License.
5659 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5662 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
5664 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
5667 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
5668 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
5669 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
5671 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
5673 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
5674 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
5675 contents of this file.
5679 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
5681 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
5683 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
5685 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
5686 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
5687 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
5688 greater level of detail.
5690 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
5692 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
5693 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
5694 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
5697 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
5699 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
5700 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
5701 machines ``out of the box''.
5703 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
5704 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
5705 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
5706 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
5707 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
5709 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
5710 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
5711 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
5712 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
5713 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
5715 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
5716 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
5719 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
5722 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
5723 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
5724 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
5725 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
5727 * New native configurations
5729 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
5730 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5734 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
5735 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
5736 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
5737 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
5739 * OBSOLETE configurations
5741 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
5742 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
5744 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
5747 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5748 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5749 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5750 be permanently REMOVED.
5752 * Gould support removed
5754 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
5756 * New features for SVR4
5758 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
5759 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
5760 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
5762 * Many C++ enhancements
5764 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
5765 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
5767 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
5769 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
5770 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
5771 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
5772 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
5774 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
5775 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
5777 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
5779 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
5780 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
5781 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
5783 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
5784 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
5786 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
5788 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
5789 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
5790 include ``set remote P-packet''.
5792 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
5794 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
5795 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
5796 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
5798 * ``apropos'' command added.
5800 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
5801 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
5802 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
5806 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
5807 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
5808 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
5809 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
5810 enabled by configuring with:
5812 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
5814 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
5816 * New native configurations
5818 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
5819 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
5820 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
5824 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
5825 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
5826 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
5828 * OBSOLETE configurations
5830 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
5832 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
5833 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
5834 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
5835 be permanently REMOVED.
5839 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
5840 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
5841 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
5842 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
5843 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
5844 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
5845 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
5850 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
5852 * set extension-language
5854 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
5855 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
5856 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
5857 set extension-language .c c++
5858 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
5859 and their associated languages.
5861 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
5863 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
5864 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
5865 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
5869 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
5870 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
5872 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
5873 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
5875 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
5876 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
5877 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
5878 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
5879 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
5880 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
5881 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
5882 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
5884 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
5885 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
5886 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
5887 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
5891 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
5892 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
5893 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
5894 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
5895 for xdb and dbx commands.
5899 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
5900 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
5901 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
5903 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
5904 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
5905 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
5907 * Debugging across forks
5909 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
5914 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
5915 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
5916 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
5918 * GDB remote protocol additions
5920 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
5921 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
5922 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
5923 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
5925 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
5926 full 64-bit address. The command
5928 set remoteaddresssize 32
5930 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
5931 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
5934 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
5935 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
5937 maint packet heythere
5939 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
5940 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
5943 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
5944 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
5945 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
5947 * Tracing can collect general expressions
5949 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
5950 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
5951 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
5953 * mask-address variable for Mips
5955 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
5956 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
5957 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
5959 * Higher serial baud rates
5961 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
5962 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
5963 to achieve all of these rates.)
5967 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
5968 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
5971 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
5973 * New native configurations
5975 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
5976 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
5977 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
5978 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
5979 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
5980 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
5981 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
5985 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
5986 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
5987 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
5988 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
5989 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
5990 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
5991 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
5992 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
5993 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
5994 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
5995 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
5997 * New debugging protocols
5999 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
6000 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
6001 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
6002 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6003 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6004 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
6008 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
6009 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
6014 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
6015 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
6017 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
6019 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
6020 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
6021 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
6023 * Live range splitting
6025 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
6026 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
6027 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
6031 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
6032 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
6036 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
6037 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
6038 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
6043 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
6048 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
6049 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
6050 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
6051 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
6052 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
6053 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
6057 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
6058 the symbol at the specified address.
6062 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
6063 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
6064 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
6065 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
6066 file tracepoint.c for more details.
6070 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
6071 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
6072 of most MIPS variants.
6076 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
6077 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
6078 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
6082 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
6083 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
6084 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
6085 the possible architectures.
6087 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
6089 * New native configurations
6091 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
6092 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
6093 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
6094 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
6095 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
6096 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
6100 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
6101 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
6102 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
6103 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
6104 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
6106 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
6110 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
6111 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
6112 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
6113 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
6114 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
6118 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
6120 * Windows 95/NT native
6122 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
6123 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
6124 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
6125 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
6126 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
6128 * dont-repeat command
6130 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
6131 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
6132 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
6133 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
6135 * Send break instead of ^C
6137 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
6138 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
6139 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
6141 * Remote protocol timeout
6143 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
6144 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
6145 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
6147 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
6149 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
6150 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
6151 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
6152 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
6153 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
6155 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
6156 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
6157 automatically on hpux10.
6159 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
6161 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
6163 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
6165 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
6166 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
6167 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
6168 every character. The default value is 1050.
6170 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
6172 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
6173 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
6174 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
6175 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
6176 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
6177 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
6179 * Speedups for remote debugging
6181 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
6182 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
6183 and more efficient S-record downloading.
6185 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
6187 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
6188 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
6190 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
6192 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
6194 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
6195 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
6197 * Remote targets use caching
6199 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
6200 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
6201 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
6202 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
6203 off' turns the the data cache off.
6205 * Remote targets may have threads
6207 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
6208 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
6209 gdb/remote.c for details.
6213 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
6214 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
6215 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
6216 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
6217 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
6218 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
6219 sequence is something like
6221 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
6223 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
6227 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
6228 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
6229 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
6230 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
6231 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
6232 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
6233 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
6234 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
6238 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
6239 but does simplify configuration and building.
6243 GDB now supports hpux10.
6245 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
6247 * New native configurations
6249 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
6250 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
6251 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
6252 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
6256 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
6257 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
6258 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
6259 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
6262 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
6264 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
6265 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
6266 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
6267 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
6268 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
6270 * Arguments to user-defined commands
6272 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
6273 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
6276 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
6278 To execute the command use:
6281 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
6282 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
6283 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
6285 * New `if' and `while' commands
6287 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
6288 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
6289 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
6290 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
6291 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
6292 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
6293 if the expression is zero.
6295 * Fortran source language mode
6297 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
6298 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
6299 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
6300 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
6303 * Better HPUX support
6305 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
6306 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
6307 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
6308 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
6309 that behavior do the following before running the program:
6315 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
6316 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
6322 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
6323 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
6326 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
6327 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
6329 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
6331 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
6332 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
6333 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
6334 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
6335 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
6336 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
6338 * New DOS host serial code
6340 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
6341 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
6344 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
6346 * New "complete" command
6348 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
6349 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
6351 * Trailing space optional in prompt
6353 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
6354 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
6356 * Breakpoint hit counts
6358 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
6359 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
6360 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
6361 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
6362 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
6365 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
6367 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
6368 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
6369 arrays actually contain only short strings.
6371 * Shared library breakpoints
6373 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
6374 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
6376 * Hardware watchpoints
6378 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
6379 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
6381 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
6385 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
6386 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
6388 * Improved Irix 5 support
6390 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
6392 * Improved HPPA support
6394 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
6396 * New native configurations
6398 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
6399 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
6400 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
6401 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
6405 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
6406 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
6409 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
6411 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
6412 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
6416 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
6417 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
6419 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
6421 * Irix 5 is now supported
6425 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
6426 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
6427 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
6428 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
6429 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
6432 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
6434 * User visible changes:
6438 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
6439 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
6440 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
6441 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
6442 debugging info for the mips target).
6444 * DEC Alpha native support
6446 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
6447 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
6448 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
6449 Alpha-specific notes.
6451 * Preliminary thread implementation
6453 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
6455 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
6457 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
6458 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
6461 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
6463 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
6464 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
6465 call methods, ...etc.
6467 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
6469 * User visible changes:
6471 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
6472 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
6473 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
6474 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
6476 Filename completion now works.
6478 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
6479 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
6480 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
6482 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
6483 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
6484 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
6485 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
6486 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
6490 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
6491 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
6494 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
6498 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
6499 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
6500 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
6504 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
6505 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
6506 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
6507 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
6508 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
6512 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
6513 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
6514 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
6516 * New targets supported
6518 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6519 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
6520 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
6521 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
6522 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
6524 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
6525 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
6526 GO32 memory extender.
6528 * New remote protocols
6530 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
6532 * New source languages supported
6534 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
6535 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
6536 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
6539 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
6541 * HP Precision Architecture supported
6543 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
6544 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
6545 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
6546 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
6547 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
6548 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
6550 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
6552 * Faster and better demangling
6554 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
6555 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
6556 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
6557 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
6558 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
6559 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
6562 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
6563 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
6564 compiler does not actually implement.
6566 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
6568 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
6569 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
6570 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
6571 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
6572 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
6573 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
6576 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
6577 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
6579 * Improved configure script
6581 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
6582 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
6583 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
6584 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
6586 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
6587 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
6588 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
6589 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
6590 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
6591 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
6593 * Documentation improvements
6595 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
6596 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
6597 before submitting changes.
6599 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
6600 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
6601 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
6602 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
6603 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
6605 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
6606 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
6607 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
6608 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
6609 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
6610 around this problem.
6614 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
6615 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
6616 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
6619 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
6620 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
6622 * New native hosts supported
6624 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
6625 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
6627 * New targets supported
6629 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
6631 * New file formats supported
6633 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
6634 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
6638 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
6640 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
6641 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
6643 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
6644 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
6645 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
6647 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
6648 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
6650 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
6651 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
6652 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
6655 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
6656 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
6657 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
6658 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
6659 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
6661 * Internal improvements
6663 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
6664 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
6666 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
6667 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
6668 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
6669 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
6670 shared code that handles any of them.
6672 * New command line options
6674 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
6678 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
6679 General Public License.
6681 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
6683 * Host/native/target split
6685 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
6686 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
6687 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
6688 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
6689 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
6691 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
6692 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
6693 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
6694 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
6695 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
6696 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
6697 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
6699 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
6700 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
6701 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
6703 * New hosts supported
6705 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
6706 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6707 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
6709 * New targets supported
6711 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
6712 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
6714 * New native hosts supported
6716 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
6717 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
6718 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
6720 * New file formats supported
6722 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
6723 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
6724 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
6728 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
6729 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
6730 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
6732 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
6734 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
6735 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
6736 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
6737 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
6741 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
6742 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
6743 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
6745 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
6749 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
6750 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
6753 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
6754 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
6756 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
6757 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
6758 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
6759 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
6760 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
6761 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
6763 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
6764 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
6765 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
6766 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
6770 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
6771 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
6772 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
6773 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
6774 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
6776 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
6777 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
6778 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
6779 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
6783 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
6784 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
6785 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
6786 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
6787 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
6788 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
6789 each instruction being stepped through.
6791 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
6792 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
6794 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
6795 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
6796 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
6797 processor with a serial port.
6801 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
6802 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
6803 supported, and what files each one uses.
6807 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
6808 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
6809 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
6810 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
6812 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
6813 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
6814 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
6815 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
6819 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
6820 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
6821 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
6822 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
6823 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
6824 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
6826 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
6829 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
6831 * Better support for C++ function names
6833 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
6834 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
6835 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
6836 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
6837 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
6839 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
6840 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
6841 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
6842 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
6843 for the list of formats.
6845 * G++ symbol mangling problem
6847 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
6848 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
6849 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
6850 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
6851 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
6852 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
6855 * New 'maintenance' command
6857 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
6858 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
6859 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
6861 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
6862 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
6863 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
6864 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
6865 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
6866 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
6868 The following commands are new:
6870 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
6871 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
6872 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
6874 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
6876 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
6877 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
6878 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
6879 read after argv processing.
6881 * New hosts supported
6883 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
6885 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
6887 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
6888 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
6889 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
6890 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
6891 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
6894 * New targets supported
6896 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
6898 * More smarts about finding #include files
6900 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
6901 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
6902 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
6903 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
6904 the one that contains your sources.
6906 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
6907 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
6908 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
6910 * Interesting infernals change
6912 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
6913 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
6914 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
6915 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
6917 * Bug fixes (of course!)
6919 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
6920 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
6921 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
6923 See the ChangeLog for details.
6925 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
6927 * New machines supported (host and target)
6929 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
6931 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
6933 * New malloc package
6935 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
6936 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
6937 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
6938 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
6939 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
6940 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
6944 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
6945 'help info proc' for details.
6947 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
6949 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
6950 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
6953 * File name changes for MS-DOS
6955 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
6956 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
6957 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
6958 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
6959 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
6960 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
6962 * Cross byte order fixes
6964 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
6965 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
6967 * New -mapped and -readnow options
6969 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
6970 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
6971 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
6972 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
6973 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
6974 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
6975 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
6976 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
6977 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
6978 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
6980 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
6981 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
6982 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
6983 slower, but makes future operations faster.
6985 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
6986 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
6987 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
6990 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
6992 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
6993 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
6994 shared across multiple host platforms.
6996 * longjmp() handling
6998 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
6999 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
7000 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
7001 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
7005 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
7006 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
7011 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
7012 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
7013 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
7015 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
7017 * New machines supported (host and target)
7019 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7021 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
7022 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
7024 * New machines supported (target)
7026 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
7030 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
7031 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
7032 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
7034 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
7035 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
7036 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
7037 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
7038 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
7041 * New features for SVR4
7043 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
7044 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
7045 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
7047 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
7048 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
7049 it prints the address mappings of the process.
7051 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
7052 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
7054 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
7056 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
7057 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
7058 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
7059 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
7060 same code linked statically.
7064 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
7065 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
7066 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
7067 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
7068 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
7069 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
7073 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7074 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7075 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7078 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
7080 * New machines supported (host and target)
7082 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
7083 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
7084 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
7086 * Almost SCO Unix support
7088 We had hoped to support:
7089 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
7090 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
7091 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
7092 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
7094 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
7096 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
7097 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
7098 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
7099 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
7104 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
7105 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
7106 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
7110 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
7111 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
7112 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
7114 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
7116 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
7117 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
7118 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
7120 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
7121 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
7122 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
7123 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
7126 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
7127 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
7128 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
7129 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
7132 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
7133 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
7136 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
7137 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
7138 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
7141 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
7143 * Improved configuration
7145 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
7146 Porting BFD is simpler.
7150 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
7151 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
7152 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
7153 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
7157 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
7159 * New host supported (not target)
7161 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
7164 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
7166 * Multiple source language support
7168 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
7169 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
7170 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
7171 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
7172 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
7173 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
7177 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
7178 currently under development at the State University of New York at
7179 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
7180 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
7182 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
7183 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
7184 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
7186 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
7187 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
7191 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
7192 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
7193 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
7194 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
7197 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
7199 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
7200 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
7201 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
7202 examining core files.
7206 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
7209 * New machines supported (host and target)
7211 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
7212 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
7213 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
7215 * New hosts supported (not targets)
7217 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
7219 * New targets supported (not hosts)
7221 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
7222 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
7223 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
7225 * New remote interfaces
7231 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
7235 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
7237 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
7238 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
7239 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
7240 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
7241 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
7242 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
7243 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
7244 stub on the target system.
7246 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
7248 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
7249 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
7250 object file types such as a.out and coff.
7252 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
7253 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
7256 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
7258 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
7259 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
7261 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
7262 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
7263 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
7265 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
7266 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
7267 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
7268 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
7270 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
7271 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
7272 it is already running. Default is ON.
7274 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
7275 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
7276 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
7277 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
7280 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
7281 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
7282 or the value of the environment variable
7285 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
7286 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
7289 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
7290 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
7291 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
7293 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
7294 history expansion will be performed on
7295 command line input. The default is OFF.
7297 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
7298 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
7299 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
7301 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
7302 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
7303 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7306 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
7307 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
7308 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
7311 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
7312 ``set width'' instead.
7314 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
7315 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
7316 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
7317 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
7319 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
7322 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
7325 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
7328 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
7331 * Support for Epoch Environment.
7333 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
7334 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
7335 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
7339 * Support for Shared Libraries
7341 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
7342 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
7343 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
7344 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
7345 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
7346 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
7347 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
7348 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
7350 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
7351 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
7352 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
7354 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
7359 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
7360 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
7361 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
7362 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
7363 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
7364 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
7366 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
7368 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
7370 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7371 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7372 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
7375 * C++ multiple inheritance
7377 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
7380 * C++ exception handling
7382 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
7383 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
7384 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
7387 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
7388 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
7389 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
7391 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
7392 current stack frame.
7395 * Minor command changes
7397 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
7398 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
7399 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
7401 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
7402 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
7403 frames without printing.
7405 * New directory command
7407 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
7408 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
7409 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
7410 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
7411 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
7413 * Configuring GDB for compilation
7415 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
7418 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
7419 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
7420 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
7421 where the program that you are debugging will run.