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