1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 7.0
8 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze-*-*
12 Xilinx MicroBlaze microblaze
14 *** Changes in GDB 7.0
16 * GDB now has an interface for JIT compilation. Applications that
17 dynamically generate code can create symbol files in memory and register
18 them with GDB. For users, the feature should work transparently, and
19 for JIT developers, the interface is documented in the GDB manual in the
20 "JIT Compilation Interface" chapter.
22 * Tracepoints may now be conditional. The syntax is as for
23 breakpoints; either an "if" clause appended to the "trace" command,
24 or the "condition" command is available. GDB sends the condition to
25 the target for evaluation using the same bytecode format as is used
26 for tracepoint actions.
28 * "disassemble" command with a /r modifier, print the raw instructions
29 in hex as well as in symbolic form."
31 * Process record and replay
33 In a architecture environment that supports ``process record and
34 replay'', ``process record and replay'' target can record a log of
35 the process execution, and replay it with both forward and reverse
38 * Reverse debugging: GDB now has new commands reverse-continue, reverse-
39 step, reverse-next, reverse-finish, reverse-stepi, reverse-nexti, and
40 set execution-direction {forward|reverse}, for targets that support
43 * GDB now supports hardware watchpoints on MIPS/Linux systems. This
44 feature is available with a native GDB running on kernel version
47 * GDB now has support for multi-byte and wide character sets on the
48 target. Strings whose character type is wchar_t, char16_t, or
49 char32_t are now correctly printed. GDB supports wide- and unicode-
50 literals in C, that is, L'x', L"string", u'x', u"string", U'x', and
51 U"string" syntax. And, GDB allows the "%ls" and "%lc" formats in
52 `printf'. This feature requires iconv to work properly; if your
53 system does not have a working iconv, GDB can use GNU libiconv. See
54 the installation instructions for more information.
56 * GDB now supports automatic retrieval of shared library files from
57 remote targets. To use this feature, specify a system root that begins
58 with the `remote:' prefix, either via the `set sysroot' command or via
59 the `--with-sysroot' configure-time option.
61 * "info sharedlibrary" now takes an optional regex of libraries to show,
62 and it now reports if a shared library has no debugging information.
64 * Commands `set debug-file-directory', `set solib-search-path' and `set args'
65 now complete on file names.
67 * When completing in expressions, gdb will attempt to limit
68 completions to allowable structure or union fields, where appropriate.
69 For instance, consider:
71 # struct example { int f1; double f2; };
72 # struct example variable;
75 If the user types TAB at the end of this command line, the available
76 completions will be "f1" and "f2".
78 * Inlined functions are now supported. They show up in backtraces, and
79 the "step", "next", and "finish" commands handle them automatically.
81 * GDB now supports the token-splicing (##) and stringification (#)
82 operators when expanding macros. It also supports variable-arity
85 * GDB now supports inspecting extra signal information, exported by
86 the new $_siginfo convenience variable. The feature is currently
87 implemented on linux ARM, i386 and amd64.
89 * GDB can now display the VFP floating point registers and NEON vector
90 registers on ARM targets. Both ARM GNU/Linux native GDB and gdbserver
91 can provide these registers (requires Linux 2.6.30 or later). Remote
92 and simulator targets may also provide them.
97 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
100 Turn off `+'/`-' protocol acknowledgments to permit more efficient
101 operation over reliable transport links. Use of this packet is
102 controlled by the `set remote noack-packet' command.
105 Kill the process with the specified process ID. Use this in preference
106 to `k' when multiprocess protocol extensions are supported.
109 Obtains additional operating system information
113 Read or write additional signal information.
115 * Removed remote protocol undocumented extension
117 An undocumented extension to the remote protocol's `S' stop reply
118 packet that permited the stub to pass a process id was removed.
119 Remote servers should use the `T' stop reply packet instead.
121 * The "disassemble" command now supports an optional /m modifier to print mixed
124 * GDB now supports multiple function calling conventions according to the
125 DWARF-2 DW_AT_calling_convention function attribute.
127 * The SH target utilizes the aforementioned change to distinguish between gcc
128 and Renesas calling convention. It also adds the new CLI commands
129 `set/show sh calling-convention'.
131 * GDB can now read compressed debug sections, as produced by GNU gold
132 with the --compress-debug-sections=zlib flag.
134 * 64-bit core files are now supported on AIX.
136 * Thread switching is now supported on Tru64.
138 * Watchpoints can now be set on unreadable memory locations, e.g. addresses
139 which will be allocated using malloc later in program execution.
141 * The qXfer:libraries:read remote procotol packet now allows passing a
142 list of section offsets.
144 * On GNU/Linux, GDB can now attach to stopped processes. Several race
145 conditions handling signals delivered during attach or thread creation
146 have also been fixed.
148 * GDB now supports the use of DWARF boolean types for Ada's type Boolean.
149 From the user's standpoint, all unqualified instances of True and False
150 are treated as the standard definitions, regardless of context.
152 * GDB now parses C++ symbol and type names more flexibly. For
155 template<typename T> class C { };
158 GDB will now correctly handle all of:
160 ptype C<char const *>
162 ptype C<const char *>
165 * New features in the GDB remote stub, gdbserver
167 - The "--wrapper" command-line argument tells gdbserver to use a
168 wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
170 - On PowerPC and S/390 targets, it is now possible to use a single
171 gdbserver executable to debug both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
172 (This requires gdbserver itself to be built as a 64-bit executable.)
174 - gdbserver uses the new noack protocol mode for TCP connections to
175 reduce communications latency, if also supported and enabled in GDB.
177 - Support for the sparc64-linux-gnu target is now included in
180 - The amd64-linux build of gdbserver now supports debugging both
181 32-bit and 64-bit programs.
183 - The i386-linux, amd64-linux, and i386-win32 builds of gdbserver
184 now support hardware watchpoints, and will use them automatically
189 GDB now has support for scripting using Python. Whether this is
190 available is determined at configure time.
192 New GDB commands can now be written in Python.
194 * Ada tasking support
196 Ada tasks can now be inspected in GDB. The following commands have
200 Print the list of Ada tasks.
202 Print detailed information about task number N.
204 Print the task number of the current task.
206 Switch the context of debugging to task number N.
208 * Support for user-defined prefixed commands. The "define" command can
209 add new commands to existing prefixes, e.g. "target".
211 * Multi-inferior, multi-process debugging.
213 GDB now has generalized support for multi-inferior debugging. See
214 "Debugging Multiple Inferiors" in the manual for more information.
215 Although availability still depends on target support, the command
216 set is more uniform now. The GNU/Linux specific multi-forks support
217 has been migrated to this new framework. This implied some user
218 visible changes; see "New commands" and also "Removed commands"
221 * Target descriptions can now describe the target OS ABI. See the
222 "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for more
225 * Target descriptions can now describe "compatible" architectures
226 to indicate that the target can execute applications for a different
227 architecture in addition to those for the main target architecture.
228 See the "Target Description Format" section in the user manual for
231 * Multi-architecture debugging.
233 GDB now includes general supports for debugging applications on
234 hybrid systems that use more than one single processor architecture
235 at the same time. Each such hybrid architecture still requires
236 specific support to be added. The only hybrid architecture supported
237 in this version of GDB is the Cell Broadband Engine.
239 * GDB now supports integrated debugging of Cell/B.E. applications that
240 use both the PPU and SPU architectures. To enable support for hybrid
241 Cell/B.E. debugging, you need to configure GDB to support both the
242 powerpc-linux or powerpc64-linux and the spu-elf targets, using the
243 --enable-targets configure option.
245 * Non-stop mode debugging.
247 For some targets, GDB now supports an optional mode of operation in
248 which you can examine stopped threads while other threads continue
249 to execute freely. This is referred to as non-stop mode, with the
250 old mode referred to as all-stop mode. See the "Non-Stop Mode"
251 section in the user manual for more information.
253 To be able to support remote non-stop debugging, a remote stub needs
254 to implement the non-stop mode remote protocol extensions, as
255 described in the "Remote Non-Stop" section of the user manual. The
256 GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been adjusted to support these
257 extensions on linux targets.
259 * New commands (for set/show, see "New options" below)
261 catch syscall [NAME(S) | NUMBER(S)]
262 Catch system calls. Arguments, which should be names of system
263 calls or their numbers, mean catch only those syscalls. Without
264 arguments, every syscall will be caught. When the inferior issues
265 any of the specified syscalls, GDB will stop and announce the system
266 call, both when it is called and when its call returns. This
267 feature is currently available with a native GDB running on the
268 Linux Kernel, under the following architectures: x86, x86_64,
269 PowerPC and PowerPC64.
271 find [/size-char] [/max-count] start-address, end-address|+search-space-size,
273 Search memory for a sequence of bytes.
275 maint set python print-stack
276 maint show python print-stack
277 Show a stack trace when an error is encountered in a Python script.
280 Invoke CODE by passing it to the Python interpreter.
285 These allow macros to be defined, undefined, and listed
289 Show operating system information about processes.
292 List the inferiors currently under GDB's control.
295 Switch focus to inferior number NUM.
298 Detach from inferior number NUM.
301 Kill inferior number NUM.
306 show spu stop-on-load
307 Control whether to stop for new SPE threads during Cell/B.E. debugging.
309 set spu auto-flush-cache
310 show spu auto-flush-cache
311 Control whether to automatically flush the software-managed cache
312 during Cell/B.E. debugging.
314 set sh calling-convention
315 show sh calling-convention
316 Control the calling convention used when calling SH target functions.
320 Control display of timestamps with GDB debugging output.
322 set disassemble-next-line
323 show disassemble-next-line
324 Control display of disassembled source lines or instructions when
327 set remote noack-packet
328 show remote noack-packet
329 Set/show the use of remote protocol QStartNoAckMode packet. See above
330 under "New remote packets."
332 set remote query-attached-packet
333 show remote query-attached-packet
334 Control use of remote protocol `qAttached' (query-attached) packet.
336 set remote read-siginfo-object
337 show remote read-siginfo-object
338 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:read' (read-siginfo-object)
341 set remote write-siginfo-object
342 show remote write-siginfo-object
343 Control use of remote protocol `qXfer:siginfo:write' (write-siginfo-object)
346 set remote reverse-continue
347 show remote reverse-continue
348 Control use of remote protocol 'bc' (reverse-continue) packet.
350 set remote reverse-step
351 show remote reverse-step
352 Control use of remote protocol 'bs' (reverse-step) packet.
354 set displaced-stepping
355 show displaced-stepping
356 Control displaced stepping mode. Displaced stepping is a way to
357 single-step over breakpoints without removing them from the debuggee.
358 Also known as "out-of-line single-stepping".
362 Control display of debugging info for displaced stepping.
364 maint set internal-error
365 maint show internal-error
366 Control what GDB does when an internal error is detected.
368 maint set internal-warning
369 maint show internal-warning
370 Control what GDB does when an internal warning is detected.
375 Use a wrapper program to launch programs for debugging.
377 set multiple-symbols (all|ask|cancel)
378 show multiple-symbols
379 The value of this variable can be changed to adjust the debugger behavior
380 when an expression or a breakpoint location contains an ambiguous symbol
381 name (an overloaded function name, for instance).
383 set breakpoint always-inserted
384 show breakpoint always-inserted
385 Keep breakpoints always inserted in the target, as opposed to inserting
386 them when resuming the target, and removing them when the target stops.
387 This option can improve debugger performance on slow remote targets.
389 set arm fallback-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
390 show arm fallback-mode
391 set arm force-mode (arm|thumb|auto)
393 These commands control how ARM GDB determines whether instructions
394 are ARM or Thumb. The default for both settings is auto, which uses
395 the current CPSR value for instructions without symbols; previous
396 versions of GDB behaved as if "set arm fallback-mode arm".
398 set disable-randomization
399 show disable-randomization
400 Standalone programs run with the virtual address space randomization enabled
401 by default on some platforms. This option keeps the addresses stable across
402 multiple debugging sessions.
406 Control whether other threads are stopped or not when some thread hits
411 Requests that asynchronous execution is enabled in the target, if available.
412 In this case, it's possible to resume target in the background, and interact
413 with GDB while the target is running. "show target-async" displays the
414 current state of asynchronous execution of the target.
416 set target-wide-charset
417 show target-wide-charset
418 The target-wide-charset is the name of the character set that GDB
419 uses when printing characters whose type is wchar_t.
421 set tcp auto-retry (on|off)
423 set tcp connect-timeout
424 show tcp connect-timeout
425 These commands allow GDB to retry failed TCP connections to a remote stub
426 with a specified timeout period; this is useful if the stub is launched
427 in parallel with GDB but may not be ready to accept connections immediately.
429 set libthread-db-search-path
430 show libthread-db-search-path
431 Control list of directories which GDB will search for appropriate
434 set schedule-multiple (on|off)
435 show schedule-multiple
436 Allow GDB to resume all threads of all processes or only threads of
441 Use more aggressive caching for accesses to the stack. This improves
442 performance of remote debugging (particularly backtraces) without
443 affecting correctness.
445 set interactive-mode (on|off|auto)
446 show interactive-mode
447 Control whether GDB runs in interactive mode (on) or not (off).
448 When in interactive mode, GDB waits for the user to answer all
449 queries. Otherwise, GDB does not wait and assumes the default
450 answer. When set to auto (the default), GDB determines which
451 mode to use based on the stdin settings.
456 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `info
457 inferiors' command. To list checkpoints, you can still use the
458 `info checkpoints' command, which was an alias for the `info forks'
462 Replaced by the new `inferior' command. To switch between
463 checkpoints, you can still use the `restart' command, which was an
464 alias for the `fork' command.
467 This is removed, since some targets don't have a notion of
468 processes. To switch between processes, you can still use the
469 `inferior' command using GDB's own inferior number.
472 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `kill
473 inferior' command. To delete a checkpoint, you can still use the
474 `delete checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `delete
478 For program forks, this is replaced by the new more generic `detach
479 inferior' command. To detach a checkpoint, you can still use the
480 `detach checkpoint' command, which was an alias for the `detach
483 * New native configurations
485 x86/x86_64 Darwin i[34567]86-*-darwin*
487 x86_64 MinGW x86_64-*-mingw*
491 Lattice Mico32 lm32-*
492 x86 DICOS i[34567]86-*-dicos*
493 x86_64 DICOS x86_64-*-dicos*
496 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports x86 Windows CE
497 (mingw32ce) debugging.
503 These commands were actually not implemented on any target.
505 *** Changes in GDB 6.8
507 * New native configurations
509 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*netbsd*
510 Xtensa GNU/Linux xtensa*-*-linux*
514 NetBSD/hppa hppa*-*-netbsd*
515 Xtensa GNU/Lunux xtensa*-*-linux*
517 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
519 When the '-p NUMBER' or '--pid NUMBER' options are used, and
520 attaching to process NUMBER fails, GDB no longer attempts to open a
521 core file named NUMBER. Attaching to a program using the -c option
522 is no longer supported. Instead, use the '-p' or '--pid' options.
524 * GDB can now be built as a native debugger for debugging Windows x86
525 (mingw32) Portable Executable (PE) programs.
527 * Pending breakpoints no longer change their number when their address
530 * GDB now supports breakpoints with multiple locations,
531 including breakpoints on C++ constructors, inside C++ templates,
532 and in inlined functions.
534 * GDB's ability to debug optimized code has been improved. GDB more
535 accurately identifies function bodies and lexical blocks that occupy
536 more than one contiguous range of addresses.
538 * Target descriptions can now describe registers for PowerPC.
540 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the AltiVec and SPE
541 registers on PowerPC targets.
543 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports thread debugging on GNU/Linux
544 targets even when the libthread_db library is not available.
546 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports the new file transfer
547 commands (remote put, remote get, and remote delete).
549 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports run and attach in
550 extended-remote mode.
552 * hppa*64*-*-hpux11* target broken
553 The debugger is unable to start a program and fails with the following
554 error: "Error trying to get information about dynamic linker".
555 The gdb-6.7 release is also affected.
557 * GDB now supports the --enable-targets= configure option to allow
558 building a single GDB executable that supports multiple remote
559 target architectures.
561 * GDB now supports debugging C and C++ programs which use the
562 Decimal Floating Point extension. In addition, the PowerPC target
563 now has a set of pseudo-registers to inspect decimal float values
564 stored in two consecutive float registers.
566 * The -break-insert MI command can optionally create pending
569 * Improved support for debugging Ada
570 Many improvements to the Ada language support have been made. These
572 - Better support for Ada2005 interface types
573 - Improved handling of arrays and slices in general
574 - Better support for Taft-amendment types
575 - The '{type} ADDRESS' expression is now allowed on the left hand-side
577 - Improved command completion in Ada
580 * GDB on GNU/Linux and HP/UX can now debug through "exec" of a new
585 set print frame-arguments (all|scalars|none)
586 show print frame-arguments
587 The value of this variable can be changed to control which argument
588 values should be printed by the debugger when displaying a frame.
593 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
600 Transfer files to and from a remote target, and delete remote files.
609 Open, close, read, write, and delete files on the remote system.
612 Attach to an existing process on the remote system, in extended-remote
616 Run a new process on the remote system, in extended-remote mode.
618 *** Changes in GDB 6.7
620 * Resolved 101 resource leaks, null pointer dereferences, etc. in gdb,
621 bfd, libiberty and opcodes, as revealed by static analysis donated by
622 Coverity, Inc. (http://scan.coverity.com).
624 * When looking up multiply-defined global symbols, GDB will now prefer the
625 symbol definition in the current shared library if it was built using the
626 -Bsymbolic linker option.
628 * When the Text User Interface (TUI) is not configured, GDB will now
629 recognize the -tui command-line option and print a message that the TUI
632 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now has lower overhead for high
633 frequency signals (e.g. SIGALRM) via the QPassSignals packet.
635 * GDB for MIPS targets now autodetects whether a remote target provides
636 32-bit or 64-bit register values.
638 * Support for C++ member pointers has been improved.
640 * GDB now understands XML target descriptions, which specify the
641 target's overall architecture. GDB can read a description from
642 a local file or over the remote serial protocol.
644 * Vectors of single-byte data use a new integer type which is not
645 automatically displayed as character or string data.
647 * The /s format now works with the print command. It displays
648 arrays of single-byte integers and pointers to single-byte integers
651 * Target descriptions can now describe target-specific registers,
652 for architectures which have implemented the support (currently
653 only ARM, M68K, and MIPS).
655 * GDB and the GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now support the XScale
658 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support
659 ARM Windows CE (mingw32ce) debugging, and GDB Windows CE support
660 has been rewritten to use the standard GDB remote protocol.
662 * GDB can now step into C++ functions which are called through thunks.
664 * GDB for the Cell/B.E. SPU now supports overlay debugging.
666 * The GDB remote protocol "qOffsets" packet can now honor ELF segment
667 layout. It also supports a TextSeg= and DataSeg= response when only
668 segment base addresses (rather than offsets) are available.
670 * The /i format now outputs any trailing branch delay slot instructions
671 immediately following the last instruction within the count specified.
673 * The GDB remote protocol "T" stop reply packet now supports a
674 "library" response. Combined with the new "qXfer:libraries:read"
675 packet, this response allows GDB to debug shared libraries on targets
676 where the operating system manages the list of loaded libraries (e.g.
677 Windows and SymbianOS).
679 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, now supports dynamic link libraries
680 (DLLs) on Windows and Windows CE targets.
682 * GDB now supports a faster verification that a .debug file matches its binary
683 according to its build-id signature, if the signature is present.
689 Enable or disable hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on the serial port
690 when debugging using remote targets.
692 set mem inaccessible-by-default
693 show mem inaccessible-by-default
694 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
695 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
696 prevents GDB from accessing memory outside the memory map. This
697 is useful for targets with memory mapped registers or which react
698 badly to accesses of unmapped address space.
700 set breakpoint auto-hw
701 show breakpoint auto-hw
702 If the target supplies a memory map, for instance via the remote
703 protocol's "qXfer:memory-map:read" packet, setting this variable
704 lets GDB use hardware breakpoints automatically for memory regions
705 where it can not use software breakpoints. This covers both the
706 "break" command and internal breakpoints used for other commands
707 including "next" and "finish".
710 catch exception unhandled
711 Stop the program execution when Ada exceptions are raised.
714 Stop the program execution when an Ada assertion failed.
718 Set an alternate system root for target files. This is a more
719 general version of "set solib-absolute-prefix", which is now
720 an alias to "set sysroot".
723 Provide extended SPU facility status information. This set of
724 commands is available only when debugging the Cell/B.E. SPU
727 * New native configurations
729 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*openbsd*
734 Use the specified local file as an XML target description, and do
735 not query the target for its built-in description.
739 OpenBSD/sh sh*-*-openbsd*
740 MIPS64 GNU/Linux (gdbserver) mips64-linux-gnu
741 Toshiba Media Processor mep-elf
746 Ignore the specified signals; pass them directly to the debugged program
747 without stopping other threads or reporting them to GDB.
750 Read an XML target description from the target, which describes its
755 Read or write contents of an spufs file on the target system. These
756 packets are available only on the Cell/B.E. SPU architecture.
758 qXfer:libraries:read:
759 Report the loaded shared libraries. Combined with new "T" packet
760 response, this packet allows GDB to debug shared libraries on
761 targets where the operating system manages the list of loaded
762 libraries (e.g. Windows and SymbianOS).
766 Support for these obsolete configurations has been removed.
775 i[34567]86-*-netware*
776 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v5*
777 i[34567]86-*-sco3.2v4*
779 i[34567]86-*-sysv4.2*
782 i[34567]86-*-unixware2*
783 i[34567]86-*-unixware*
792 * Other removed features
799 Various m68k-only ROM monitors.
806 Various Renesas ROM monitors and debugging interfaces for SH and
811 Support for a Macraigor serial interface to on-chip debugging.
812 GDB does not directly support the newer parallel or USB
817 A debug information format. The predecessor to DWARF 2 and
818 DWARF 3, which are still supported.
820 Support for the HP aCC compiler on HP-UX/PA-RISC
822 SOM-encapsulated symbolic debugging information, automatic
823 invocation of pxdb, and the aCC custom C++ ABI. This does not
824 affect HP-UX for Itanium or GCC for HP-UX/PA-RISC. Code compiled
825 with aCC can still be debugged on an assembly level.
829 A MIPS-specific format used to describe stack frame layout
830 in debugging information.
834 GDB could work with an older version of Guile to debug
835 the interpreter and Scheme programs running in it.
837 set mips stack-arg-size
838 set mips saved-gpreg-size
840 Use "set mips abi" to control parameter passing for MIPS.
842 *** Changes in GDB 6.6
847 Cell Broadband Engine SPU spu-elf
849 * GDB can now be configured as a cross-debugger targeting native Windows
850 (mingw32) or Cygwin. It can communicate with a remote debugging stub
851 running on a Windows system over TCP/IP to debug Windows programs.
853 * The GDB remote stub, gdbserver, has been updated to support Windows and
854 Cygwin debugging. Both single-threaded and multi-threaded programs are
857 * The "set trust-readonly-sections" command works again. This command was
858 broken in GDB 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5.
860 * The "load" command now supports writing to flash memory, if the remote
861 stub provides the required support.
863 * Support for GNU/Linux Thread Local Storage (TLS, per-thread variables) no
864 longer requires symbolic debug information (e.g. DWARF-2).
869 unset substitute-path
871 Manage a list of substitution rules that GDB uses to rewrite the name
872 of the directories where the sources are located. This can be useful
873 for instance when the sources were moved to a different location
874 between compilation and debugging.
878 Print each CLI command as it is executed. Each command is prefixed with
879 a number of `+' symbols representing the nesting depth.
880 The source command now has a `-v' option to enable the same feature.
884 The ARM Demon monitor support (RDP protocol, "target rdp").
886 Kernel Object Display, an embedded debugging feature which only worked with
887 an obsolete version of Cisco IOS.
889 The 'set download-write-size' and 'show download-write-size' commands.
894 Tell a stub about GDB client features, and request remote target features.
895 The first feature implemented is PacketSize, which allows the target to
896 specify the size of packets it can handle - to minimize the number of
897 packets required and improve performance when connected to a remote
901 Fetch an OS auxilliary vector from the remote stub. This packet is a
902 more efficient replacement for qPart:auxv:read.
904 qXfer:memory-map:read:
905 Fetch a memory map from the remote stub, including information about
906 RAM, ROM, and flash memory devices.
911 Erase and program a flash memory device.
913 * Removed remote packets
916 This packet has been replaced by qXfer:auxv:read. Only GDB 6.4 and 6.5
917 used it, and only gdbserver implemented it.
919 *** Changes in GDB 6.5
923 Renesas M32C/M16C m32c-elf
925 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
929 init-if-undefined Initialize a convenience variable, but
930 only if it doesn't already have a value.
932 The following commands are presently only implemented for native GNU/Linux:
934 checkpoint Save a snapshot of the program state.
936 restart <n> Return the program state to a
937 previously saved state.
939 info checkpoints List currently saved checkpoints.
941 delete-checkpoint <n> Delete a previously saved checkpoint.
943 set|show detach-on-fork Tell gdb whether to detach from a newly
944 forked process, or to keep debugging it.
946 info forks List forks of the user program that
947 are available to be debugged.
949 fork <n> Switch to debugging one of several
950 forks of the user program that are
951 available to be debugged.
953 delete-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
954 that are available to be debugged (and
955 kill the forked process).
957 detach-fork <n> Delete a fork from the list of forks
958 that are available to be debugged (and
959 allow the process to continue).
963 Morpho Technologies ms2 ms1-elf
965 * Improved Windows host support
967 GDB now builds as a cross debugger hosted on i686-mingw32, including
968 native console support, and remote communications using either
969 network sockets or serial ports.
971 * Improved Modula-2 language support
973 GDB can now print most types in the Modula-2 syntax. This includes:
974 basic types, set types, record types, enumerated types, range types,
975 pointer types and ARRAY types. Procedure var parameters are correctly
976 printed and hexadecimal addresses and character constants are also
977 written in the Modula-2 syntax. Best results can be obtained by using
978 GNU Modula-2 together with the -gdwarf-2 command line option.
982 The ARM rdi-share module.
984 The Netware NLM debug server.
986 *** Changes in GDB 6.4
988 * New native configurations
990 OpenBSD/arm arm*-*-openbsd*
991 OpenBSD/mips64 mips64-*-openbsd*
995 Morpho Technologies ms1 ms1-elf
997 * New command line options
999 --batch-silent As for --batch, but totally silent.
1000 --return-child-result The debugger will exist with the same value
1001 the child (debugged) program exited with.
1002 --eval-command COMMAND, -ex COMMAND
1003 Execute a single GDB CLI command. This may be
1004 specified multiple times and in conjunction
1005 with the --command (-x) option.
1007 * Deprecated commands removed
1009 The following commands, that were deprecated in 2000, have been
1013 set|show arm disassembly-flavor set|show arm disassembler
1014 othernames set arm disassembler
1015 set|show remotedebug set|show debug remote
1016 set|show archdebug set|show debug arch
1017 set|show eventdebug set|show debug event
1020 * New BSD user-level threads support
1022 It is now possible to debug programs using the user-level threads
1023 library on OpenBSD and FreeBSD. Currently supported (target)
1026 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1027 FreeBSD/i386 i386-*-freebsd*
1028 OpenBSD/i386 i386-*-openbsd*
1030 Note that the new kernel threads libraries introduced in FreeBSD 5.x
1031 are not yet supported.
1033 * New support for Matsushita MN10300 w/sim added
1034 (Work in progress). mn10300-elf.
1036 * REMOVED configurations and files
1038 VxWorks and the XDR protocol *-*-vxworks
1039 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1040 National Semiconductor NS32000 ns32k-*-*
1042 * New "set print array-indexes" command
1044 After turning this setting "on", GDB prints the index of each element
1045 when displaying arrays. The default is "off" to preserve the previous
1048 * VAX floating point support
1050 GDB now supports the not-quite-ieee VAX F and D floating point formats.
1052 * User-defined command support
1054 In addition to using $arg0..$arg9 for argument passing, it is now possible
1055 to use $argc to determine now many arguments have been passed. See the
1056 section on user-defined commands in the user manual for more information.
1058 *** Changes in GDB 6.3:
1060 * New command line option
1062 GDB now accepts -l followed by a number to set the timeout for remote
1065 * GDB works with GCC -feliminate-dwarf2-dups
1067 GDB now supports a more compact representation of DWARF-2 debug
1068 information using DW_FORM_ref_addr references. These are produced
1069 by GCC with the option -feliminate-dwarf2-dups and also by some
1070 proprietary compilers. With GCC, you must use GCC 3.3.4 or later
1071 to use -feliminate-dwarf2-dups.
1073 * Internationalization
1075 When supported by the host system, GDB will be built with
1076 internationalization (libintl). The task of marking up the sources is
1077 continued, we're looking forward to our first translation.
1081 Initial support for debugging programs compiled with the GNAT
1082 implementation of the Ada programming language has been integrated
1083 into GDB. In this release, support is limited to expression evaluation.
1085 * New native configurations
1087 GNU/Linux/m32r m32r-*-linux-gnu
1091 GDB's remote protocol now includes support for the 'p' packet. This
1092 packet is used to fetch individual registers from a remote inferior.
1094 * END-OF-LIFE registers[] compatibility module
1096 GDB's internal register infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1097 The new infrastructure making possible the implementation of key new
1098 features including 32x64 (e.g., 64-bit amd64 GDB debugging a 32-bit
1101 GDB 6.3 will be the last release to include the the registers[]
1102 compatibility module that allowed out-of-date configurations to
1103 continue to work. This change directly impacts the following
1113 powerpc bdm protocol
1115 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1116 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.4, and REMOVED from GDB 6.5.
1118 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1120 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1121 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1122 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1123 permanently REMOVED.
1132 *** Changes in GDB 6.2.1:
1134 * MIPS `break main; run' gave an heuristic-fence-post warning
1136 When attempting to run even a simple program, a warning about
1137 heuristic-fence-post being hit would be reported. This problem has
1140 * MIPS IRIX 'long double' crashed GDB
1142 When examining a long double variable, GDB would get a segmentation
1143 fault. The crash has been fixed (but GDB 6.2 cannot correctly examine
1144 IRIX long double values).
1148 A bug in the VAX stack code was causing problems with the "next"
1149 command. This problem has been fixed.
1151 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
1153 * Fix for ``many threads''
1155 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
1156 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
1159 ptrace: No such process.
1160 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
1162 This problem has been fixed.
1164 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
1166 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
1169 * New ``start'' command.
1171 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
1173 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
1175 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
1176 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
1177 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
1179 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1180 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
1181 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
1182 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
1183 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
1184 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1185 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
1186 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
1187 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1189 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
1191 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
1192 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
1193 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
1194 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
1195 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
1197 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
1198 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
1199 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
1201 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
1203 * New native configurations
1205 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
1206 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
1207 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
1208 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
1209 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
1210 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
1211 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
1213 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
1215 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
1216 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
1217 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
1218 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
1219 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
1220 work, was also included.
1222 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
1223 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
1233 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
1234 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
1236 * REMOVED configurations and files
1238 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1239 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1240 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1241 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1242 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1243 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1244 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1245 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1246 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1247 sonymips mips-sony-*
1248 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1250 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
1252 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
1254 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
1255 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
1256 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
1257 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
1260 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
1262 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
1263 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
1264 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
1265 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
1266 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
1267 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
1270 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
1272 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
1274 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
1275 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
1276 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
1278 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
1280 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
1281 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
1283 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
1285 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
1286 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
1287 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
1289 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
1291 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
1292 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
1294 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
1296 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
1297 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
1298 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
1300 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
1302 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
1303 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
1304 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
1306 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
1308 * Removed --with-mmalloc
1310 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
1311 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
1313 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
1315 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
1316 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
1317 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
1318 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
1320 * Revised SPARC target
1322 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
1323 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
1324 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
1325 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
1326 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
1330 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
1331 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
1332 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
1335 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1337 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
1338 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
1341 * C++ nested types and namespaces
1343 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
1344 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
1345 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
1346 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
1347 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
1348 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
1349 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
1350 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
1351 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
1353 * New native configurations
1355 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
1356 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
1357 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
1358 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
1359 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
1361 * New debugging protocols
1363 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
1365 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
1367 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
1368 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
1369 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
1371 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1373 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1374 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1375 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1376 permanently REMOVED.
1378 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
1379 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
1380 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
1381 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
1382 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
1383 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
1384 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
1385 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
1386 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
1387 sonymips mips-sony-*
1388 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
1390 * REMOVED configurations and files
1392 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1393 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1394 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1395 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1396 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1397 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1398 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1399 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1400 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1401 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
1402 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1403 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1404 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1405 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
1406 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
1407 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1408 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1410 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
1414 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
1415 integrated into GDB.
1417 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
1419 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
1420 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
1421 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
1424 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
1425 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
1426 DWARF 2 CFI support.
1430 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
1431 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
1432 remote protocol documentation for details.
1434 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
1436 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
1437 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
1438 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
1441 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
1443 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
1444 per-thread variables.
1446 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
1448 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
1449 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
1451 * Separate debug info.
1453 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
1454 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
1455 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
1456 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
1457 and optional debug files.
1459 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
1461 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
1462 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
1465 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
1466 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
1470 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
1471 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
1472 considered "useable".
1474 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
1476 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
1477 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
1480 * GDB supports logging output to a file
1482 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
1483 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
1485 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
1487 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
1488 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
1491 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
1493 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
1494 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
1498 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
1499 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
1500 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
1501 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
1502 data, for more informative profiling results.
1504 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
1506 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
1507 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
1508 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
1510 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
1513 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
1514 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
1515 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
1516 in a subsequent -var-update.
1518 * New native configurations.
1520 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
1522 * Multi-arched targets.
1524 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
1525 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1527 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1529 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1530 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1531 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1532 permanently REMOVED.
1534 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1535 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1536 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1537 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
1538 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1539 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
1540 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
1541 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
1542 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
1543 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
1544 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1545 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1547 * REMOVED configurations and files
1550 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1551 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1552 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1553 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1554 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1555 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1557 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1558 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1559 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1560 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1561 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1562 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1564 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
1566 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
1567 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
1568 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
1569 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
1570 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
1572 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
1574 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
1576 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
1577 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
1578 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
1579 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
1580 shared libs like mad''.
1582 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
1584 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
1585 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
1586 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
1587 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
1589 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
1591 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
1592 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
1595 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
1596 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
1598 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
1599 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
1601 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
1602 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
1603 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
1604 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
1606 * Multi-arched targets.
1608 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
1609 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
1611 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
1612 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
1613 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
1617 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
1620 * New native configurations
1622 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
1623 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
1624 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
1625 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
1627 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1629 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1630 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1631 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1632 permanently REMOVED.
1634 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1635 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1636 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
1637 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1638 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1639 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1640 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
1641 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
1642 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
1643 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
1645 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
1646 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1648 * OBSOLETE languages
1650 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
1652 * REMOVED configurations and files
1654 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1655 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1656 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1657 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1658 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1660 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1662 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
1664 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
1665 commands. The default is 1024.
1667 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
1669 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
1671 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
1673 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
1674 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
1675 from a file into memory (restore).
1677 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
1679 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
1680 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
1681 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
1683 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
1691 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
1692 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
1693 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
1695 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
1696 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
1697 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
1699 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
1700 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
1701 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
1703 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
1704 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
1705 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
1707 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
1709 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
1711 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
1712 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
1713 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
1714 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
1715 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
1716 (notably embedded) targets.
1718 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
1720 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
1721 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
1722 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
1723 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
1725 * New command line option
1727 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
1729 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
1731 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
1732 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
1733 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
1734 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
1735 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
1736 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
1737 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
1738 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
1739 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
1740 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
1742 * Changes in ARM configurations.
1744 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
1745 configuration is fully multi-arch.
1747 * New native configurations
1749 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
1750 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
1751 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
1752 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
1756 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
1758 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1760 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1761 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1762 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1763 permanently REMOVED.
1765 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
1766 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1767 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1768 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1769 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1771 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
1773 * REMOVED configurations and files
1775 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1777 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1778 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1779 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1780 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1781 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1782 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1783 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1784 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1785 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1786 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1787 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
1789 * Changes to command line processing
1791 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
1792 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
1794 * Changes to key bindings
1796 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
1798 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
1800 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
1802 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
1805 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
1807 Numerous documentation fixes.
1809 Numerous testsuite fixes.
1811 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
1813 * New native configurations
1815 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
1816 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
1817 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
1818 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1819 ia64 AIX ia64-*-aix*
1820 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
1824 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
1826 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
1828 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
1830 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
1831 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
1832 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
1833 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
1834 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
1836 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
1837 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1838 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1839 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
1840 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
1841 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
1842 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
1843 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
1845 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
1846 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
1848 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
1849 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
1850 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
1851 permanently REMOVED.
1853 * REMOVED configurations and files
1855 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
1856 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
1858 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
1862 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
1864 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
1865 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
1870 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
1872 * The MI enabled by default.
1874 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
1875 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
1876 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
1877 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
1878 which is now deprecated.
1880 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
1882 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
1883 main features are supported:
1885 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
1887 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
1890 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
1892 - a Pascal expression parser.
1894 However, some important features are not yet supported.
1896 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
1898 - there are some problems with boolean types;
1900 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
1901 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
1903 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
1905 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
1907 * Changes in completion.
1909 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
1910 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
1911 users expect at the shell prompt.
1913 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
1914 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
1915 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
1916 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
1917 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
1918 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
1919 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
1921 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
1923 * New platform-independent commands:
1925 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
1926 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
1927 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
1929 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
1931 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
1932 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
1933 many threads as your system allows you to have.
1935 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
1937 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
1938 multi-threaded programs though.
1940 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
1942 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
1944 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
1945 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
1948 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
1950 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
1951 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
1952 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
1953 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
1954 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
1957 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
1958 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
1959 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
1961 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
1963 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
1964 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
1966 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
1967 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
1970 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
1971 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
1972 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
1973 a given linear address.
1975 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
1976 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
1977 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
1979 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
1981 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
1983 * Changes in documentation.
1985 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
1986 Documentation License.
1988 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1991 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
1993 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
1996 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
1997 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
1998 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
2000 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
2002 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
2003 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
2004 contents of this file.
2008 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
2010 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
2012 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
2014 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
2015 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
2016 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
2017 greater level of detail.
2019 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
2021 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
2022 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
2023 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
2026 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
2028 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
2029 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
2030 machines ``out of the box''.
2032 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
2033 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
2034 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
2035 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
2036 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
2038 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
2039 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
2040 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
2041 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
2042 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
2044 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
2045 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
2048 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
2051 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
2052 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
2053 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
2054 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
2056 * New native configurations
2058 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
2059 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2063 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
2064 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
2065 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
2066 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
2068 * OBSOLETE configurations
2070 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
2071 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
2073 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
2076 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2077 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2078 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2079 be permanently REMOVED.
2081 * Gould support removed
2083 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
2085 * New features for SVR4
2087 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
2088 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
2089 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
2091 * Many C++ enhancements
2093 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
2094 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
2096 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
2098 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
2099 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
2100 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
2101 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
2103 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
2104 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
2106 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
2108 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
2109 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
2110 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
2112 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
2113 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
2115 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
2117 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
2118 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
2119 include ``set remote P-packet''.
2121 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
2123 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
2124 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
2125 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
2127 * ``apropos'' command added.
2129 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
2130 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
2131 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
2135 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
2136 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
2137 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
2138 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
2139 enabled by configuring with:
2141 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
2143 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
2145 * New native configurations
2147 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
2148 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
2149 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
2153 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
2154 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
2155 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
2157 * OBSOLETE configurations
2159 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
2161 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
2162 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
2163 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
2164 be permanently REMOVED.
2168 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
2169 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
2170 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
2171 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
2172 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
2173 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
2174 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
2179 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
2181 * set extension-language
2183 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
2184 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
2185 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
2186 set extension-language .c c++
2187 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
2188 and their associated languages.
2190 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
2192 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
2193 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
2194 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
2198 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
2199 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
2201 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
2202 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
2204 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
2205 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
2206 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
2207 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
2208 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
2209 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
2210 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
2211 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
2213 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
2214 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
2215 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
2216 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
2220 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
2221 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
2222 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
2223 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
2224 for xdb and dbx commands.
2228 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
2229 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
2230 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
2232 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
2233 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
2234 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
2236 * Debugging across forks
2238 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
2243 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
2244 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
2245 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
2247 * GDB remote protocol additions
2249 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
2250 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
2251 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
2252 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
2254 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
2255 full 64-bit address. The command
2257 set remoteaddresssize 32
2259 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
2260 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
2263 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
2264 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
2266 maint packet heythere
2268 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
2269 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
2272 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
2273 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
2274 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
2276 * Tracing can collect general expressions
2278 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
2279 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
2280 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
2282 * mask-address variable for Mips
2284 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
2285 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
2286 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
2288 * Higher serial baud rates
2290 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
2291 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
2292 to achieve all of these rates.)
2296 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
2297 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
2300 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
2302 * New native configurations
2304 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
2305 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
2306 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
2307 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
2308 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
2309 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
2310 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
2314 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
2315 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
2316 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
2317 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
2318 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
2319 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
2320 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
2321 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
2322 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
2323 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2324 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
2326 * New debugging protocols
2328 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
2329 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
2330 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
2331 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2332 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2333 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
2337 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
2338 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
2343 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
2344 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
2346 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
2348 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
2349 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
2350 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
2352 * Live range splitting
2354 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
2355 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
2356 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
2360 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
2361 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
2365 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
2366 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
2367 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
2372 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
2377 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
2378 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
2379 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
2380 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
2381 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
2382 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
2386 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
2387 the symbol at the specified address.
2391 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
2392 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
2393 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
2394 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
2395 file tracepoint.c for more details.
2399 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
2400 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
2401 of most MIPS variants.
2405 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
2406 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
2407 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
2411 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
2412 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
2413 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
2414 the possible architectures.
2416 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
2418 * New native configurations
2420 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
2421 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
2422 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
2423 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
2424 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
2425 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
2429 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
2430 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
2431 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
2432 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
2433 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
2435 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
2439 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
2440 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
2441 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
2442 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
2443 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
2447 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
2449 * Windows 95/NT native
2451 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
2452 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
2453 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
2454 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
2455 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
2457 * dont-repeat command
2459 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
2460 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
2461 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
2462 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
2464 * Send break instead of ^C
2466 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
2467 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
2468 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
2470 * Remote protocol timeout
2472 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
2473 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
2474 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
2476 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
2478 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
2479 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
2480 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
2481 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
2482 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
2484 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
2485 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
2486 automatically on hpux10.
2488 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
2490 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
2492 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
2494 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
2495 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
2496 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
2497 every character. The default value is 1050.
2499 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
2501 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
2502 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
2503 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
2504 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
2505 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
2506 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
2508 * Speedups for remote debugging
2510 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
2511 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
2512 and more efficient S-record downloading.
2514 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
2516 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
2517 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
2519 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
2521 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
2523 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
2524 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
2526 * Remote targets use caching
2528 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
2529 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
2530 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
2531 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
2532 off' turns the the data cache off.
2534 * Remote targets may have threads
2536 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
2537 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
2538 gdb/remote.c for details.
2542 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
2543 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
2544 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
2545 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
2546 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
2547 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
2548 sequence is something like
2550 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
2552 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
2556 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
2557 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
2558 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
2559 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
2560 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
2561 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
2562 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
2563 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
2567 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
2568 but does simplify configuration and building.
2572 GDB now supports hpux10.
2574 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
2576 * New native configurations
2578 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
2579 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
2580 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
2581 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
2585 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
2586 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
2587 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
2588 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
2591 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
2593 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
2594 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
2595 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
2596 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
2597 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
2599 * Arguments to user-defined commands
2601 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
2602 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
2605 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
2607 To execute the command use:
2610 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
2611 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
2612 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
2614 * New `if' and `while' commands
2616 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
2617 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
2618 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
2619 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
2620 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
2621 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
2622 if the expression is zero.
2624 * Fortran source language mode
2626 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
2627 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
2628 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
2629 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
2632 * Better HPUX support
2634 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
2635 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
2636 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
2637 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
2638 that behavior do the following before running the program:
2644 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
2645 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
2651 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
2652 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
2655 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
2656 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
2658 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
2660 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
2661 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
2662 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
2663 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
2664 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
2665 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
2667 * New DOS host serial code
2669 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
2670 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
2673 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
2675 * New "complete" command
2677 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
2678 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
2680 * Trailing space optional in prompt
2682 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
2683 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
2685 * Breakpoint hit counts
2687 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
2688 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
2689 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
2690 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
2691 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
2694 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
2696 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
2697 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
2698 arrays actually contain only short strings.
2700 * Shared library breakpoints
2702 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
2703 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
2705 * Hardware watchpoints
2707 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
2708 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
2710 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
2714 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
2715 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
2717 * Improved Irix 5 support
2719 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
2721 * Improved HPPA support
2723 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
2725 * New native configurations
2727 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
2728 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
2729 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
2730 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
2734 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
2735 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
2738 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
2740 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
2741 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
2745 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
2746 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
2748 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
2750 * Irix 5 is now supported
2754 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
2755 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
2756 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
2757 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
2758 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
2761 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
2763 * User visible changes:
2767 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
2768 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
2769 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
2770 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
2771 debugging info for the mips target).
2773 * DEC Alpha native support
2775 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
2776 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
2777 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
2778 Alpha-specific notes.
2780 * Preliminary thread implementation
2782 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
2784 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
2786 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
2787 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
2790 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
2792 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
2793 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
2794 call methods, ...etc.
2796 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
2798 * User visible changes:
2800 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
2801 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
2802 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
2803 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
2805 Filename completion now works.
2807 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
2808 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
2809 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
2811 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
2812 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
2813 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
2814 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
2815 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
2819 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
2820 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
2823 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
2827 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
2828 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
2829 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
2833 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
2834 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
2835 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
2836 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
2837 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
2841 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
2842 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
2843 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
2845 * New targets supported
2847 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2848 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
2849 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
2850 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
2851 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
2853 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
2854 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
2855 GO32 memory extender.
2857 * New remote protocols
2859 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
2861 * New source languages supported
2863 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
2864 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
2865 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
2868 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
2870 * HP Precision Architecture supported
2872 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
2873 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
2874 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
2875 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
2876 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
2877 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
2879 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
2881 * Faster and better demangling
2883 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
2884 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
2885 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
2886 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
2887 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
2888 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
2891 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
2892 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
2893 compiler does not actually implement.
2895 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
2897 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
2898 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
2899 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
2900 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
2901 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
2902 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
2905 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
2906 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
2908 * Improved configure script
2910 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
2911 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
2912 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
2913 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
2915 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
2916 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
2917 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
2918 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
2919 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
2920 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
2922 * Documentation improvements
2924 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
2925 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
2926 before submitting changes.
2928 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
2929 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
2930 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
2931 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
2932 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
2934 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
2935 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
2936 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
2937 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
2938 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
2939 around this problem.
2943 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
2944 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
2945 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
2948 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
2949 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
2951 * New native hosts supported
2953 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
2954 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
2956 * New targets supported
2958 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
2960 * New file formats supported
2962 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
2963 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
2967 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
2969 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
2970 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
2972 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
2973 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
2974 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
2976 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
2977 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
2979 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
2980 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
2981 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
2984 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
2985 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
2986 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
2987 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
2988 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
2990 * Internal improvements
2992 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
2993 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
2995 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
2996 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
2997 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
2998 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
2999 shared code that handles any of them.
3001 * New command line options
3003 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
3007 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
3008 General Public License.
3010 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
3012 * Host/native/target split
3014 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
3015 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
3016 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
3017 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
3018 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
3020 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
3021 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
3022 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
3023 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
3024 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
3025 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
3026 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
3028 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
3029 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
3030 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
3032 * New hosts supported
3034 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
3035 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3036 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
3038 * New targets supported
3040 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
3041 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
3043 * New native hosts supported
3045 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
3046 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
3047 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
3049 * New file formats supported
3051 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
3052 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
3053 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
3057 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
3058 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
3059 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
3061 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
3063 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
3064 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
3065 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
3066 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
3070 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
3071 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
3072 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
3074 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
3078 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
3079 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
3082 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
3083 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
3085 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
3086 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
3087 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
3088 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
3089 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
3090 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
3092 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
3093 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
3094 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
3095 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
3099 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
3100 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
3101 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
3102 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
3103 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
3105 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
3106 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
3107 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
3108 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
3112 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
3113 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
3114 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
3115 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
3116 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
3117 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
3118 each instruction being stepped through.
3120 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
3121 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
3123 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
3124 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
3125 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
3126 processor with a serial port.
3130 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
3131 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
3132 supported, and what files each one uses.
3136 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
3137 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
3138 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
3139 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
3141 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
3142 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
3143 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
3144 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
3148 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
3149 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
3150 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
3151 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
3152 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
3153 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
3155 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
3158 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
3160 * Better support for C++ function names
3162 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
3163 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
3164 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
3165 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
3166 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
3168 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
3169 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
3170 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
3171 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
3172 for the list of formats.
3174 * G++ symbol mangling problem
3176 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
3177 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
3178 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
3179 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
3180 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
3181 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
3184 * New 'maintenance' command
3186 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
3187 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
3188 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
3190 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
3191 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
3192 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
3193 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
3194 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
3195 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
3197 The following commands are new:
3199 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
3200 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
3201 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
3203 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
3205 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
3206 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
3207 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
3208 read after argv processing.
3210 * New hosts supported
3212 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
3214 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
3216 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
3217 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
3218 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
3219 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
3220 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
3223 * New targets supported
3225 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
3227 * More smarts about finding #include files
3229 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
3230 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
3231 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
3232 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
3233 the one that contains your sources.
3235 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
3236 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
3237 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
3239 * Interesting infernals change
3241 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
3242 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
3243 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
3244 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
3246 * Bug fixes (of course!)
3248 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
3249 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
3250 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
3252 See the ChangeLog for details.
3254 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
3256 * New machines supported (host and target)
3258 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
3260 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
3262 * New malloc package
3264 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
3265 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
3266 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
3267 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
3268 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
3269 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
3273 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
3274 'help info proc' for details.
3276 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
3278 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
3279 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
3282 * File name changes for MS-DOS
3284 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
3285 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
3286 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
3287 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
3288 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
3289 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
3291 * Cross byte order fixes
3293 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
3294 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
3296 * New -mapped and -readnow options
3298 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
3299 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
3300 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
3301 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
3302 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
3303 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
3304 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
3305 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
3306 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
3307 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
3309 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
3310 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
3311 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
3312 slower, but makes future operations faster.
3314 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
3315 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
3316 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
3319 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
3321 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
3322 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
3323 shared across multiple host platforms.
3325 * longjmp() handling
3327 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
3328 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
3329 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
3330 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
3334 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
3335 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
3340 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
3341 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
3342 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
3344 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
3346 * New machines supported (host and target)
3348 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3350 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
3351 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
3353 * New machines supported (target)
3355 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
3359 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
3360 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
3361 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
3363 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
3364 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
3365 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
3366 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
3367 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
3370 * New features for SVR4
3372 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
3373 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
3374 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
3376 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
3377 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
3378 it prints the address mappings of the process.
3380 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
3381 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
3383 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
3385 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
3386 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
3387 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
3388 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
3389 same code linked statically.
3393 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
3394 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
3395 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
3396 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
3397 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
3398 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
3402 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3403 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3404 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3407 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
3409 * New machines supported (host and target)
3411 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
3412 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
3413 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
3415 * Almost SCO Unix support
3417 We had hoped to support:
3418 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
3419 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
3420 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
3421 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
3423 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
3425 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
3426 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
3427 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
3428 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
3433 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
3434 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
3435 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
3439 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
3440 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
3441 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
3443 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
3445 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
3446 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
3447 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
3449 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
3450 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
3451 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
3452 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
3455 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
3456 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
3457 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
3458 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
3461 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
3462 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
3465 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
3466 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
3467 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
3470 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
3472 * Improved configuration
3474 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
3475 Porting BFD is simpler.
3479 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
3480 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
3481 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
3482 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
3486 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
3488 * New host supported (not target)
3490 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
3493 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
3495 * Multiple source language support
3497 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
3498 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
3499 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
3500 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
3501 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
3502 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
3506 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
3507 currently under development at the State University of New York at
3508 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
3509 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
3511 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
3512 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
3513 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
3515 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
3516 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
3520 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
3521 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
3522 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
3523 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
3526 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
3528 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
3529 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
3530 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
3531 examining core files.
3535 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
3538 * New machines supported (host and target)
3540 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
3541 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
3542 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
3544 * New hosts supported (not targets)
3546 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
3548 * New targets supported (not hosts)
3550 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
3551 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
3552 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
3554 * New remote interfaces
3560 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
3564 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
3566 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
3567 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
3568 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
3569 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
3570 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
3571 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
3572 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
3573 stub on the target system.
3575 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
3577 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
3578 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
3579 object file types such as a.out and coff.
3581 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
3582 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
3585 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
3587 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
3588 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
3590 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
3591 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
3592 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
3594 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
3595 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
3596 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
3597 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
3599 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
3600 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
3601 it is already running. Default is ON.
3603 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
3604 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
3605 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
3606 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
3609 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
3610 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
3611 or the value of the environment variable
3614 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
3615 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
3618 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
3619 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
3620 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
3622 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
3623 history expansion will be performed on
3624 command line input. The default is OFF.
3626 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
3627 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
3628 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
3630 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
3631 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
3632 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3635 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
3636 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
3637 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
3640 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
3641 ``set width'' instead.
3643 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
3644 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
3645 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
3646 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
3648 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
3651 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
3654 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
3657 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
3660 * Support for Epoch Environment.
3662 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
3663 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
3664 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
3668 * Support for Shared Libraries
3670 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
3671 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
3672 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
3673 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
3674 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
3675 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
3676 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
3677 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
3679 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
3680 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
3681 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
3683 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
3688 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
3689 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
3690 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
3691 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
3692 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
3693 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
3695 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
3697 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
3699 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3700 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3701 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
3704 * C++ multiple inheritance
3706 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
3709 * C++ exception handling
3711 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
3712 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
3713 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
3716 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
3717 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
3718 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
3720 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
3721 current stack frame.
3724 * Minor command changes
3726 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
3727 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
3728 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
3730 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
3731 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
3732 frames without printing.
3734 * New directory command
3736 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
3737 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
3738 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
3739 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
3740 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
3742 * Configuring GDB for compilation
3744 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
3747 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
3748 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
3749 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
3750 where the program that you are debugging will run.