1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB 6.2:
6 *** Changes in GDB 6.2:
8 * Fix for ``many threads''
10 On GNU/Linux systems that use the NPTL threads library, a program
11 rapidly creating and deleting threads would confuse GDB leading to the
14 ptrace: No such process.
15 thread_db_get_info: cannot get thread info: generic error
17 This problem has been fixed.
19 * "-async" and "-noasync" options removed.
21 Support for the broken "-noasync" option has been removed (it caused
24 * New ``start'' command.
26 This command runs the program until the begining of the main procedure.
28 * New BSD Kernel Data Access Library (libkvm) interface
30 Using ``target kvm'' it is now possible to debug kernel core dumps and
31 live kernel memory images on various FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD
32 platforms. Currently supported (native-only) configurations are:
34 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
35 FreeBSD/i386 i?86-*-freebsd*
36 NetBSD/i386 i?86-*-netbsd*
37 NetBSD/m68k m68*-*-netbsd*
38 NetBSD/sparc sparc-*-netbsd*
39 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
40 OpenBSD/i386 i?86-*-openbsd*
41 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-openbsd*
42 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
44 * Signal trampoline code overhauled
46 Many generic problems with GDB's signal handling code have been fixed.
47 These include: backtraces through non-contiguous stacks; recognition
48 of sa_sigaction signal trampolines; backtrace from a NULL pointer
49 call; backtrace through a signal trampoline; step into and out of
50 signal handlers; and single-stepping in the signal trampoline.
52 Please note that kernel bugs are a limiting factor here. These
53 features have been shown to work on an s390 GNU/Linux system that
54 include a 2.6.8-rc1 kernel. Ref PR breakpoints/1702.
56 * Cygwin support for DWARF 2 added.
58 * New native configurations
60 GNU/Linux/hppa hppa*-*-linux*
61 OpenBSD/hppa hppa*-*-openbsd*
62 OpenBSD/m68k m68*-*-openbsd*
63 OpenBSD/m88k m88*-*-openbsd*
64 OpenBSD/powerpc powerpc-*-openbsd*
65 NetBSD/vax vax-*-netbsd*
66 OpenBSD/vax vax-*-openbsd*
68 * END-OF-LIFE frame compatibility module
70 GDB's internal frame infrastructure has been completely rewritten.
71 The new infrastructure making it possible to support key new features
72 including DWARF 2 Call Frame Information. To aid in the task of
73 migrating old configurations to this new infrastructure, a
74 compatibility module, that allowed old configurations to continue to
75 work, was also included.
77 GDB 6.2 will be the last release to include this frame compatibility
78 module. This change directly impacts the following configurations:
88 Unless there is activity to revive these configurations, they will be
89 made OBSOLETE in GDB 6.3, and REMOVED from GDB 6.4.
91 * REMOVED configurations and files
93 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
94 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
95 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
96 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
97 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
98 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
99 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
100 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
101 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
103 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
105 *** Changes in GDB 6.1.1:
107 * TUI (Text-mode User Interface) built-in (also included in GDB 6.1)
109 The TUI (Text-mode User Interface) is now built as part of a default
110 GDB configuration. It is enabled by either selecting the TUI with the
111 command line option "-i=tui" or by running the separate "gdbtui"
112 program. For more information on the TUI, see the manual "Debugging
115 * Pending breakpoint support (also included in GDB 6.1)
117 Support has been added to allow you to specify breakpoints in shared
118 libraries that have not yet been loaded. If a breakpoint location
119 cannot be found, and the "breakpoint pending" option is set to auto,
120 GDB queries you if you wish to make the breakpoint pending on a future
121 shared-library load. If and when GDB resolves the breakpoint symbol,
122 the pending breakpoint is removed as one or more regular breakpoints
125 Pending breakpoints are very useful for GCJ Java debugging.
127 * Fixed ISO-C build problems
129 The files bfd/elf-bfd.h, gdb/dictionary.c and gdb/types.c contained
130 non ISO-C code that stopped them being built using a more strict ISO-C
131 compiler (e.g., IBM's C compiler).
133 * Fixed build problem on IRIX 5
135 Due to header problems with <sys/proc.h>, the file gdb/proc-api.c
136 wasn't able to compile compile on an IRIX 5 system.
138 * Added execute permission to gdb/gdbserver/configure
140 The shell script gdb/testsuite/gdb.stabs/configure lacked execute
141 permission. This bug would cause configure to fail on a number of
142 systems (Solaris, IRIX). Ref: server/519.
144 * Fixed build problem on hpux2.0w-hp-hpux11.00 using the HP ANSI C compiler
146 Older HPUX ANSI C compilers did not accept variable array sizes. somsolib.c
147 has been updated to use constant array sizes.
149 * Fixed a panic in the DWARF Call Frame Info code on Solaris 2.7
151 GCC 3.3.2, on Solaris 2.7, includes the DW_EH_PE_funcrel encoding in
152 its generated DWARF Call Frame Info. This encoding was causing GDB to
153 panic, that panic has been fixed. Ref: gdb/1628.
155 * Fixed a problem when examining parameters in shared library code.
157 When examining parameters in optimized shared library code generated
158 by a mainline GCC, GDB would incorrectly report ``Variable "..." is
159 not available''. GDB now correctly displays the variable's value.
161 *** Changes in GDB 6.1:
163 * Removed --with-mmalloc
165 Support for the mmalloc memory manager has been removed, as it
166 conflicted with the internal gdb byte cache.
168 * Changes in AMD64 configurations
170 The AMD64 target now includes the %cs and %ss registers. As a result
171 the AMD64 remote protocol has changed; this affects the floating-point
172 and SSE registers. If you rely on those registers for your debugging,
173 you should upgrade gdbserver on the remote side.
175 * Revised SPARC target
177 The SPARC target has been completely revised, incorporating the
178 FreeBSD/sparc64 support that was added for GDB 6.0. As a result
179 support for LynxOS and SunOS 4 has been dropped. Calling functions
180 from within GDB on operating systems with a non-executable stack
181 (Solaris, OpenBSD) now works.
185 GDB has a new C++ demangler which does a better job on the mangled
186 names generated by current versions of g++. It also runs faster, so
187 with this and other changes gdb should now start faster on large C++
190 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
192 GDB support for location expressions has been extended to support function
193 arguments and frame bases. Older versions of GDB could crash when they
196 * C++ nested types and namespaces
198 GDB's support for nested types and namespaces in C++ has been
199 improved, especially if you use the DWARF 2 debugging format. (This
200 is the default for recent versions of GCC on most platforms.)
201 Specifically, if you have a class "Inner" defined within a class or
202 namespace "Outer", then GDB realizes that the class's name is
203 "Outer::Inner", not simply "Inner". This should greatly reduce the
204 frequency of complaints about not finding RTTI symbols. In addition,
205 if you are stopped at inside of a function defined within a namespace,
206 GDB modifies its name lookup accordingly.
208 * New native configurations
210 NetBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-netbsd*
211 OpenBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-openbsd*
212 OpenBSD/alpha alpha*-*-openbsd*
213 OpenBSD/sparc sparc-*-openbsd*
214 OpenBSD/sparc64 sparc64-*-openbsd*
216 * New debugging protocols
218 M32R with SDI protocol m32r-*-elf*
220 * "set prompt-escape-char" command deleted.
222 The command "set prompt-escape-char" has been deleted. This command,
223 and its very obscure effet on GDB's prompt, was never documented,
224 tested, nor mentioned in the NEWS file.
226 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
228 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
229 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
230 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
233 Sun 3, running SunOS 3 m68*-*-sunos3*
234 Sun 3, running SunOS 4 m68*-*-sunos4*
235 Sun 2, running SunOS 3 m68000-*-sunos3*
236 Sun 2, running SunOS 4 m68000-*-sunos4*
237 Motorola 680x0 running LynxOS m68*-*-lynxos*
238 AT&T 3b1/Unix pc m68*-att-*
239 Bull DPX2 (68k, System V release 3) m68*-bull-sysv*
240 decstation mips-dec-* mips-little-*
241 riscos mips-*-riscos* mips-*-sysv*
243 sysv mips*-*-sysv4* (IRIX 5/6 not included)
245 * REMOVED configurations and files
247 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
248 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
249 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
250 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
251 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
252 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
253 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
254 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
255 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
256 386BSD i[3456]86-*-bsd*
257 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
258 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
259 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
260 SPARC running LynxOS sparc-*-lynxos*
261 SPARC running SunOS 4 sparc-*-sunos4*
262 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
263 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
265 *** Changes in GDB 6.0:
269 Support for debugging the Objective-C programming language has been
272 * New backtrace mechanism (includes DWARF 2 Call Frame Information).
274 DWARF 2's Call Frame Information makes available compiler generated
275 information that more exactly describes the program's run-time stack.
276 By using this information, GDB is able to provide more robust stack
279 The i386, amd64 (nee, x86-64), Alpha, m68hc11, ia64, and m32r targets
280 have been updated to use a new backtrace mechanism which includes
285 GDB's remote protocol has been extended to include support for hosted
286 file I/O (where the remote target uses GDB's file system). See GDB's
287 remote protocol documentation for details.
289 * All targets using the new architecture framework.
291 All of GDB's targets have been updated to use the new internal
292 architecture framework. The way is now open for future GDB releases
293 to include cross-architecture native debugging support (i386 on amd64,
296 * GNU/Linux's Thread Local Storage (TLS)
298 GDB now includes support for for the GNU/Linux implementation of
299 per-thread variables.
301 * GNU/Linux's Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
303 GDB's thread code has been updated to work with either the new
304 GNU/Linux NPTL thread library or the older "LinuxThreads" library.
306 * Separate debug info.
308 GDB, in conjunction with BINUTILS, now supports a mechanism for
309 automatically loading debug information from a separate file. Instead
310 of shipping full debug and non-debug versions of system libraries,
311 system integrators can now instead ship just the stripped libraries
312 and optional debug files.
314 * DWARF 2 Location Expressions
316 DWARF 2 Location Expressions allow the compiler to more completely
317 describe the location of variables (even in optimized code) to the
320 GDB now includes preliminary support for location expressions (support
321 for DW_OP_piece is still missing).
325 A number of long standing bugs that caused GDB to die while starting a
326 Java application have been fixed. GDB's Java support is now
327 considered "useable".
329 * GNU/Linux support for fork, vfork, and exec.
331 The "catch fork", "catch exec", "catch vfork", and "set follow-fork-mode"
332 commands are now implemented for GNU/Linux. They require a 2.5.x or later
335 * GDB supports logging output to a file
337 There are two new commands, "set logging" and "show logging", which can be
338 used to capture GDB's output to a file.
340 * The meaning of "detach" has changed for gdbserver
342 The "detach" command will now resume the application, as documented. To
343 disconnect from gdbserver and leave it stopped, use the new "disconnect"
346 * d10v, m68hc11 `regs' command deprecated
348 The `info registers' command has been updated so that it displays the
349 registers using a format identical to the old `regs' command.
353 A new command, "maint set profile on/off", has been added. This command can
354 be used to enable or disable profiling while running GDB, to profile a
355 session or a set of commands. In addition there is a new configure switch,
356 "--enable-profiling", which will cause GDB to be compiled with profiling
357 data, for more informative profiling results.
359 * Default MI syntax changed to "mi2".
361 The default MI (machine interface) syntax, enabled by the command line
362 option "-i=mi", has been changed to "mi2". The previous MI syntax,
363 "mi1", can be enabled by specifying the option "-i=mi1".
365 Support for the original "mi0" syntax (included in GDB 5.0) has been
368 Fix for gdb/192: removed extraneous space when displaying frame level.
369 Fix for gdb/672: update changelist is now output in mi list format.
370 Fix for gdb/702: a -var-assign that updates the value now shows up
371 in a subsequent -var-update.
373 * New native configurations.
375 FreeBSD/amd64 x86_64-*-freebsd*
377 * Multi-arched targets.
379 HP/PA HPUX11 hppa*-*-hpux*
380 Renesas M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
382 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
384 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
385 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
386 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
389 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
390 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
391 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
392 HP/PA running BSD hppa*-*-bsd*
393 HP/PA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
394 HP/PA Pro target hppa*-*-pro*
395 PMAX (MIPS) running Mach 3.0 mips*-*-mach3*
396 Sequent family i[3456]86-sequent-sysv4*
397 i[3456]86-sequent-sysv*
398 i[3456]86-sequent-bsd*
399 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
400 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
402 * REMOVED configurations and files
405 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
406 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
407 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
408 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
409 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
410 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
412 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
413 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
414 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
415 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
416 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
417 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
419 * MIPS $fp behavior changed
421 The convenience variable $fp, for the MIPS, now consistently returns
422 the address of the current frame's base. Previously, depending on the
423 context, $fp could refer to either $sp or the current frame's base
424 address. See ``8.10 Registers'' in the manual ``Debugging with GDB:
425 The GNU Source-Level Debugger''.
427 *** Changes in GDB 5.3:
429 * GNU/Linux shared library multi-threaded performance improved.
431 When debugging a multi-threaded application on GNU/Linux, GDB now uses
432 `/proc', in preference to `ptrace' for memory reads. This may result
433 in an improvement in the start-up time of multi-threaded, shared
434 library applications when run under GDB. One GDB user writes: ``loads
435 shared libs like mad''.
437 * ``gdbserver'' now supports multi-threaded applications on some targets
439 Support for debugging multi-threaded applications which use
440 the GNU/Linux LinuxThreads package has been added for
441 arm*-*-linux*-gnu*, i[3456]86-*-linux*-gnu*, mips*-*-linux*-gnu*,
442 powerpc*-*-linux*-gnu*, and sh*-*-linux*-gnu*.
444 * GDB now supports C/C++ preprocessor macros.
446 GDB now expands preprocessor macro invocations in C/C++ expressions,
447 and provides various commands for showing macro definitions and how
450 The new command `macro expand EXPRESSION' expands any macro
451 invocations in expression, and shows the result.
453 The new command `show macro MACRO-NAME' shows the definition of the
454 macro named MACRO-NAME, and where it was defined.
456 Most compilers don't include information about macros in the debugging
457 information by default. In GCC 3.1, for example, you need to compile
458 your program with the options `-gdwarf-2 -g3'. If the macro
459 information is present in the executable, GDB will read it.
461 * Multi-arched targets.
463 DEC Alpha (partial) alpha*-*-*
464 DEC VAX (partial) vax-*-*
466 National Semiconductor NS32000 (partial) ns32k-*-*
467 Motorola 68000 (partial) m68k-*-*
468 Motorola MCORE mcore-*-*
472 Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat frv*-*-*
475 * New native configurations
477 Alpha NetBSD alpha*-*-netbsd*
478 SH NetBSD sh*-*-netbsdelf*
479 MIPS NetBSD mips*-*-netbsd*
480 UltraSPARC NetBSD sparc64-*-netbsd*
482 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
484 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
485 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
486 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
489 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
490 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
491 IBM AIX PS/2 i[3456]86-*-aix
492 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
493 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
494 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
495 i386 running Mach 3.0 i[3456]86-*-mach3*
496 i386 running Mach i[3456]86-*-mach*
497 i386 running OSF/1 i[3456]86-*osf1mk*
498 HP/Apollo 68k Family m68*-apollo*-sysv*,
500 m68*-hp-bsd*, m68*-hp-hpux*
501 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
505 CHILL, a Pascal like language used by telecommunications companies.
507 * REMOVED configurations and files
509 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
510 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
511 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
512 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
513 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
515 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
517 * New command "set max-user-call-depth <nnn>"
519 This command allows the user to limit the call depth of user-defined
520 commands. The default is 1024.
522 * Changes in FreeBSD/i386 native debugging.
524 Support for the "generate-core-file" has been added.
526 * New commands "dump", "append", and "restore".
528 These commands allow data to be copied from target memory
529 to a bfd-format or binary file (dump and append), and back
530 from a file into memory (restore).
532 * Improved "next/step" support on multi-processor Alpha Tru64.
534 The previous single-step mechanism could cause unpredictable problems,
535 including the random appearance of SIGSEGV or SIGTRAP signals. The use
536 of a software single-step mechanism prevents this.
538 *** Changes in GDB 5.2.1:
546 gdb/182: gdb/323: gdb/237: On alpha, gdb was reporting:
547 mdebugread.c:2443: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_data not initialized
548 Fix, by Joel Brobecker imported from mainline.
550 gdb/439: gdb/291: On some ELF object files, gdb was reporting:
551 dwarf2read.c:1072: gdb-internal-error: sect_index_text not initialize
552 Fix, by Fred Fish, imported from mainline.
554 Dwarf2 .debug_frame & .eh_frame handler improved in many ways.
555 Surprisingly enough, it works now.
556 By Michal Ludvig, imported from mainline.
558 i386 hardware watchpoint support:
559 avoid misses on second run for some targets.
560 By Pierre Muller, imported from mainline.
562 *** Changes in GDB 5.2:
564 * New command "set trust-readonly-sections on[off]".
566 This command is a hint that tells gdb that read-only sections
567 really are read-only (ie. that their contents will not change).
568 In this mode, gdb will go to the object file rather than the
569 target to read memory from read-only sections (such as ".text").
570 This can be a significant performance improvement on some
571 (notably embedded) targets.
573 * New command "generate-core-file" (or "gcore").
575 This new gdb command allows the user to drop a core file of the child
576 process state at any time. So far it's been implemented only for
577 GNU/Linux and Solaris, but should be relatively easily ported to other
578 hosts. Argument is core file name (defaults to core.<pid>).
580 * New command line option
582 GDB now accepts --pid or -p followed by a process id.
584 * Change in command line behavior -- corefiles vs. process ids.
586 There is a subtle behavior in the way in which GDB handles
587 command line arguments. The first non-flag argument is always
588 a program to debug, but the second non-flag argument may either
589 be a corefile or a process id. Previously, GDB would attempt to
590 open the second argument as a corefile, and if that failed, would
591 issue a superfluous error message and then attempt to attach it as
592 a process. Now, if the second argument begins with a non-digit,
593 it will be treated as a corefile. If it begins with a digit,
594 GDB will attempt to attach it as a process, and if no such process
595 is found, will then attempt to open it as a corefile.
597 * Changes in ARM configurations.
599 Multi-arch support is enabled for all ARM configurations. The ARM/NetBSD
600 configuration is fully multi-arch.
602 * New native configurations
604 ARM NetBSD arm*-*-netbsd*
605 x86 OpenBSD i[3456]86-*-openbsd*
606 AMD x86-64 running GNU/Linux x86_64-*-linux-*
607 Sparc64 running FreeBSD sparc64-*-freebsd*
611 Sanyo XStormy16 xstormy16-elf
613 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
615 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
616 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
617 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
620 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi, udi29k
621 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
622 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
623 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
624 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
626 testsuite/gdb.hp/gdb.threads-hp/ directory
628 * REMOVED configurations and files
630 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
632 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
633 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
634 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
635 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
636 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
637 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
638 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
639 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
640 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
641 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
642 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host and target N/A host, powerpc-*-macos*
644 * Changes to command line processing
646 The new `--args' feature can be used to specify command-line arguments
647 for the inferior from gdb's command line.
649 * Changes to key bindings
651 There is a new `operate-and-get-next' function bound to `C-o'.
653 *** Changes in GDB 5.1.1
655 Fix compile problem on DJGPP.
657 Fix a problem with floating-point registers on the i386 being
660 Fix to stop GDB crashing on .debug_str debug info.
662 Numerous documentation fixes.
664 Numerous testsuite fixes.
666 *** Changes in GDB 5.1:
668 * New native configurations
670 Alpha FreeBSD alpha*-*-freebsd*
671 x86 FreeBSD 3.x and 4.x i[3456]86*-freebsd[34]*
672 MIPS GNU/Linux mips*-*-linux*
673 MIPS SGI Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
675 s390 and s390x GNU/Linux {s390,s390x}-*-linux*
679 Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12 m68hc11-elf
681 UltraSparc running GNU/Linux sparc64-*-linux*
683 * OBSOLETE configurations and files
685 x86 FreeBSD before 2.2 i[3456]86*-freebsd{1,2.[01]}*,
686 Harris/CXUX m88k m88*-harris-cxux*
687 Most ns32k hosts and targets ns32k-*-mach3* ns32k-umax-*
688 ns32k-utek-sysv* ns32k-utek-*
689 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
691 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1 a29k-nyu-sym1 a29k-*-kern*
692 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
693 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
694 PowerPC Netware powerpc-*-netware*
695 SunOS 4.0.Xi on i386 i[3456]86-*-sunos*
696 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x m68*-sony-sysv news
697 ISI Optimum V (3.05) under 4.3bsd. m68*-isi-*
698 Apple Macintosh (MPW) host N/A
700 stuff.c (Program to stuff files into a specially prepared space in kdb)
701 kdb-start.c (Main loop for the standalone kernel debugger)
703 Configurations that have been declared obsolete in this release have
704 been commented out. Unless there is activity to revive these
705 configurations, the next release of GDB will have their sources
708 * REMOVED configurations and files
710 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
711 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
713 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
717 * GDB has been converted to ISO C.
719 GDB's source code has been converted to ISO C. In particular, the
720 sources are fully protoized, and rely on standard headers being
725 * "info symbol" works on platforms which use COFF, ECOFF, XCOFF, and NLM.
727 * The MI enabled by default.
729 The new machine oriented interface (MI) introduced in GDB 5.0 has been
730 revised and enabled by default. Packages which use GDB as a debugging
731 engine behind a UI or another front end are encouraged to switch to
732 using the GDB/MI interface, instead of the old annotations interface
733 which is now deprecated.
735 * Support for debugging Pascal programs.
737 GDB now includes support for debugging Pascal programs. The following
738 main features are supported:
740 - Pascal-specific data types such as sets;
742 - automatic recognition of Pascal sources based on file-name
745 - Pascal-style display of data types, variables, and functions;
747 - a Pascal expression parser.
749 However, some important features are not yet supported.
751 - Pascal string operations are not supported at all;
753 - there are some problems with boolean types;
755 - Pascal type hexadecimal constants are not supported
756 because they conflict with the internal variables format;
758 - support for Pascal objects and classes is not full yet;
760 - unlike Pascal, GDB is case-sensitive for symbol names.
762 * Changes in completion.
764 Commands such as `shell', `run' and `set args', which pass arguments
765 to inferior programs, now complete on file names, similar to what
766 users expect at the shell prompt.
768 Commands which accept locations, such as `disassemble', `print',
769 `breakpoint', `until', etc. now complete on filenames as well as
770 program symbols. Thus, if you type "break foob TAB", and the source
771 files linked into the programs include `foobar.c', that file name will
772 be one of the candidates for completion. However, file names are not
773 considered for completion after you typed a colon that delimits a file
774 name from a name of a function in that file, as in "break foo.c:bar".
776 `set demangle-style' completes on available demangling styles.
778 * New platform-independent commands:
780 It is now possible to define a post-hook for a command as well as a
781 hook that runs before the command. For more details, see the
782 documentation of `hookpost' in the GDB manual.
784 * Changes in GNU/Linux native debugging.
786 Support for debugging multi-threaded programs has been completely
787 revised for all platforms except m68k and sparc. You can now debug as
788 many threads as your system allows you to have.
790 Attach/detach is supported for multi-threaded programs.
792 Support for SSE registers was added for x86. This doesn't work for
793 multi-threaded programs though.
795 * Changes in MIPS configurations.
797 Multi-arch support is enabled for all MIPS configurations.
799 GDB can now be built as native debugger on SGI Irix 6.x systems for
800 debugging n32 executables. (Debugging 64-bit executables is not yet
803 * Unified support for hardware watchpoints in all x86 configurations.
805 Most (if not all) native x86 configurations support hardware-assisted
806 breakpoints and watchpoints in a unified manner. This support
807 implements debug register sharing between watchpoints, which allows to
808 put a virtually infinite number of watchpoints on the same address,
809 and also supports watching regions up to 16 bytes with several debug
812 The new maintenance command `maintenance show-debug-regs' toggles
813 debugging print-outs in functions that insert, remove, and test
814 watchpoints and hardware breakpoints.
816 * Changes in the DJGPP native configuration.
818 New command ``info dos sysinfo'' displays assorted information about
819 the CPU, OS, memory, and DPMI server.
821 New commands ``info dos gdt'', ``info dos ldt'', and ``info dos idt''
822 display information about segment descriptors stored in GDT, LDT, and
825 New commands ``info dos pde'' and ``info dos pte'' display entries
826 from Page Directory and Page Tables (for now works with CWSDPMI only).
827 New command ``info dos address-pte'' displays the Page Table entry for
828 a given linear address.
830 GDB can now pass command lines longer than 126 characters to the
831 program being debugged (requires an update to the libdbg.a library
832 which is part of the DJGPP development kit).
834 DWARF2 debug info is now supported.
836 It is now possible to `step' and `next' through calls to `longjmp'.
838 * Changes in documentation.
840 All GDB documentation was converted to GFDL, the GNU Free
841 Documentation License.
843 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
846 TUI, the Text-mode User Interface, is now documented in the manual.
848 Tracepoints-related commands are now fully documented in the GDB
851 The "GDB Internals" manual now has an index. It also includes
852 documentation of `ui_out' functions, GDB coding standards, x86
853 hardware watchpoints, and memory region attributes.
855 * GDB's version number moved to ``version.in''
857 The Makefile variable VERSION has been replaced by the file
858 ``version.in''. People creating GDB distributions should update the
859 contents of this file.
863 GUD support is now a standard part of the EMACS distribution.
865 *** Changes in GDB 5.0:
867 * Improved support for debugging FP programs on x86 targets
869 Unified and much-improved support for debugging floating-point
870 programs on all x86 targets. In particular, ``info float'' now
871 displays the FP registers in the same format on all x86 targets, with
872 greater level of detail.
874 * Improvements and bugfixes in hardware-assisted watchpoints
876 It is now possible to watch array elements, struct members, and
877 bitfields with hardware-assisted watchpoints. Data-read watchpoints
878 on x86 targets no longer erroneously trigger when the address is
881 * Improvements in the native DJGPP version of GDB
883 The distribution now includes all the scripts and auxiliary files
884 necessary to build the native DJGPP version on MS-DOS/MS-Windows
885 machines ``out of the box''.
887 The DJGPP version can now debug programs that use signals. It is
888 possible to catch signals that happened in the debuggee, deliver
889 signals to it, interrupt it with Ctrl-C, etc. (Previously, a signal
890 would kill the program being debugged.) Programs that hook hardware
891 interrupts (keyboard, timer, etc.) can also be debugged.
893 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that redirect their
894 standard handles or switch them to raw (as opposed to cooked) mode, or
895 even close them. The command ``run < foo > bar'' works as expected,
896 and ``info terminal'' reports useful information about the debuggee's
897 terminal, including raw/cooked mode, redirection, etc.
899 The DJGPP version now uses termios functions for console I/O, which
900 enables debugging graphics programs. Interrupting GDB with Ctrl-C
903 DOS-style file names with drive letters are now fully supported by
906 It is now possible to debug DJGPP programs that switch their working
907 directory. It is also possible to rerun the debuggee any number of
908 times without restarting GDB; thus, you can use the same setup,
909 breakpoints, etc. for many debugging sessions.
911 * New native configurations
913 ARM GNU/Linux arm*-*-linux*
914 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
918 Motorola MCore mcore-*-*
919 x86 VxWorks i[3456]86-*-vxworks*
920 PowerPC VxWorks powerpc-*-vxworks*
921 TI TMS320C80 tic80-*-*
923 * OBSOLETE configurations
925 Altos 3068 m68*-altos-*
926 Convex c1-*-*, c2-*-*
928 ARM RISCix arm-*-* (as host)
931 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
932 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
933 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
934 be permanently REMOVED.
936 * Gould support removed
938 Support for the Gould PowerNode and NP1 has been removed.
940 * New features for SVR4
942 On SVR4 native platforms (such as Solaris), if you attach to a process
943 without first loading a symbol file, GDB will now attempt to locate and
944 load symbols from the running process's executable file.
946 * Many C++ enhancements
948 C++ support has been greatly improved. Overload resolution now works properly
949 in almost all cases. RTTI support is on the way.
951 * Remote targets can connect to a sub-program
953 A popen(3) style serial-device has been added. This device starts a
954 sub-process (such as a stand-alone simulator) and then communicates
955 with that. The sub-program to run is specified using the syntax
956 ``|<program> <args>'' vis:
958 (gdb) set remotedebug 1
959 (gdb) target extended-remote |mn10300-elf-sim program-args
961 * MIPS 64 remote protocol
963 A long standing bug in the mips64 remote protocol where by GDB
964 expected certain 32 bit registers (ex SR) to be transfered as 32
965 instead of 64 bits has been fixed.
967 The command ``set remote-mips64-transfers-32bit-regs on'' has been
968 added to provide backward compatibility with older versions of GDB.
970 * ``set remotebinarydownload'' replaced by ``set remote X-packet''
972 The command ``set remotebinarydownload'' command has been replaced by
973 ``set remote X-packet''. Other commands in ``set remote'' family
974 include ``set remote P-packet''.
976 * Breakpoint commands accept ranges.
978 The breakpoint commands ``enable'', ``disable'', and ``delete'' now
979 accept a range of breakpoints, e.g. ``5-7''. The tracepoint command
980 ``tracepoint passcount'' also accepts a range of tracepoints.
982 * ``apropos'' command added.
984 The ``apropos'' command searches through command names and
985 documentation strings, printing out matches, making it much easier to
986 try to find a command that does what you are looking for.
990 A new machine oriented interface (MI) has been added to GDB. This
991 interface is designed for debug environments running GDB as a separate
992 process. This is part of the long term libGDB project. See the
993 "GDB/MI" chapter of the GDB manual for further information. It can be
994 enabled by configuring with:
996 .../configure --enable-gdbmi
998 *** Changes in GDB-4.18:
1000 * New native configurations
1002 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
1003 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
1004 M68K GNU/Linux m68*-*-linux*
1008 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
1009 Intel StrongARM strongarm-*-*
1010 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
1012 * OBSOLETE configurations
1014 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
1016 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
1017 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
1018 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
1019 be permanently REMOVED.
1023 As a compatibility experiment, GDB's source files buildsym.h and
1024 buildsym.c have been converted to pure standard C, no longer
1025 containing any K&R compatibility code. We believe that all systems in
1026 use today either come with a standard C compiler, or have a GCC port
1027 available. If this is not true, please report the affected
1028 configuration to bug-gdb@gnu.org immediately. See the README file for
1029 information about getting a standard C compiler if you don't have one
1034 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
1036 * set extension-language
1038 You can now control the mapping between filename extensions and source
1039 languages by using the `set extension-language' command. For instance,
1040 you can ask GDB to treat .c files as C++ by saying
1041 set extension-language .c c++
1042 The command `info extensions' lists all of the recognized extensions
1043 and their associated languages.
1045 * Setting processor type for PowerPC and RS/6000
1047 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
1048 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
1049 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
1053 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
1054 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
1056 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
1057 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
1059 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
1060 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
1061 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
1062 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
1063 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
1064 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
1065 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
1066 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
1068 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
1069 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
1070 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
1071 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
1075 Thanks to a major code donation from Hewlett-Packard, GDB now has much
1076 more extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared
1077 library support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00,
1078 support for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and a compatibility mode
1079 for xdb and dbx commands.
1083 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
1084 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
1085 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
1087 This means that the existing catch command has changed; its first
1088 argument now specifies the type of catch to be set up. See the
1089 output of "help catch" for a list of catchpoint types.
1091 * Debugging across forks
1093 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
1098 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
1099 it, build with --enable-tui. Although this can be enabled for any
1100 configuration, at present it only works for native HP debugging.
1102 * GDB remote protocol additions
1104 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
1105 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
1106 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
1107 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
1109 For 64-bit targets, the memory packets ('M' and 'm') can now contain a
1110 full 64-bit address. The command
1112 set remoteaddresssize 32
1114 can be used to revert to the old behaviour. For existing remote stubs
1115 the change should not be noticed, as the additional address information
1118 In order to assist in debugging stubs, you may use the maintenance
1119 command `packet' to send any text string to the stub. For instance,
1121 maint packet heythere
1123 sends the packet "$heythere#<checksum>". Note that it is very easy to
1124 disrupt a debugging session by sending the wrong packet at the wrong
1127 The compare-sections command allows you to compare section data on the
1128 target to what is in the executable file without uploading or
1129 downloading, by comparing CRC checksums.
1131 * Tracing can collect general expressions
1133 You may now collect general expressions at tracepoints. This requires
1134 further additions to the target-side stub; see tracepoint.c and
1135 doc/agentexpr.texi for further details.
1137 * mask-address variable for Mips
1139 For Mips targets, you may control the zeroing of the upper 32 bits of
1140 a 64-bit address by entering `set mask-address on'. This is mainly
1141 of interest to users of embedded R4xxx and R5xxx processors.
1143 * Higher serial baud rates
1145 GDB's serial code now allows you to specify baud rates 57600, 115200,
1146 230400, and 460800 baud. (Note that your host system may not be able
1147 to achieve all of these rates.)
1151 The i960 configuration now includes an initial implementation of a
1152 builtin simulator, contributed by Jim Wilson.
1155 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
1157 * New native configurations
1159 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
1160 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
1161 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
1162 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
1163 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
1164 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
1165 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
1169 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
1170 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
1171 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
1172 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
1173 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
1174 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
1175 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
1176 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
1177 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
1178 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1179 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
1181 * New debugging protocols
1183 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
1184 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
1185 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
1186 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1187 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1188 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
1192 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
1193 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
1198 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
1199 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
1201 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
1203 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
1204 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
1205 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
1207 * Live range splitting
1209 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
1210 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
1211 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
1215 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
1216 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
1220 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
1221 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
1222 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
1227 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
1232 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
1233 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
1234 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
1235 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
1236 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
1237 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
1241 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
1242 the symbol at the specified address.
1246 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
1247 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
1248 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
1249 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
1250 file tracepoint.c for more details.
1254 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
1255 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
1256 of most MIPS variants.
1260 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
1261 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
1262 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
1266 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
1267 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
1268 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
1269 the possible architectures.
1271 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
1273 * New native configurations
1275 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
1276 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
1277 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
1278 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
1279 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
1280 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
1284 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
1285 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
1286 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
1287 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
1288 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
1290 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
1294 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
1295 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
1296 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
1297 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
1298 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
1302 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
1304 * Windows 95/NT native
1306 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
1307 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
1308 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
1309 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
1310 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
1312 * dont-repeat command
1314 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
1315 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
1316 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
1317 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
1319 * Send break instead of ^C
1321 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
1322 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
1323 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
1325 * Remote protocol timeout
1327 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
1328 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
1329 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
1331 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
1333 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
1334 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
1335 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
1336 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
1337 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
1339 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
1340 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
1341 automatically on hpux10.
1343 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
1345 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
1347 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
1349 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
1350 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
1351 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
1352 every character. The default value is 1050.
1354 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
1356 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
1357 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
1358 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
1359 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
1360 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
1361 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
1363 * Speedups for remote debugging
1365 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
1366 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
1367 and more efficient S-record downloading.
1369 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
1371 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
1372 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
1374 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
1376 * Psymtabs for XCOFF
1378 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
1379 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
1381 * Remote targets use caching
1383 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
1384 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
1385 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
1386 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
1387 off' turns the the data cache off.
1389 * Remote targets may have threads
1391 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
1392 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
1393 gdb/remote.c for details.
1397 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
1398 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
1399 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
1400 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
1401 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
1402 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
1403 sequence is something like
1405 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
1407 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
1411 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
1412 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
1413 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
1414 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
1415 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
1416 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
1417 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
1418 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
1422 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
1423 but does simplify configuration and building.
1427 GDB now supports hpux10.
1429 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
1431 * New native configurations
1433 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
1434 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
1435 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
1436 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
1440 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
1441 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
1442 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
1443 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
1446 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
1448 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
1449 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
1450 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
1451 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
1452 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
1454 * Arguments to user-defined commands
1456 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
1457 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
1460 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
1462 To execute the command use:
1465 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
1466 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
1467 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
1469 * New `if' and `while' commands
1471 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
1472 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
1473 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
1474 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
1475 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
1476 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
1477 if the expression is zero.
1479 * Fortran source language mode
1481 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
1482 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
1483 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
1484 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
1487 * Better HPUX support
1489 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
1490 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
1491 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
1492 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
1493 that behavior do the following before running the program:
1499 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
1500 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
1506 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
1507 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
1510 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
1511 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
1513 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
1515 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
1516 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
1517 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
1518 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
1519 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
1520 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
1522 * New DOS host serial code
1524 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
1525 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
1528 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
1530 * New "complete" command
1532 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
1533 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
1535 * Trailing space optional in prompt
1537 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
1538 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
1540 * Breakpoint hit counts
1542 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
1543 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
1544 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
1545 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
1546 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
1549 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
1551 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
1552 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
1553 arrays actually contain only short strings.
1555 * Shared library breakpoints
1557 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
1558 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
1560 * Hardware watchpoints
1562 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
1563 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
1565 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under GNU/Linux.
1569 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
1570 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
1572 * Improved Irix 5 support
1574 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
1576 * Improved HPPA support
1578 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
1580 * New native configurations
1582 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
1583 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
1584 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
1585 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
1589 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
1590 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
1593 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
1595 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
1596 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
1600 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
1601 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
1603 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
1605 * Irix 5 is now supported
1609 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
1610 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
1611 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
1612 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
1613 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
1616 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
1618 * User visible changes:
1622 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
1623 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
1624 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
1625 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
1626 debugging info for the mips target).
1628 * DEC Alpha native support
1630 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
1631 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
1632 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
1633 Alpha-specific notes.
1635 * Preliminary thread implementation
1637 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
1639 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
1641 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
1642 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
1645 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
1647 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
1648 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
1649 call methods, ...etc.
1651 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
1653 * User visible changes:
1655 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
1656 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
1657 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
1658 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
1660 Filename completion now works.
1662 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
1663 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
1664 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
1666 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
1667 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
1668 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
1669 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
1670 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
1674 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
1675 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
1678 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
1682 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
1683 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
1684 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
1688 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
1689 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
1690 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
1691 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
1692 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
1696 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
1697 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
1698 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
1700 * New targets supported
1702 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1703 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
1704 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
1705 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
1706 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
1708 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
1709 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
1710 GO32 memory extender.
1712 * New remote protocols
1714 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
1716 * New source languages supported
1718 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
1719 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
1720 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
1723 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
1725 * HP Precision Architecture supported
1727 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
1728 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
1729 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
1730 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
1731 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
1732 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
1734 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
1736 * Faster and better demangling
1738 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
1739 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
1740 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
1741 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
1742 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
1743 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
1746 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
1747 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
1748 compiler does not actually implement.
1750 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
1752 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
1753 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
1754 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
1755 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
1756 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
1757 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
1760 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
1761 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
1763 * Improved configure script
1765 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
1766 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
1767 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
1768 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
1770 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
1771 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
1772 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
1773 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
1774 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
1775 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
1777 * Documentation improvements
1779 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
1780 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
1781 before submitting changes.
1783 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
1784 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
1785 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
1786 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
1787 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
1789 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
1790 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
1791 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
1792 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
1793 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
1794 around this problem.
1798 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
1799 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
1800 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
1803 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
1804 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
1806 * New native hosts supported
1808 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
1809 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
1811 * New targets supported
1813 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
1815 * New file formats supported
1817 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
1818 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
1822 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
1824 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
1825 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
1827 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
1828 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
1829 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
1831 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
1832 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
1834 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
1835 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
1836 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
1839 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
1840 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
1841 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
1842 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
1843 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
1845 * Internal improvements
1847 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
1848 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
1850 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
1851 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
1852 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
1853 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
1854 shared code that handles any of them.
1856 * New command line options
1858 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
1862 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
1863 General Public License.
1865 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
1867 * Host/native/target split
1869 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
1870 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
1871 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
1872 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
1873 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
1875 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
1876 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
1877 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
1878 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
1879 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
1880 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
1881 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
1883 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
1884 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
1885 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
1887 * New hosts supported
1889 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
1890 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1891 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
1893 * New targets supported
1895 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
1896 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
1898 * New native hosts supported
1900 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
1901 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
1902 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
1904 * New file formats supported
1906 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
1907 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
1908 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
1912 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
1913 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
1914 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
1916 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
1918 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
1919 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
1920 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
1921 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
1925 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
1926 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
1927 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
1929 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
1933 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
1934 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
1937 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
1938 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
1940 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
1941 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
1942 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
1943 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
1944 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
1945 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
1947 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
1948 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
1949 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
1950 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
1954 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
1955 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
1956 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
1957 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
1958 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
1960 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
1961 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
1962 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
1963 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
1967 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
1968 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
1969 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
1970 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
1971 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
1972 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
1973 each instruction being stepped through.
1975 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
1976 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
1978 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
1979 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
1980 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
1981 processor with a serial port.
1985 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
1986 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
1987 supported, and what files each one uses.
1991 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
1992 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
1993 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
1994 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
1996 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
1997 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
1998 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
1999 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
2003 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
2004 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
2005 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
2006 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
2007 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
2008 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
2010 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
2013 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
2015 * Better support for C++ function names
2017 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
2018 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
2019 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
2020 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
2021 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
2023 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
2024 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
2025 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
2026 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
2027 for the list of formats.
2029 * G++ symbol mangling problem
2031 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
2032 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
2033 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
2034 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
2035 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
2036 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
2039 * New 'maintenance' command
2041 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
2042 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
2043 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
2045 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
2046 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
2047 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
2048 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
2049 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
2050 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
2052 The following commands are new:
2054 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
2055 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
2056 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
2058 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
2060 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
2061 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
2062 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
2063 read after argv processing.
2065 * New hosts supported
2067 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
2069 GNU/Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
2071 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
2072 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
2073 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
2074 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
2075 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
2078 * New targets supported
2080 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
2082 * More smarts about finding #include files
2084 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
2085 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
2086 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
2087 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
2088 the one that contains your sources.
2090 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
2091 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
2092 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
2094 * Interesting infernals change
2096 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
2097 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
2098 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
2099 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
2101 * Bug fixes (of course!)
2103 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
2104 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
2105 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
2107 See the ChangeLog for details.
2109 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
2111 * New machines supported (host and target)
2113 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
2115 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
2117 * New malloc package
2119 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
2120 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
2121 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
2122 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
2123 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
2124 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
2128 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
2129 'help info proc' for details.
2131 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
2133 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
2134 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
2137 * File name changes for MS-DOS
2139 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
2140 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
2141 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
2142 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
2143 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
2144 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
2146 * Cross byte order fixes
2148 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
2149 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
2151 * New -mapped and -readnow options
2153 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
2154 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
2155 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
2156 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
2157 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
2158 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
2159 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
2160 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
2161 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
2162 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
2164 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
2165 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
2166 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
2167 slower, but makes future operations faster.
2169 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
2170 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
2171 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
2174 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
2176 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
2177 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
2178 shared across multiple host platforms.
2180 * longjmp() handling
2182 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
2183 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
2184 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
2185 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
2189 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
2190 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
2195 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
2196 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
2197 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
2199 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
2201 * New machines supported (host and target)
2203 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2205 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
2206 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
2208 * New machines supported (target)
2210 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
2214 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
2215 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
2216 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
2218 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
2219 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
2220 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
2221 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
2222 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
2225 * New features for SVR4
2227 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
2228 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
2229 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
2231 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
2232 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
2233 it prints the address mappings of the process.
2235 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
2236 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
2238 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
2240 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
2241 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
2242 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
2243 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
2244 same code linked statically.
2248 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
2249 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
2250 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
2251 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
2252 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
2253 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
2257 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2258 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2259 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2262 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
2264 * New machines supported (host and target)
2266 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
2267 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
2268 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
2270 * Almost SCO Unix support
2272 We had hoped to support:
2273 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
2274 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
2275 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
2276 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
2278 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
2280 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
2281 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
2282 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
2283 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
2288 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
2289 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
2290 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
2294 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
2295 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
2296 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
2298 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
2300 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
2301 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
2302 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
2304 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
2305 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
2306 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
2307 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
2310 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
2311 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
2312 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
2313 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
2316 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
2317 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
2320 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
2321 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
2322 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
2325 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
2327 * Improved configuration
2329 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
2330 Porting BFD is simpler.
2334 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
2335 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
2336 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
2337 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
2341 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
2343 * New host supported (not target)
2345 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
2348 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
2350 * Multiple source language support
2352 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
2353 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
2354 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
2355 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
2356 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
2357 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
2361 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
2362 currently under development at the State University of New York at
2363 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
2364 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
2366 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
2367 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
2368 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
2370 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
2371 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
2375 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
2376 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
2377 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
2378 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
2381 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
2383 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
2384 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
2385 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
2386 examining core files.
2390 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
2393 * New machines supported (host and target)
2395 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
2396 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
2397 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
2399 * New hosts supported (not targets)
2401 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
2403 * New targets supported (not hosts)
2405 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
2406 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
2407 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
2409 * New remote interfaces
2415 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
2419 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
2421 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
2422 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
2423 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
2424 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
2425 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
2426 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
2427 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
2428 stub on the target system.
2430 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
2432 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
2433 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
2434 object file types such as a.out and coff.
2436 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
2437 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
2440 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
2442 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
2443 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
2445 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
2446 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
2447 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
2449 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
2450 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
2451 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
2452 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
2454 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
2455 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
2456 it is already running. Default is ON.
2458 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
2459 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
2460 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
2461 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
2464 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
2465 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
2466 or the value of the environment variable
2469 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
2470 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
2473 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
2474 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
2475 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
2477 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
2478 history expansion will be performed on
2479 command line input. The default is OFF.
2481 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
2482 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
2483 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
2485 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
2486 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
2487 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2490 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
2491 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
2492 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
2495 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
2496 ``set width'' instead.
2498 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
2499 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
2500 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
2501 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
2503 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
2506 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
2509 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
2512 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
2515 * Support for Epoch Environment.
2517 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
2518 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
2519 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
2523 * Support for Shared Libraries
2525 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
2526 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
2527 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
2528 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
2529 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
2530 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
2531 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
2532 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
2534 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
2535 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
2536 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
2538 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
2543 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
2544 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
2545 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
2546 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
2547 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
2548 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
2550 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
2552 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
2554 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2555 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2556 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
2559 * C++ multiple inheritance
2561 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
2564 * C++ exception handling
2566 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
2567 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
2568 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
2571 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
2572 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
2573 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
2575 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
2576 current stack frame.
2579 * Minor command changes
2581 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
2582 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
2583 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
2585 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
2586 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
2587 frames without printing.
2589 * New directory command
2591 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
2592 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
2593 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
2594 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
2595 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
2597 * Configuring GDB for compilation
2599 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
2602 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
2603 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
2604 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
2605 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob