1 What has changed in GDB?
2 (Organized release by release)
4 *** Changes since GDB-4.17:
6 * New native configurations
8 HP-UX 10.20 hppa*-*-hpux10.20
9 HP-UX 11.x hppa*-*-hpux11.0*
10 M68K Linux m68*-*-linux*
14 Fujitsu FR30 fr30-*-elf*
15 Mitsubishi D30V d30v-*-*
17 * OBSOLETE configurations
19 Gould PowerNode, NP1 np1-*-*, pn-*-*
21 Configurations that have been declared obsolete will be commented out,
22 but the code will be left in place. If there is no activity to revive
23 these configurations before the next release of GDB, the sources will
24 be permanently REMOVED.
28 GDB now uses readline 2.2.
30 ** The PowerPC and RS6000 targets now have a `set processor' command.
32 When GDB is configured for a powerpc*-*-* or an rs6000*-*-* target,
33 you can use the `set processor' command to specify what variant of the
34 PowerPC family you are debugging. The command
38 sets the PowerPC/RS6000 variant to NAME. GDB knows about the
39 following PowerPC and RS6000 variants:
41 ppc-uisa PowerPC UISA - a PPC processor as viewed by user-level code
42 rs6000 IBM RS6000 ("POWER") architecture, user-level view
44 403GC IBM PowerPC 403GC
45 505 Motorola PowerPC 505
46 860 Motorola PowerPC 860 or 850
47 601 Motorola PowerPC 601
48 602 Motorola PowerPC 602
49 603 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 603 or 603e
50 604 Motorola PowerPC 604 or 604e
51 750 Motorola/IBM PowerPC 750 or 750
53 At the moment, this command just tells GDB what to name the
54 special-purpose processor registers. Since almost all the affected
55 registers are inaccessible to user-level programs, this command is
56 only useful for remote debugging in its present form.
60 Thanks to a major code donation from HP, GDB now has much more
61 extensive support for HP-UX. Added features include shared library
62 support, kernel threads and hardware watchpoints for 11.00, support
63 for HP's ANSI C and C++ compilers, and compatibility mode for xdb
68 HP's donation includes the new concept of catchpoints, which is a
69 generalization of the old catch command. On HP-UX, it is now possible
70 to catch exec, fork, and vfork, as well as library loading.
72 * Debugging Across Forks
74 On HP-UX, you can choose which process to debug when a fork() happens
79 HP has donated a curses-based terminal user interface (TUI). To get
80 it, build with --enable-tui.
84 A new protocol packet 'X' that writes binary data is now available.
85 Default behavior is to try 'X', then drop back to 'M' if the stub
86 fails to respond. The settable variable `remotebinarydownload'
87 allows explicit control over the use of 'X'.
89 For 64 bit targets, the memory packets ("M" and "m") can now contain a
90 full 64 bit address. The class-obscure gdb command:
91 set targetaddresssize 32
92 can be used to revert to the old behavour. For existing remote stubs
93 the change should not be noticed as the additional address information
96 * Changes to particular targets
98 *** Changes in GDB-4.17:
100 * New native configurations
102 Alpha GNU/Linux alpha*-*-linux*
103 Unixware 2.x i[3456]86-unixware2*
104 Irix 6.x mips*-sgi-irix6*
105 PowerPC GNU/Linux powerpc-*-linux*
106 PowerPC Solaris powerpcle-*-solaris*
107 Sparc GNU/Linux sparc-*-linux*
108 Motorola sysV68 R3V7.1 m68k-motorola-sysv
112 Argonaut Risc Chip (ARC) arc-*-*
113 Hitachi H8/300S h8300*-*-*
114 Matsushita MN10200 w/simulator mn10200-*-*
115 Matsushita MN10300 w/simulator mn10300-*-*
116 MIPS NEC VR4100 mips64*vr4100*{,el}-*-elf*
117 MIPS NEC VR5000 mips64*vr5000*{,el}-*-elf*
118 MIPS Toshiba TX39 mips64*tx39*{,el}-*-elf*
119 Mitsubishi D10V w/simulator d10v-*-*
120 Mitsubishi M32R/D w/simulator m32r-*-elf*
121 Tsqware Sparclet sparclet-*-*
122 NEC V850 w/simulator v850-*-*
124 * New debugging protocols
126 ARM with RDI protocol arm*-*-*
127 M68K with dBUG monitor m68*-*-{aout,coff,elf}
128 DDB and LSI variants of PMON protocol mips*-*-*
129 PowerPC with DINK32 monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
130 PowerPC with SDS protocol powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
131 Macraigor OCD (Wiggler) devices powerpc{,le}-*-eabi
135 All configurations can now understand and use the DWARF 2 debugging
136 format. The choice is automatic, if the symbol file contains DWARF 2
141 GDB now includes basic Java language support. This support is
142 only useful with Java compilers that produce native machine code.
144 * solib-absolute-prefix and solib-search-path
146 For SunOS and SVR4 shared libraries, you may now set the prefix for
147 loading absolute shared library symbol files, and the search path for
148 locating non-absolute shared library symbol files.
150 * Live range splitting
152 GDB can now effectively debug code for which GCC has performed live
153 range splitting as part of its optimization. See gdb/doc/LRS for
154 more details on the expected format of the stabs information.
158 GDB's support for the GNU Hurd, including thread debugging, has been
159 updated to work with current versions of the Hurd.
163 GDB's ARM target configuration now handles the ARM7T (Thumb) 16-bit
164 instruction set. ARM GDB automatically detects when Thumb
165 instructions are in use, and adjusts disassembly and backtracing
170 GDB's MIPS target configurations now handle the MIP16 16-bit
175 GDB now includes support for overlays; if an executable has been
176 linked such that multiple sections are based at the same address, GDB
177 will decide which section to use for symbolic info. You can choose to
178 control the decision manually, using overlay commands, or implement
179 additional target-side support and use "overlay load-target" to bring
180 in the overlay mapping. Do "help overlay" for more detail.
184 The command "info symbol <address>" displays information about
185 the symbol at the specified address.
189 The standard remote protocol now includes an extension that allows
190 asynchronous collection and display of trace data. This requires
191 extensive support in the target-side debugging stub. Tracing mode
192 includes a new interaction mode in GDB and new commands: see the
193 file tracepoint.c for more details.
197 Configurations for embedded MIPS now include a simulator contributed
198 by Cygnus Solutions. The simulator supports the instruction sets
199 of most MIPS variants.
203 Sparc configurations may now include the ERC32 simulator contributed
204 by the European Space Agency. The simulator is not built into
205 Sparc targets by default; configure with --enable-sim to include it.
209 For target configurations that may include multiple variants of a
210 basic architecture (such as MIPS and SH), you may now set the
211 architecture explicitly. "set arch" sets, "info arch" lists
212 the possible architectures.
214 *** Changes in GDB-4.16:
216 * New native configurations
218 Windows 95, x86 Windows NT i[345]86-*-cygwin32
219 M68K NetBSD m68k-*-netbsd*
220 PowerPC AIX 4.x powerpc-*-aix*
221 PowerPC MacOS powerpc-*-macos*
222 PowerPC Windows NT powerpcle-*-cygwin32
223 RS/6000 AIX 4.x rs6000-*-aix4*
227 ARM with RDP protocol arm-*-*
228 I960 with MON960 i960-*-coff
229 MIPS VxWorks mips*-*-vxworks*
230 MIPS VR4300 with PMON mips64*vr4300{,el}-*-elf*
231 PowerPC with PPCBUG monitor powerpc{,le}-*-eabi*
233 Matra Sparclet sparclet-*-*
237 The powerpc-eabi configuration now includes the PSIM simulator,
238 contributed by Andrew Cagney, with assistance from Mike Meissner.
239 PSIM is a very elaborate model of the PowerPC, including not only
240 basic instruction set execution, but also details of execution unit
241 performance and I/O hardware. See sim/ppc/README for more details.
245 GDB now works with Solaris 2.5.
247 * Windows 95/NT native
249 GDB will now work as a native debugger on Windows 95 and Windows NT.
250 To build it from source, you must use the "gnu-win32" environment,
251 which uses a DLL to emulate enough of Unix to run the GNU tools.
252 Further information, binaries, and sources are available at
253 ftp.cygnus.com, under pub/gnu-win32.
255 * dont-repeat command
257 If a user-defined command includes the command `dont-repeat', then the
258 command will not be repeated if the user just types return. This is
259 useful if the command is time-consuming to run, so that accidental
260 extra keystrokes don't run the same command many times.
262 * Send break instead of ^C
264 The standard remote protocol now includes an option to send a break
265 rather than a ^C to the target in order to interrupt it. By default,
266 GDB will send ^C; to send a break, set the variable `remotebreak' to 1.
268 * Remote protocol timeout
270 The standard remote protocol includes a new variable `remotetimeout'
271 that allows you to set the number of seconds before GDB gives up trying
272 to read from the target. The default value is 2.
274 * Automatic tracking of dynamic object loading (HPUX and Solaris only)
276 By default GDB will automatically keep track of objects as they are
277 loaded and unloaded by the dynamic linker. By using the command `set
278 stop-on-solib-events 1' you can arrange for GDB to stop the inferior
279 when shared library events occur, thus allowing you to set breakpoints
280 in shared libraries which are explicitly loaded by the inferior.
282 Note this feature does not work on hpux8. On hpux9 you must link
283 /usr/lib/end.o into your program. This feature should work
284 automatically on hpux10.
286 * Irix 5.x hardware watchpoint support
288 Irix 5 configurations now support the use of hardware watchpoints.
290 * Mips protocol "SYN garbage limit"
292 When debugging a Mips target using the `target mips' protocol, you
293 may set the number of characters that GDB will ignore by setting
294 the `syn-garbage-limit'. A value of -1 means that GDB will ignore
295 every character. The default value is 1050.
297 * Recording and replaying remote debug sessions
299 If you set `remotelogfile' to the name of a file, gdb will write to it
300 a recording of a remote debug session. This recording may then be
301 replayed back to gdb using "gdbreplay". See gdbserver/README for
302 details. This is useful when you have a problem with GDB while doing
303 remote debugging; you can make a recording of the session and send it
304 to someone else, who can then recreate the problem.
306 * Speedups for remote debugging
308 GDB includes speedups for downloading and stepping MIPS systems using
309 the IDT monitor, fast downloads to the Hitachi SH E7000 emulator,
310 and more efficient S-record downloading.
312 * Memory use reductions and statistics collection
314 GDB now uses less memory and reports statistics about memory usage.
315 Try the `maint print statistics' command, for example.
317 *** Changes in GDB-4.15:
321 The symbol reader for AIX GDB now uses partial symbol tables. This
322 can greatly improve startup time, especially for large executables.
324 * Remote targets use caching
326 Remote targets now use a data cache to speed up communication with the
327 remote side. The data cache could lead to incorrect results because
328 it doesn't know about volatile variables, thus making it impossible to
329 debug targets which use memory mapped I/O devices. `set remotecache
330 off' turns the the data cache off.
332 * Remote targets may have threads
334 The standard remote protocol now includes support for multiple threads
335 in the target system, using new protocol commands 'H' and 'T'. See
336 gdb/remote.c for details.
340 If GDB is configured with `--enable-netrom', then it will include
341 support for the NetROM ROM emulator from XLNT Designs. The NetROM
342 acts as though it is a bank of ROM on the target board, but you can
343 write into it over the network. GDB's support consists only of
344 support for fast loading into the emulated ROM; to debug, you must use
345 another protocol, such as standard remote protocol. The usual
346 sequence is something like
348 target nrom <netrom-hostname>
350 target remote <netrom-hostname>:1235
354 GDB now includes support for the Apple Macintosh, as a host only. It
355 may be run as either an MPW tool or as a standalone application, and
356 it can debug through the serial port. All the usual GDB commands are
357 available, but to the target command, you must supply "serial" as the
358 device type instead of "/dev/ttyXX". See mpw-README in the main
359 directory for more information on how to build. The MPW configuration
360 scripts */mpw-config.in support only a few targets, and only the
361 mips-idt-ecoff target has been tested.
365 GDB configuration now uses autoconf. This is not user-visible,
366 but does simplify configuration and building.
370 GDB now supports hpux10.
372 *** Changes in GDB-4.14:
374 * New native configurations
376 x86 FreeBSD i[345]86-*-freebsd
377 x86 NetBSD i[345]86-*-netbsd
378 NS32k NetBSD ns32k-*-netbsd
379 Sparc NetBSD sparc-*-netbsd
383 A29K VxWorks a29k-*-vxworks
384 HP PA PRO embedded (WinBond W89K & Oki OP50N) hppa*-*-pro*
385 CPU32 EST-300 emulator m68*-*-est*
386 PowerPC ELF powerpc-*-elf
389 * Alpha OSF/1 support for procfs
391 GDB now supports procfs under OSF/1-2.x and higher, which makes it
392 possible to attach to running processes. As the mounting of the /proc
393 filesystem is optional on the Alpha, GDB automatically determines
394 the availability of /proc during startup. This can lead to problems
395 if /proc is unmounted after GDB has been started.
397 * Arguments to user-defined commands
399 User commands may accept up to 10 arguments separated by whitespace.
400 Arguments are accessed within the user command via $arg0..$arg9. A
403 print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
405 To execute the command use:
408 Defines the command "adder" which prints the sum of its three arguments.
409 Note the arguments are text substitutions, so they may reference variables,
410 use complex expressions, or even perform inferior function calls.
412 * New `if' and `while' commands
414 This makes it possible to write more sophisticated user-defined
415 commands. Both commands take a single argument, which is the
416 expression to evaluate, and must be followed by the commands to
417 execute, one per line, if the expression is nonzero, the list being
418 terminated by the word `end'. The `if' command list may include an
419 `else' word, which causes the following commands to be executed only
420 if the expression is zero.
422 * Fortran source language mode
424 GDB now includes partial support for Fortran 77. It will recognize
425 Fortran programs and can evaluate a subset of Fortran expressions, but
426 variables and functions may not be handled correctly. GDB will work
427 with G77, but does not yet know much about symbols emitted by other
430 * Better HPUX support
432 Most debugging facilities now work on dynamic executables for HPPAs
433 running hpux9 or later. You can attach to running dynamically linked
434 processes, but by default the dynamic libraries will be read-only, so
435 for instance you won't be able to put breakpoints in them. To change
436 that behavior do the following before running the program:
442 This will cause the libraries to be mapped private and read-write.
443 To revert to the normal behavior, do this:
449 You cannot set breakpoints or examine data in the library until after
450 the library is loaded if the function/data symbols do not have
453 GDB can now also read debug symbols produced by the HP C compiler on
454 HPPAs (sorry, no C++, Fortran or 68k support).
456 * Target byte order now dynamically selectable
458 You can choose which byte order to use with a target system, via the
459 commands "set endian big" and "set endian little", and you can see the
460 current setting by using "show endian". You can also give the command
461 "set endian auto", in which case GDB will use the byte order
462 associated with the executable. Currently, only embedded MIPS
463 configurations support dynamic selection of target byte order.
465 * New DOS host serial code
467 This version uses DPMI interrupts to handle buffered I/O, so you
468 no longer need to run asynctsr when debugging boards connected to
471 *** Changes in GDB-4.13:
473 * New "complete" command
475 This lists all the possible completions for the rest of the line, if it
476 were to be given as a command itself. This is intended for use by emacs.
478 * Trailing space optional in prompt
480 "set prompt" no longer adds a space for you after the prompt you set. This
481 allows you to set a prompt which ends in a space or one that does not.
483 * Breakpoint hit counts
485 "info break" now displays a count of the number of times the breakpoint
486 has been hit. This is especially useful in conjunction with "ignore"; you
487 can ignore a large number of breakpoint hits, look at the breakpoint info
488 to see how many times the breakpoint was hit, then run again, ignoring one
489 less than that number, and this will get you quickly to the last hit of
492 * Ability to stop printing at NULL character
494 "set print null-stop" will cause GDB to stop printing the characters of
495 an array when the first NULL is encountered. This is useful when large
496 arrays actually contain only short strings.
498 * Shared library breakpoints
500 In SunOS 4.x, SVR4, and Alpha OSF/1 configurations, you can now set
501 breakpoints in shared libraries before the executable is run.
503 * Hardware watchpoints
505 There is a new hardware breakpoint for the watch command for sparclite
506 targets. See gdb/sparclite/hw_breakpoint.note.
508 Hardware watchpoints are also now supported under Linux.
512 Annotations have been added. These are for use with graphical interfaces,
513 and are still experimental. Currently only gdba.el uses these.
515 * Improved Irix 5 support
517 GDB now works properly with Irix 5.2.
519 * Improved HPPA support
521 GDB now works properly with the latest GCC and GAS.
523 * New native configurations
525 Sequent PTX4 i[34]86-sequent-ptx4
526 HPPA running OSF/1 hppa*-*-osf*
527 Atari TT running SVR4 m68*-*-sysv4*
528 RS/6000 LynxOS rs6000-*-lynxos*
532 OS/9000 i[34]86-*-os9k
533 MIPS R4000 mips64*{,el}-*-{ecoff,elf}
536 * Hitachi SH7000 and E7000-PC ICE support
538 There is now support for communicating with the Hitachi E7000-PC ICE.
539 This is available automatically when GDB is configured for the SH.
543 As usual, a variety of small fixes and improvements, both generic
544 and configuration-specific. See the ChangeLog for more detail.
546 *** Changes in GDB-4.12:
548 * Irix 5 is now supported
552 GDB-4.12 on the HPPA has a number of changes which make it unable
553 to debug the output from the currently released versions of GCC and
554 GAS (GCC 2.5.8 and GAS-2.2 or PAGAS-1.36). Until the next major release
555 of GCC and GAS, versions of these tools designed to work with GDB-4.12
556 can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist.
559 *** Changes in GDB-4.11:
561 * User visible changes:
565 The "set remotedebug" option is now consistent between the mips remote
566 target, remote targets using the gdb-specific protocol, UDI (AMD's
567 debug protocol for the 29k) and the 88k bug monitor. It is now an
568 integer specifying a debug level (normally 0 or 1, but 2 means more
569 debugging info for the mips target).
571 * DEC Alpha native support
573 GDB now works on the DEC Alpha. GCC 2.4.5 does not produce usable
574 debug info, but GDB works fairly well with the DEC compiler and should
575 work with a future GCC release. See the README file for a few
576 Alpha-specific notes.
578 * Preliminary thread implementation
580 GDB now has preliminary thread support for both SGI/Irix and LynxOS.
582 * LynxOS native and target support for 386
584 This release has been hosted on LynxOS 2.2, and also can be configured
585 to remotely debug programs running under LynxOS (see gdb/gdbserver/README
588 * Improvements in C++ mangling/demangling.
590 This release has much better g++ debugging, specifically in name
591 mangling/demangling, virtual function calls, print virtual table,
592 call methods, ...etc.
594 *** Changes in GDB-4.10:
596 * User visible changes:
598 Remote debugging using the GDB-specific (`target remote') protocol now
599 supports the `load' command. This is only useful if you have some
600 other way of getting the stub to the target system, and you can put it
601 somewhere in memory where it won't get clobbered by the download.
603 Filename completion now works.
605 When run under emacs mode, the "info line" command now causes the
606 arrow to point to the line specified. Also, "info line" prints
607 addresses in symbolic form (as well as hex).
609 All vxworks based targets now support a user settable option, called
610 vxworks-timeout. This option represents the number of seconds gdb
611 should wait for responses to rpc's. You might want to use this if
612 your vxworks target is, perhaps, a slow software simulator or happens
613 to be on the far side of a thin network line.
617 This release contains support for using a DEC alpha as a GDB host for
618 cross debugging. Native alpha debugging is not supported yet.
621 *** Changes in GDB-4.9:
625 This is the first GDB release which is accompanied by a matching testsuite.
626 The testsuite requires installation of dejagnu, which should be available
627 via ftp from most sites that carry GNU software.
631 'Cfront' style demangling has had its name changed to 'ARM' style, to
632 emphasize that it was written from the specifications in the C++ Annotated
633 Reference Manual, not necessarily to be compatible with AT&T cfront. Despite
634 disclaimers, it still generated too much confusion with users attempting to
635 use gdb with AT&T cfront.
639 GDB now uses a standard remote interface to a simulator library.
640 So far, the library contains simulators for the Zilog Z8001/2, the
641 Hitachi H8/300, H8/500 and Super-H.
643 * New targets supported
645 H8/300 simulator h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
646 H8/500 simulator h8500-hitachi-hms or h8500hms
647 SH simulator sh-hitachi-hms or sh
648 Z8000 simulator z8k-zilog-none or z8ksim
649 IDT MIPS board over serial line mips-idt-ecoff
651 Cross-debugging to GO32 targets is supported. It requires a custom
652 version of the i386-stub.c module which is integrated with the
653 GO32 memory extender.
655 * New remote protocols
657 MIPS remote debugging protocol.
659 * New source languages supported
661 This version includes preliminary support for Chill, a Pascal like language
662 used by telecommunications companies. Chill support is also being integrated
663 into the GNU compiler, but we don't know when it will be publically available.
666 *** Changes in GDB-4.8:
668 * HP Precision Architecture supported
670 GDB now supports HP PA-RISC machines running HPUX. A preliminary
671 version of this support was available as a set of patches from the
672 University of Utah. GDB does not support debugging of programs
673 compiled with the HP compiler, because HP will not document their file
674 format. Instead, you must use GCC (version 2.3.2 or later) and PA-GAS
675 (as available from jaguar.cs.utah.edu:/dist/pa-gas.u4.tar.Z).
677 Many problems in the preliminary version have been fixed.
679 * Faster and better demangling
681 We have improved template demangling and fixed numerous bugs in the GNU style
682 demangler. It can now handle type modifiers such as `static' or `const'. Wide
683 character types (wchar_t) are now supported. Demangling of each symbol is now
684 only done once, and is cached when the symbol table for a file is read in.
685 This results in a small increase in memory usage for C programs, a moderate
686 increase in memory usage for C++ programs, and a fantastic speedup in
689 `Cfront' style demangling still doesn't work with AT&T cfront. It was written
690 from the specifications in the Annotated Reference Manual, which AT&T's
691 compiler does not actually implement.
693 * G++ multiple inheritance compiler problem
695 In the 2.3.2 release of gcc/g++, how the compiler resolves multiple
696 inheritance lattices was reworked to properly discover ambiguities. We
697 recently found an example which causes this new algorithm to fail in a
698 very subtle way, producing bad debug information for those classes.
699 The file 'gcc.patch' (in this directory) can be applied to gcc to
700 circumvent the problem. A future GCC release will contain a complete
703 The previous G++ debug info problem (mentioned below for the gdb-4.7
704 release) is fixed in gcc version 2.3.2.
706 * Improved configure script
708 The `configure' script will now attempt to guess your system type if
709 you don't supply a host system type. The old scheme of supplying a
710 host system triplet is preferable over using this. All the magic is
711 done in the new `config.guess' script. Examine it for details.
713 We have also brought our configure script much more in line with the FSF's
714 version. It now supports the --with-xxx options. In particular,
715 `--with-minimal-bfd' can be used to make the GDB binary image smaller.
716 The resulting GDB will not be able to read arbitrary object file formats --
717 only the format ``expected'' to be used on the configured target system.
718 We hope to make this the default in a future release.
720 * Documentation improvements
722 There's new internal documentation on how to modify GDB, and how to
723 produce clean changes to the code. We implore people to read it
724 before submitting changes.
726 The GDB manual uses new, sexy Texinfo conditionals, rather than arcane
727 M4 macros. The new texinfo.tex is provided in this release. Pre-built
728 `info' files are also provided. To build `info' files from scratch,
729 you will need the latest `makeinfo' release, which will be available in
730 a future texinfo-X.Y release.
732 *NOTE* The new texinfo.tex can cause old versions of TeX to hang.
733 We're not sure exactly which versions have this problem, but it has
734 been seen in 3.0. We highly recommend upgrading to TeX version 3.141
735 or better. If that isn't possible, there is a patch in
736 `texinfo/tex3patch' that will modify `texinfo/texinfo.tex' to work
741 GDB now supports array constants that can be used in expressions typed in by
742 the user. The syntax is `{element, element, ...}'. Ie: you can now type
743 `print {1, 2, 3}', and it will build up an array in memory malloc'd in
746 The new directory `gdb/sparclite' contains a program that demonstrates
747 how the sparc-stub.c remote stub runs on a Fujitsu SPARClite processor.
749 * New native hosts supported
751 HP/PA-RISC under HPUX using GNU tools hppa1.1-hp-hpux
752 386 CPUs running SCO Unix 3.2v4 i386-unknown-sco3.2v4
754 * New targets supported
756 AMD 29k family via UDI a29k-amd-udi or udi29k
758 * New file formats supported
760 BFD now supports reading HP/PA-RISC executables (SOM file format?),
761 HPUX core files, and SCO 3.2v2 core files.
765 Attaching to processes now works again; thanks for the many bug reports.
767 We have also stomped on a bunch of core dumps caused by
768 printf_filtered("%s") problems.
770 We eliminated a copyright problem on the rpc and ptrace header files
771 for VxWorks, which was discovered at the last minute during the 4.7
772 release. You should now be able to build a VxWorks GDB.
774 You can now interrupt gdb while an attached process is running. This
775 will cause the attached process to stop, and give control back to GDB.
777 We fixed problems caused by using too many file descriptors
778 for reading symbols from object files and libraries. This was
779 especially a problem for programs that used many (~100) shared
782 The `step' command now only enters a subroutine if there is line number
783 information for the subroutine. Otherwise it acts like the `next'
784 command. Previously, `step' would enter subroutines if there was
785 any debugging information about the routine. This avoids problems
786 when using `cc -g1' on MIPS machines.
788 * Internal improvements
790 GDB's internal interfaces have been improved to make it easier to support
791 debugging of multiple languages in the future.
793 GDB now uses a common structure for symbol information internally.
794 Minimal symbols (derived from linkage symbols in object files), partial
795 symbols (from a quick scan of debug information), and full symbols
796 contain a common subset of information, making it easier to write
797 shared code that handles any of them.
799 * New command line options
801 We now accept --silent as an alias for --quiet.
805 The memory-mapped-malloc library is now licensed under the GNU Library
806 General Public License.
808 *** Changes in GDB-4.7:
810 * Host/native/target split
812 GDB has had some major internal surgery to untangle the support for
813 hosts and remote targets. Now, when you configure GDB for a remote
814 target, it will no longer load in all of the support for debugging
815 local programs on the host. When fully completed and tested, this will
816 ensure that arbitrary host/target combinations are possible.
818 The primary conceptual shift is to separate the non-portable code in
819 GDB into three categories. Host specific code is required any time GDB
820 is compiled on that host, regardless of the target. Target specific
821 code relates to the peculiarities of the target, but can be compiled on
822 any host. Native specific code is everything else: it can only be
823 built when the host and target are the same system. Child process
824 handling and core file support are two common `native' examples.
826 GDB's use of /proc for controlling Unix child processes is now cleaner.
827 It has been split out into a single module under the `target_ops' vector,
828 plus two native-dependent functions for each system that uses /proc.
830 * New hosts supported
832 HP/Apollo 68k (under the BSD domain) m68k-apollo-bsd or apollo68bsd
833 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
834 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or i386sco
836 * New targets supported
838 Fujitsu SPARClite sparclite-fujitsu-none or sparclite
839 68030 and CPU32 m68030-*-*, m68332-*-*
841 * New native hosts supported
843 386 CPUs running various BSD ports i386-unknown-bsd or 386bsd
844 (386bsd is not well tested yet)
845 386 CPUs running SCO Unix i386-unknown-scosysv322 or sco
847 * New file formats supported
849 BFD now supports COFF files for the Zilog Z8000 microprocessor. It
850 supports reading of `a.out.adobe' object files, which are an a.out
851 format extended with minimal information about multiple sections.
855 `show copying' is the same as the old `info copying'.
856 `show warranty' is the same as `info warrantee'.
857 These were renamed for consistency. The old commands continue to work.
859 `info handle' is a new alias for `info signals'.
861 You can now define pre-command hooks, which attach arbitrary command
862 scripts to any command. The commands in the hook will be executed
863 prior to the user's command. You can also create a hook which will be
864 executed whenever the program stops. See gdb.texinfo.
868 We now deal with Cfront style name mangling, and can even extract type
869 info from mangled symbols. GDB can automatically figure out which
870 symbol mangling style your C++ compiler uses.
872 Calling of methods and virtual functions has been improved as well.
876 The crash that occured when debugging Sun Ansi-C compiled binaries is
877 fixed. This was due to mishandling of the extra N_SO stabs output
880 We also finally got Ultrix 4.2 running in house, and fixed core file
881 support, with help from a dozen people on the net.
883 John M. Farrell discovered that the reason that single-stepping was so
884 slow on all of the Mips based platforms (primarily SGI and DEC) was
885 that we were trying to demangle and lookup a symbol used for internal
886 purposes on every instruction that was being stepped through. Changing
887 the name of that symbol so that it couldn't be mistaken for a C++
888 mangled symbol sped things up a great deal.
890 Rich Pixley sped up symbol lookups in general by getting much smarter
891 about when C++ symbol mangling is necessary. This should make symbol
892 completion (TAB on the command line) much faster. It's not as fast as
893 we'd like, but it's significantly faster than gdb-4.6.
897 A new user controllable variable 'call_scratch_address' can
898 specify the location of a scratch area to be used when GDB
899 calls a function in the target. This is necessary because the
900 usual method of putting the scratch area on the stack does not work
901 in systems that have separate instruction and data spaces.
903 We integrated changes to support the 29k UDI (Universal Debugger
904 Interface), but discovered at the last minute that we didn't have all
905 of the appropriate copyright paperwork. We are working with AMD to
906 resolve this, and hope to have it available soon.
910 We have sped up the remote serial line protocol, especially for targets
911 with lots of registers. It now supports a new `expedited status' ('T')
912 message which can be used in place of the existing 'S' status message.
913 This allows the remote stub to send only the registers that GDB
914 needs to make a quick decision about single-stepping or conditional
915 breakpoints, eliminating the need to fetch the entire register set for
916 each instruction being stepped through.
918 The GDB remote serial protocol now implements a write-through cache for
919 registers, only re-reading the registers if the target has run.
921 There is also a new remote serial stub for SPARC processors. You can
922 find it in gdb-4.7/gdb/sparc-stub.c. This was written to support the
923 Fujitsu SPARClite processor, but will run on any stand-alone SPARC
924 processor with a serial port.
928 Configure.in files have become much easier to read and modify. A new
929 `table driven' format makes it more obvious what configurations are
930 supported, and what files each one uses.
934 There is a new opcodes library which will eventually contain all of the
935 disassembly routines and opcode tables. At present, it only contains
936 Sparc and Z8000 routines. This will allow the assembler, debugger, and
937 disassembler (binutils/objdump) to share these routines.
939 The libiberty library is now copylefted under the GNU Library General
940 Public License. This allows more liberal use, and was done so libg++
941 can use it. This makes no difference to GDB, since the Library License
942 grants all the rights from the General Public License.
946 The file gdb-4.7/gdb/doc/stabs.texinfo is a (relatively) complete
947 reference to the stabs symbol info used by the debugger. It is (as far
948 as we know) the only published document on this fascinating topic. We
949 encourage you to read it, compare it to the stabs information on your
950 system, and send improvements on the document in general (to
951 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu).
953 And, of course, many bugs have been fixed.
956 *** Changes in GDB-4.6:
958 * Better support for C++ function names
960 GDB now accepts as input the "demangled form" of C++ overloaded function
961 names and member function names, and can do command completion on such names
962 (using TAB, TAB-TAB, and ESC-?). The names have to be quoted with a pair of
963 single quotes. Examples are 'func (int, long)' and 'obj::operator==(obj&)'.
964 Make use of command completion, it is your friend.
966 GDB also now accepts a variety of C++ mangled symbol formats. They are
967 the GNU g++ style, the Cfront (ARM) style, and the Lucid (lcc) style.
968 You can tell GDB which format to use by doing a 'set demangle-style {gnu,
969 lucid, cfront, auto}'. 'gnu' is the default. Do a 'set demangle-style foo'
970 for the list of formats.
972 * G++ symbol mangling problem
974 Recent versions of gcc have a bug in how they emit debugging information for
975 C++ methods (when using dbx-style stabs). The file 'gcc.patch' (in this
976 directory) can be applied to gcc to fix the problem. Alternatively, if you
977 can't fix gcc, you can #define GCC_MANGLE_BUG when compling gdb/symtab.c. The
978 usual symptom is difficulty with setting breakpoints on methods. GDB complains
979 about the method being non-existent. (We believe that version 2.2.2 of GCC has
982 * New 'maintenance' command
984 All of the commands related to hacking GDB internals have been moved out of
985 the main command set, and now live behind the 'maintenance' command. This
986 can also be abbreviated as 'mt'. The following changes were made:
988 dump-me -> maintenance dump-me
989 info all-breakpoints -> maintenance info breakpoints
990 printmsyms -> maintenance print msyms
991 printobjfiles -> maintenance print objfiles
992 printpsyms -> maintenance print psymbols
993 printsyms -> maintenance print symbols
995 The following commands are new:
997 maintenance demangle Call internal GDB demangler routine to
998 demangle a C++ link name and prints the result.
999 maintenance print type Print a type chain for a given symbol
1001 * Change to .gdbinit file processing
1003 We now read the $HOME/.gdbinit file before processing the argv arguments
1004 (e.g. reading symbol files or core files). This allows global parameters to
1005 be set, which will apply during the symbol reading. The ./.gdbinit is still
1006 read after argv processing.
1008 * New hosts supported
1010 Solaris-2.0 !!! sparc-sun-solaris2 or sun4sol2
1012 Linux support i386-unknown-linux or linux
1014 We are also including code to support the HP/PA running BSD and HPUX. This
1015 is almost guaranteed not to work, as we didn't have time to test or build it
1016 for this release. We are including it so that the more adventurous (or
1017 masochistic) of you can play with it. We also had major problems with the
1018 fact that the compiler that we got from HP doesn't support the -g option.
1021 * New targets supported
1023 Hitachi H8/300 h8300-hitachi-hms or h8300hms
1025 * More smarts about finding #include files
1027 GDB now remembers the compilation directory for all include files, and for
1028 all files from which C is generated (like yacc and lex sources). This
1029 greatly improves GDB's ability to find yacc/lex sources, and include files,
1030 especially if you are debugging your program from a directory different from
1031 the one that contains your sources.
1033 We also fixed a bug which caused difficulty with listing and setting
1034 breakpoints in include files which contain C code. (In the past, you had to
1035 try twice in order to list an include file that you hadn't looked at before.)
1037 * Interesting infernals change
1039 GDB now deals with arbitrary numbers of sections, where the symbols for each
1040 section must be relocated relative to that section's landing place in the
1041 target's address space. This work was needed to support ELF with embedded
1042 stabs used by Solaris-2.0.
1044 * Bug fixes (of course!)
1046 There have been loads of fixes for the following things:
1047 mips, rs6000, 29k/udi, m68k, g++, type handling, elf/dwarf, m88k,
1048 i960, stabs, DOS(GO32), procfs, etc...
1050 See the ChangeLog for details.
1052 *** Changes in GDB-4.5:
1054 * New machines supported (host and target)
1056 IBM RS6000 running AIX rs6000-ibm-aix or rs6000
1058 SGI Irix-4.x mips-sgi-irix4 or iris4
1060 * New malloc package
1062 GDB now uses a new memory manager called mmalloc, based on gmalloc.
1063 Mmalloc is capable of handling mutiple heaps of memory. It is also
1064 capable of saving a heap to a file, and then mapping it back in later.
1065 This can be used to greatly speedup the startup of GDB by using a
1066 pre-parsed symbol table which lives in a mmalloc managed heap. For
1067 more details, please read mmalloc/mmalloc.texi.
1071 The 'info proc' command (SVR4 only) has been enhanced quite a bit. See
1072 'help info proc' for details.
1074 * MIPS ecoff symbol table format
1076 The code that reads MIPS symbol table format is now supported on all hosts.
1077 Thanks to MIPS for releasing the sym.h and symconst.h files to make this
1080 * File name changes for MS-DOS
1082 Many files in the config directories have been renamed to make it easier to
1083 support GDB on MS-DOSe systems (which have very restrictive file name
1084 conventions :-( ). MS-DOSe host support (under DJ Delorie's GO32
1085 environment) is close to working but has some remaining problems. Note
1086 that debugging of DOS programs is not supported, due to limitations
1087 in the ``operating system'', but it can be used to host cross-debugging.
1089 * Cross byte order fixes
1091 Many fixes have been made to support cross debugging of Sparc and MIPS
1092 targets from hosts whose byte order differs.
1094 * New -mapped and -readnow options
1096 If memory-mapped files are available on your system through the 'mmap'
1097 system call, you can use the -mapped option on the `file' or
1098 `symbol-file' commands to cause GDB to write the symbols from your
1099 program into a reusable file. If the program you are debugging is
1100 called `/path/fred', the mapped symbol file will be `./fred.syms'.
1101 Future GDB debugging sessions will notice the presence of this file,
1102 and will quickly map in symbol information from it, rather than reading
1103 the symbol table from the executable program. Using the '-mapped'
1104 option in a GDB `file' or `symbol-file' command has the same effect as
1105 starting GDB with the '-mapped' command-line option.
1107 You can cause GDB to read the entire symbol table immediately by using
1108 the '-readnow' option with any of the commands that load symbol table
1109 information (or on the GDB command line). This makes the command
1110 slower, but makes future operations faster.
1112 The -mapped and -readnow options are typically combined in order to
1113 build a `fred.syms' file that contains complete symbol information.
1114 A simple GDB invocation to do nothing but build a `.syms' file for future
1117 gdb -batch -nx -mapped -readnow programname
1119 The `.syms' file is specific to the host machine on which GDB is run.
1120 It holds an exact image of GDB's internal symbol table. It cannot be
1121 shared across multiple host platforms.
1123 * longjmp() handling
1125 GDB is now capable of stepping and nexting over longjmp(), _longjmp(), and
1126 siglongjmp() without losing control. This feature has not yet been ported to
1127 all systems. It currently works on many 386 platforms, all MIPS-based
1128 platforms (SGI, DECstation, etc), and Sun3/4.
1132 Preliminary work has been put in to support the new Solaris OS from Sun. At
1133 this time, it can control and debug processes, but it is not capable of
1138 As always, many many bug fixes. The major areas were with g++, and mipsread.
1139 People using the MIPS-based platforms should experience fewer mysterious
1140 crashes and trashed symbol tables.
1142 *** Changes in GDB-4.4:
1144 * New machines supported (host and target)
1146 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1148 BSD Reno on Vax vax-dec-bsd
1149 Ultrix on Vax vax-dec-ultrix
1151 * New machines supported (target)
1153 AMD 29000 embedded, using EBMON a29k-none-none
1157 GDB continues to improve its handling of C++. `References' work better.
1158 The demangler has also been improved, and now deals with symbols mangled as
1159 per the Annotated C++ Reference Guide.
1161 GDB also now handles `stabs' symbol information embedded in MIPS
1162 `ecoff' symbol tables. Since the ecoff format was not easily
1163 extensible to handle new languages such as C++, this appeared to be a
1164 good way to put C++ debugging info into MIPS binaries. This option
1165 will be supported in the GNU C compiler, version 2, when it is
1168 * New features for SVR4
1170 GDB now handles SVR4 shared libraries, in the same fashion as SunOS
1171 shared libraries. Debugging dynamically linked programs should present
1172 only minor differences from debugging statically linked programs.
1174 The `info proc' command will print out information about any process
1175 on an SVR4 system (including the one you are debugging). At the moment,
1176 it prints the address mappings of the process.
1178 If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please send mail to
1179 bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were reqired (if any).
1181 * Better dynamic linking support in SunOS
1183 Reading symbols from shared libraries which contain debugging symbols
1184 now works properly. However, there remain issues such as automatic
1185 skipping of `transfer vector' code during function calls, which
1186 make it harder to debug code in a shared library, than to debug the
1187 same code linked statically.
1191 GDB is now using the latest `getopt' routines from the FSF. This
1192 version accepts the -- prefix for options with long names. GDB will
1193 continue to accept the old forms (-option and +option) as well.
1194 Various single letter abbreviations for options have been explicity
1195 added to the option table so that they won't get overshadowed in the
1196 future by other options that begin with the same letter.
1200 The `cleanup_undefined_types' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1201 Many assorted bugs have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1202 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1205 *** Changes in GDB-4.3:
1207 * New machines supported (host and target)
1209 Amiga 3000 running Amix m68k-cbm-svr4 or amix
1210 NCR 3000 386 running SVR4 i386-ncr-svr4 or ncr3000
1211 Motorola Delta 88000 running Sys V m88k-motorola-sysv or delta88
1213 * Almost SCO Unix support
1215 We had hoped to support:
1216 SCO Unix on i386 IBM PC clones i386-sco-sysv or i386sco
1217 (except for core file support), but we discovered very late in the release
1218 that it has problems with process groups that render gdb unusable. Sorry
1219 about that. I encourage people to fix it and post the fixes.
1221 * Preliminary ELF and DWARF support
1223 GDB can read ELF object files on System V Release 4, and can handle
1224 debugging records for C, in DWARF format, in ELF files. This support
1225 is preliminary. If you bring up GDB on another SVR4 system, please
1226 send mail to bug-gdb@prep.ai.mit.edu to let us know what changes were
1231 GDB now uses the latest `readline' library. One user-visible change
1232 is that two tabs will list possible command completions, which previously
1233 required typing M-? (meta-question mark, or ESC ?).
1237 The `stepi' bug that many of you noticed has been squashed.
1238 Many bugs in C++ have been handled. Many more remain to be handled.
1239 See the various ChangeLog files (primarily in gdb and bfd) for details.
1241 * State of the MIPS world (in case you wondered):
1243 GDB can understand the symbol tables emitted by the compilers
1244 supplied by most vendors of MIPS-based machines, including DEC. These
1245 symbol tables are in a format that essentially nobody else uses.
1247 Some versions of gcc come with an assembler post-processor called
1248 mips-tfile. This program is required if you want to do source-level
1249 debugging of gcc-compiled programs. I believe FSF does not ship
1250 mips-tfile with gcc version 1, but it will eventually come with gcc
1253 Debugging of g++ output remains a problem. g++ version 1.xx does not
1254 really support it at all. (If you're lucky, you should be able to get
1255 line numbers and stack traces to work, but no parameters or local
1256 variables.) With some work it should be possible to improve the
1259 When gcc version 2 is released, you will have somewhat better luck.
1260 However, even then you will get confusing results for inheritance and
1263 We will eventually provide full debugging of g++ output on
1264 DECstations. This will probably involve some kind of stabs-in-ecoff
1265 encapulation, but the details have not been worked out yet.
1268 *** Changes in GDB-4.2:
1270 * Improved configuration
1272 Only one copy of `configure' exists now, and it is not self-modifying.
1273 Porting BFD is simpler.
1277 The `step' and `next' commands now only stop at the first instruction
1278 of a source line. This prevents the multiple stops that used to occur
1279 in switch statements, for-loops, etc. `Step' continues to stop if a
1280 function that has debugging information is called within the line.
1284 Lots of small bugs fixed. More remain.
1286 * New host supported (not target)
1288 Intel 386 PC clone running Mach i386-none-mach
1291 *** Changes in GDB-4.1:
1293 * Multiple source language support
1295 GDB now has internal scaffolding to handle several source languages.
1296 It determines the type of each source file from its filename extension,
1297 and will switch expression parsing and number formatting to match the
1298 language of the function in the currently selected stack frame.
1299 You can also specifically set the language to be used, with
1300 `set language c' or `set language modula-2'.
1304 GDB now has preliminary support for the GNU Modula-2 compiler,
1305 currently under development at the State University of New York at
1306 Buffalo. Development of both GDB and the GNU Modula-2 compiler will
1307 continue through the fall of 1991 and into 1992.
1309 Other Modula-2 compilers are currently not supported, and attempting to
1310 debug programs compiled with them will likely result in an error as the
1311 symbol table is read. Feel free to work on it, though!
1313 There are hooks in GDB for strict type checking and range checking,
1314 in the `Modula-2 philosophy', but they do not currently work.
1318 GDB can now write to executable and core files (e.g. patch
1319 a variable's value). You must turn this switch on, specify
1320 the file ("exec foo" or "core foo"), *then* modify it, e.g.
1321 by assigning a new value to a variable. Modifications take
1324 * Automatic SunOS shared library reading
1326 When you run your program, GDB automatically determines where its
1327 shared libraries (if any) have been loaded, and reads their symbols.
1328 The `share' command is no longer needed. This also works when
1329 examining core files.
1333 You can specify the number of lines that the `list' command shows.
1336 * New machines supported (host and target)
1338 SGI Iris (MIPS) running Irix V3: mips-sgi-irix or iris
1339 Sony NEWS (68K) running NEWSOS 3.x: m68k-sony-sysv or news
1340 Ultracomputer (29K) running Sym1: a29k-nyu-sym1 or ultra3
1342 * New hosts supported (not targets)
1344 IBM RT/PC: romp-ibm-aix or rtpc
1346 * New targets supported (not hosts)
1348 AMD 29000 embedded with COFF a29k-none-coff
1349 AMD 29000 embedded with a.out a29k-none-aout
1350 Ultracomputer remote kernel debug a29k-nyu-kern
1352 * New remote interfaces
1358 *** Changes in GDB-4.0:
1362 Wide output is wrapped at good places to make the output more readable.
1364 Gdb now supports cross-debugging from a host machine of one type to a
1365 target machine of another type. Communication with the target system
1366 is over serial lines. The ``target'' command handles connecting to the
1367 remote system; the ``load'' command will download a program into the
1368 remote system. Serial stubs for the m68k and i386 are provided. Gdb
1369 also supports debugging of realtime processes running under VxWorks,
1370 using SunRPC Remote Procedure Calls over TCP/IP to talk to a debugger
1371 stub on the target system.
1373 New CPUs supported include the AMD 29000 and Intel 960.
1375 GDB now reads object files and symbol tables via a ``binary file''
1376 library, which allows a single copy of GDB to debug programs of multiple
1377 object file types such as a.out and coff.
1379 There is now a GDB reference card in "doc/refcard.tex". (Make targets
1380 refcard.dvi and refcard.ps are available to format it).
1383 * Control-Variable user interface simplified
1385 All variables that control the operation of the debugger can be set
1386 by the ``set'' command, and displayed by the ``show'' command.
1388 For example, ``set prompt new-gdb=>'' will change your prompt to new-gdb=>.
1389 ``Show prompt'' produces the response:
1390 Gdb's prompt is new-gdb=>.
1392 What follows are the NEW set commands. The command ``help set'' will
1393 print a complete list of old and new set commands. ``help set FOO''
1394 will give a longer description of the variable FOO. ``show'' will show
1395 all of the variable descriptions and their current settings.
1397 confirm on/off: Enables warning questions for operations that are
1398 hard to recover from, e.g. rerunning the program while
1399 it is already running. Default is ON.
1401 editing on/off: Enables EMACS style command line editing
1402 of input. Previous lines can be recalled with
1403 control-P, the current line can be edited with control-B,
1404 you can search for commands with control-R, etc.
1407 history filename NAME: NAME is where the gdb command history
1408 will be stored. The default is .gdb_history,
1409 or the value of the environment variable
1412 history size N: The size, in commands, of the command history. The
1413 default is 256, or the value of the environment variable
1416 history save on/off: If this value is set to ON, the history file will
1417 be saved after exiting gdb. If set to OFF, the
1418 file will not be saved. The default is OFF.
1420 history expansion on/off: If this value is set to ON, then csh-like
1421 history expansion will be performed on
1422 command line input. The default is OFF.
1424 radix N: Sets the default radix for input and output. It can be set
1425 to 8, 10, or 16. Note that the argument to "radix" is interpreted
1426 in the current radix, so "set radix 10" is always a no-op.
1428 height N: This integer value is the number of lines on a page. Default
1429 is 24, the current `stty rows'' setting, or the ``li#''
1430 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1433 width N: This integer value is the number of characters on a line.
1434 Default is 80, the current `stty cols'' setting, or the ``co#''
1435 setting from the termcap entry matching the environment
1438 Note: ``set screensize'' is obsolete. Use ``set height'' and
1439 ``set width'' instead.
1441 print address on/off: Print memory addresses in various command displays,
1442 such as stack traces and structure values. Gdb looks
1443 more ``symbolic'' if you turn this off; it looks more
1444 ``machine level'' with it on. Default is ON.
1446 print array on/off: Prettyprint arrays. New convenient format! Default
1449 print demangle on/off: Print C++ symbols in "source" form if on,
1452 print asm-demangle on/off: Same, for assembler level printouts
1455 print vtbl on/off: Prettyprint C++ virtual function tables. Default is OFF.
1458 * Support for Epoch Environment.
1460 The epoch environment is a version of Emacs v18 with windowing. One
1461 new command, ``inspect'', is identical to ``print'', except that if you
1462 are running in the epoch environment, the value is printed in its own
1466 * Support for Shared Libraries
1468 GDB can now debug programs and core files that use SunOS shared libraries.
1469 Symbols from a shared library cannot be referenced
1470 before the shared library has been linked with the program (this
1471 happens after you type ``run'' and before the function main() is entered).
1472 At any time after this linking (including when examining core files
1473 from dynamically linked programs), gdb reads the symbols from each
1474 shared library when you type the ``sharedlibrary'' command.
1475 It can be abbreviated ``share''.
1477 sharedlibrary REGEXP: Load shared object library symbols for files
1478 matching a unix regular expression. No argument
1479 indicates to load symbols for all shared libraries.
1481 info sharedlibrary: Status of loaded shared libraries.
1486 A watchpoint stops execution of a program whenever the value of an
1487 expression changes. Checking for this slows down execution
1488 tremendously whenever you are in the scope of the expression, but is
1489 quite useful for catching tough ``bit-spreader'' or pointer misuse
1490 problems. Some machines such as the 386 have hardware for doing this
1491 more quickly, and future versions of gdb will use this hardware.
1493 watch EXP: Set a watchpoint (breakpoint) for an expression.
1495 info watchpoints: Information about your watchpoints.
1497 delete N: Deletes watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1498 disable N: Temporarily turns off watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1499 enable N: Re-enables watchpoint number N (same as breakpoints).
1502 * C++ multiple inheritance
1504 When used with a GCC version 2 compiler, GDB supports multiple inheritance
1507 * C++ exception handling
1509 Gdb now supports limited C++ exception handling. Besides the existing
1510 ability to breakpoint on an exception handler, gdb can breakpoint on
1511 the raising of an exception (before the stack is peeled back to the
1514 catch FOO: If there is a FOO exception handler in the dynamic scope,
1515 set a breakpoint to catch exceptions which may be raised there.
1516 Multiple exceptions (``catch foo bar baz'') may be caught.
1518 info catch: Lists all exceptions which may be caught in the
1519 current stack frame.
1522 * Minor command changes
1524 The command ``call func (arg, arg, ...)'' now acts like the print
1525 command, except it does not print or save a value if the function's result
1526 is void. This is similar to dbx usage.
1528 The ``up'' and ``down'' commands now always print the frame they end up
1529 at; ``up-silently'' and `down-silently'' can be used in scripts to change
1530 frames without printing.
1532 * New directory command
1534 'dir' now adds directories to the FRONT of the source search path.
1535 The path starts off empty. Source files that contain debug information
1536 about the directory in which they were compiled can be found even
1537 with an empty path; Sun CC and GCC include this information. If GDB can't
1538 find your source file in the current directory, type "dir .".
1540 * Configuring GDB for compilation
1542 For normal use, type ``./configure host''. See README or gdb.texinfo
1545 GDB now handles cross debugging. If you are remotely debugging between
1546 two different machines, type ``./configure host -target=targ''.
1547 Host is the machine where GDB will run; targ is the machine
1548 where the program that you are debugging will run.
projects / deliverable / binutils-gdb.git / blob